Image is of legal adviser to Israel’s foreign ministry Tal Becker and British jurist Malcolm Shaw at the ICJ hearing.
The ICJ case against Israel might not achieve much for the Palestinian cause directly, given that Israeli politicians have explicitly stated that the Hague will not stop them - and I believe them. The Resistance will be what stops them, and they are doing quite well for themselves. Hezbollah has hit highly sensitive and important Israeli military sites over the last couple weeks, and in general persist in several border attacks every day. The battles in Iraq and Syria also continue. Hamas remains largely intact, and is successfully forcing Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip to retreat, and other parts of the Gazan Resistance are continuing to battle down in Khan Yunis. And, last but not least, Yemen is firmly dedicated to the blockade, warding off another ship literally minutes before I started writing this paragraph.
What the ICJ is battling over isn’t Palestine and Israel - not really - but the legitimacy of international law itself, and to what degree victimized countries can rely on it to solve problems, versus needing to take more militant routes for justice. In a weird sense, it might be an L for Israel either way. If international law sides with Palestine, then when Israel refuses to stop, it will invalidate international law. If international law sides with Israel, then it will invalidate international law. There is no conceivable way for the West to come out of this looking good.
The South African portion detailing Israeli atrocities against Gaza was largely ignored by the western media. They have instead, obviously, decided to focus on the Israeli portion. Their defense appears to amount to “We didn’t do it, Hamas did it. And if we did do it, it doesn’t matter, because that’s just urban warfare for you. Please get this whole thing thrown out on a very dubious technicality so we don’t have to advance to the next stage.”
From Craig Murray, who has been physically going to the Hague:
It is important to realise this. Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute, unilateral assurances and jurisdiction. The obvious nonsense they spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media.
…I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s “no dispute” argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means “no dispute”. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…
What do I think will happen? Some sort of “compromise”. The judges will issue provisional measures different to South Africa’s request, asking Israel to continue to take measures to protect the civilian population, or some such guff. Doubtless the State Department have drafted something like this for President of the court Donoghoe already.
I hope I am wrong. I would hate to give up on international law. One thing I do know for certain. These two days in the Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights. I still believe action by the court could cause the US and UK to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza.
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The Country of the Week is South Africa! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
https://nitter.cz/LucasFoxNews/status/1748759058163659130#m
BREAKING: Over 15 U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missiles fired from al-Asad air base in Iraq to intercept incoming Iranian missiles - source
$30,000,000 gone and the base was still hit.
There is disagreement about what weapons were used against the base, and it could have been dumb rockets costing only a few thousand dollars each.
Wait a second, how can Ukrainian patriots intercept ten Kinzhals in a single night, with barely trained operators, and US Army patriots fail against Iranian ramshackle production SCUD derivatives? Are US operators that bad?
Iran missiles are not ramshackle, they have superior rocketry than the US does
It’s actually pretty easy to say you intercepted ten kinzhals if you’re Ukraine, there’s millions of gullible NATO brains who are eager to believe it
They interviewed and did puff pieces on the “hero” Patriot operator that supposedly shot down all the khinzals and he even said something like ‘I was just shooting at radar targets, I didn’t even recognize what I had accomplished until the army told me”.
So even the guy who supposedly did it isn’t aware that he did it and is just repeating what he was told. You would think if the army knew 10 khinzals were destroyed they would have some proof (wreckage or footage or something). Yet nothing has been shown
That whole thing remains so fucking funny to me. Like, there’s exaggerating events to make yourself look better; there’s making shit up to boost morale; and then there’s just completely, outrageously giving out information that not only isn’t true, but is essentially physically impossible to be true. They might as well have said that Ukraine has bred magical unicorns that shoot rainbow beams out of their horns and those shot down the Kinzhals, and it would at least be a more entertaining lie
we’re gonna get a retraction in the NYT in 3 years, hidden in fine text at the bottom of an article that is hidden from most users and can only be accessed directly via URL, saying “Turns out that Ukraine did not in fact shoot down 10 hypersonic missiles with air defense missiles that travel several times slower than said hypersonic missiles.” whoopsie daisy, at least our journalistic integrity has now been restored
Missiles are virtually impossible to intercept, it turns out. At least in useful ways in the vast majority of circumstances. Missile defense systems are 99% marketing gimmick and giveaway to arms manufacturers.
What’s funny is when these fuckers start believing their own hype, and doing big after the failures.
A lot of HIMARS were intercepted by Pantsirs. There is a reason why even firing hundreds of HIMARS every month, Ukraine could only achieve some successes in civilian areas which are less protected by air defenses. After the initial wave of successes, the Russians already plugged the missile defense gaps around their military installations, which mitigated much of the damage and rendered HIMARS as a whole useless.
The stockpile of HIMARS is actually running quite low for the US, so even sending more launchers to Ukraine is futile at this point.
The Patriot is another story though. It is simply a crappy system. It couldn’t even intercept Iraqi Scuds, a Soviet-designed system from the 1950s.
A lot of HIMARS were intercepted by Pantsirs. There is a reason why even firing hundreds of HIMARS every month, Ukraine could only achieve some successes in civilian areas which are less protected by air defenses.
Those “intercepted” missiles generally still hit in civilian areas and killed people and/or damaged civilian infrastructure. Notice I said “in useful ways, in [most] circumstances”. If the incoming missiles are simply diverted a little from their original target but still hit with intact payloads and do serious damage, then congratulations: you may have saved military targets at the expense of civilian ones.
Generally actually destroying an incoming missile only happens when you are able to hit them head-on, which only happens when you launch interceptors right from the point they are targeting. And even then they are not even close to as effective as advertised.
This is why Iron Dome—the vaunted pinnacle of interception systems, touted by Israel, the U.S. military, and arms manufacturers alike—is such a sham, for example. It is likely only about 1-2% successful (generously), and that’s against what are typically slow, unguided, under-powered rockets. Iron Dome or Iron Sieve? Evidence Questions Effectiveness of U.S.-Funded Israeli Missile Shield
I agree about the expense of such systems, though. Getting the suckers to fire and replace them is a fantastic giveaway to arms manufacturers…when they can even keep up with the “stimulated” production demand.
Eh, from a technical perspective, missile and gun based missile defense is not only possible, but feasible. However, from a logistics perspective it’s a waste of time, money, material, resources, research, etc, until an actual functioning laser-based missile defense exists which is at least two decades away IMO. When offensive missiles were as or more expensive than defensive systems, like the 1980’s, missile defense was very plausible, but the paradigm has shifted and the generals and admirals and politicians can’t figure that out.
I don’t think laser based systems will ever be feasible. The amount of energy required is absurd, and can be countered like any other missile defense system by firing more missiles than the system has batteries for, in addition to rotating projectiles (to spread heat load) and reflective coatings.
