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Posted (edited)

Note- I’m not saying the poster is racist; I’m just a little shocked by the image, and the idea of Jews as puppet masters has an ugly history. 

Edited by statsman
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Posted
22 minutes ago, statsman said:

Note- I’m not saying the poster is racist; I’m just a little shocked by the image, and the idea of Jews as puppet masters has an ugly history. 

Indeed it does:

We continue to see fundraising emails from the Trump campaign that feature language & imagery of George Soros controlling puppet strings and secret globalist cabals. This isn’t just disturbing, it’s indisputably dangerous and reprehensible. Let’s be clear, these are antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and are a gateway into hardcore antisemitic conspiracy theories.

 

Posted
8 hours ago, bolverk said:

While the delivery of some bombs has been delayed, the administration fought for months to secure $15 billion in military funding. This is one of the things that's so fucking frustrating. You can be an Israel supporter, but once you level any criticism, you're either antisemitic or pro-terrorist.

Stalin once said “Кадры решают всё,” the cadres/personnel decide everything.

To that I would add: personnel, procurement, and provision IS policy. The types of bombs you provide or procure matter and demonstrate what your policy is. Or what your policy can ever be. 

Cue Anastasis to explain why understanding bombs is ghoulish. 

Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Cue Anastasis to explain why understanding bombs is ghoulish. 

I sleep well knowing that I oppose sending weapons to Israel that will end up being used to execute an ethnic cleansing operation. 

I understand that ymmv. 

 

Edited by Anastasis
Posted
2 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

I’m not sure you understood, at all, what I said. 

The Mormons don’t believe in the pre-Trib rapture anyway. But they do believe in the Second Coming and that we are in the end times. The devil is in the details on what the term means. Same problem when you ask Muslims about the Sharia. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Rex Kramer said:

I’m not sure you understood, at all, what I said. 

You implied, I think, that Mormons are some small, fringey cult like you seem to maintain that the fundagelicals are some small, fringey cult with their "Jesus ain't comin without Israel" schtick.

They may be fringey, they may be a cult, but they ain't small, either LDS or fundagelicals that support Israel because it's a prerequisite to the second coming, whether they are explicitly aware of that belief or just told they should by their pastors.

 

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Posted
5 hours ago, statsman said:

This is the most overtly racist thing I have ever seen on this message board. 

Oh buddy, you ain’t looking hard enough then 

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Posted
8 hours ago, statsman said:

Note- I’m not saying the poster is racist; I’m just a little shocked by the image, and the idea of Jews as puppet masters has an ugly history. 

Like the Brits deciding to give them their own state in Palestine. 

Posted
8 hours ago, bolverk said:

Indeed it does:

We continue to see fundraising emails from the Trump campaign that feature language & imagery of George Soros controlling puppet strings and secret globalist cabals. This isn’t just disturbing, it’s indisputably dangerous and reprehensible. Let’s be clear, these are antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and are a gateway into hardcore antisemitic conspiracy theories.

 

Probably learned that from Orban. 

Posted
21 hours ago, mdmost said:

I've already seen MAGA try to liken what Biden is doing by withholding weapons to Israel to what Trump was impeached for by withholding aid to Ukraine. They claim Biden is doing this to sway the election. Their brains just no longer work. 

Accusing their opposition of their own crimes is CLASSIC fascism

Posted
12 hours ago, statsman said:

Note- I’m not saying the poster is racist; I’m just a little shocked by the image, and the idea of Jews as puppet masters has an ugly history. 

There's a bunch of angry racists in the DT Houston thread complaining about the "George Soros funded DA office letting criminals out on bond to terrorize cities", completely unaware of the antisemitic origin of that conspiracy theory

Posted
9 hours ago, Rex Kramer said:

 

The rapture is an 1800s doctrine dreamed up by American fundamentalists. In my mind it’s not quite as fantastical as Joe Smith’s fantasies, but it’s close. That’s what I meant. 

Raptures are dinosaurs with sharp teeth and claws, you clod. 

Posted
30 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I'm surprised Bern hadn't already posted this.

This is a new low in casting shade.  I'd say you are better than this, but it's been a few years since there was any evidence of that.

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Posted

Hey, I'm not the one who posted a clearly anti-Semitic libertarian tweet by Ron Paul and then pretended not to understand how it was anti-Semitic. 

Posted

Two thoughts:

  1. The US remains committed to a full-state resolution, as it has for the last few decades, but we still voted against this resolution for UN recognition as a full-member state. I kind of get that because they aren't a state, yet, but we're out here almost all alone on that branch.
  2. The Israeli Ambassador to the UN says the vote rewards Hamas. I kind of get that because of the timing, but this should've happened a long time ago, like, before Hamas ever came to power.

 

Quote

 

The U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution in support of Palestinian statehood.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution declaring that Palestinians qualify for full-members status at the United Nations, a highly symbolic move that reflects growing global solidarity with Palestinians and is a rebuke to Israel and the United States.

The resolution was approved by a vote of 143 to 9 with 25 nations abstaining. The Assembly broke into a big applause after the vote.

But the resolution does not mean a Palestinian state will be recognized and admitted to the United Nations as a full member anytime soon.  The Assembly can only grant full membership with the approval of the Security Council, and if history is a guide, the United States would almost inevitably wield its veto power to kill such a measure, as it did in April.

Even though a majority in the General Assembly have long supported Palestinian statehood, the resolution was the first time the body had voted on the issue of full membership. The resolution declares that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations” under its charter rules and recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter with a favorable outcome.

The resolution was prepared by the United Arab Emirates, the current chair of the U.N. Arab Group and sponsored by 70 countries. The United States voted no, along with Hungary, Argentina, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia and Nauru.

Though largely symbolic, the resolution does provide new diplomatic privileges to Palestinians. Palestinians can now sit among member states in alphabetical order; they can speak at General Assembly meetings on any topic instead of being limited to Palestinian affairs; they can submit proposals and amendments; and they can participate at U.N. conferences and international meetings organized by the Assembly and other United Nations entities.

The 193-member General Assembly took up the issue of Palestinian membership after the United States in April vetoed a resolution before the Security Council that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state. While a majority of council members supported the move, the United States said recognition of Palestinian statehood should be achieved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Frustration with the United States has been brewing for months among many senior U.N. officials and diplomats, including from allies such as France, because the Washington has repeatedly blocked cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council and has staunchly supported Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, even as civilian suffering has mounted.

“The U.S. is resigned to having another bad day at the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, an expert on the U.N. for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization. But he added that the resolution “gives the Palestinians a boost without creating a breakdown over whether they are or are not now U.N. members.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., told the Assembly ahead of the vote that Palestinians’ right to full membership at the U.N. and statehood “are not up for negotiations, they are our inherent rights as Palestinians.” He added that a vote against Palestinian statehood was a vote against the two-state solution.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan, a sharp critic of the U.N., said voting for a Palestinian state would be inviting “a state of terror” in its midst and rewarding “terrorists” who killed Jewish civilians with privileges and called member states endorsing it “Jew haters.”

Robert A. Wood, a U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that while the U.S. supported a two-state solution as the only means for sustainable peace, “It remains the U.S. view that unilateral measures at the U.N. and on the ground will not advance this goal.”

Mr. Wood said that if the Assembly refers the issue back to the Council, it would veto have the same outcome again with the U.S. blocking the move.

The Palestinians are currently recognized by the U.N. as a nonmember observer state, a status granted to them in 2012 by the General Assembly. They do not have the right to vote on General Assembly resolutions or nominate any candidates to U.N. agencies.

France, a close U.S. ally and one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, has supported Palestinian’s bid for statehood breaking away from U.S.’s stance at the U.N. both at the Council and the Assembly vote. “The time has come for the United Nations to take action with a view to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the basis of the two-state solution,” said Nicolas de Rivière France’s ambassador to the U.N. in his address on Friday.

The Assembly session, which was expected to flow over to Monday because of the long list of speakers, was not without moments of performative drama.

Mr. Gilad. Israel’s ambassador, held up the picture of Hamas’s military leader Yahya Sinwar, considered the architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, with the word ‘President,” and then a transparent shredder, inserting a piece of paper inside it, and said the member sates were “shredding the U.N. charter.”

Mr. Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador, at the end of his speech raised his fist in the air, visibly chocking back tears, and said “Free Palestine.” The Assembly broke into applause.

 

 

Posted
15 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Feels like anything not done to please Israel 100% is considering rewarding Hamas. 

yup. the world is asking them to stop slaughtering children and their response is "antisemite!" stupid sky daddies fucking things up for the rest of us

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Posted

There is a congressional mandate, statutory law, that requires the United States to immediately pull all funding from the UN if Palestine is admitted as a member. We are, of course, the single largest donor. There a lot more here than meets the eye and the president can’t do as much as you want him to.

Posted
18 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Feels like anything not done to please Israel 100% is considering rewarding Hamas. 

My fav was the tweet Prong Horn posted in the DT thread that described the professors demanding that the university students be released from jail as "Pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic"

But not his fault. He says he's too stupid to understand the words that he posts, so no foul.

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Posted
1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There is a congressional mandate, statutory law, that requires the United States to immediately pull all funding from the UN if Palestine is admitted as a member. We are, of course, the single largest donor. There a lot more here than meets the eye and the president can’t do as much as you want him to.

Why was that law made?  

Posted
1 minute ago, Biff Tannen said:

Why was that law made?  

It was passed back in 1990 because Congress voted for it. They don’t want the PLO (so, not actually Palestine) to be recognized.  The PLO remains the official de jure government of Palestine. 

Posted

Yikes, I hadn't stopped by this thread in a minute...I had no idea posting something that like 40% of the population says out loud would be so controversial to that 40%.

Sorry Rex, go back to putting your head in the sand...I didn't mean to upset you by pointing out the obvious.

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Posted
9 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

It was passed back in 1990 because Congress voted for it. They don’t want the PLO (so, not actually Palestine) to be recognized.  The PLO remains the official de jure government of Palestine. 

That's regarded.  Palestine needs to be recognized and its borders recognized and secured.  

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Posted (edited)
32 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Why was that law made?  

 

29 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

It was passed back in 1990 because Congress voted for it. They don’t want the PLO (so, not actually Palestine) to be recognized.  The PLO remains the official de jure government of Palestine. 

 

Biff: I'm obviously no expert, and it feels fairly obscure and certainly outdated. When the law was passed, the First Intifadah was still going on, and the Reagan/Bush administrations considered the PLO a terrorist organization at the time.

I just looked up the list of whom we consider as Foreign Terrorist Organizations to see when they were delisted because I was pretty damn sure they're not considered one now. The listing provided on the State Department website doesn't even show them ever being listed. Still, it also doesn't show anyone listed before 1997, so the designation process may have been different in the 1980s/early 1990s.

So, the rationale for why that law was made in the first place doesn't even apply anymore. That doesn't mean the law won't still be enforced (which is awfully convenient for those domestic groups who continue to oppose the establishment of the State of Palestine). Not only that, it's also created an awfully big hammer to bully the organization to whom Israel ultimately owes its existence: the UN.

Edit: I included 956 in my response so he can correct anything I might have wrong.

Edited by bolverk
Posted
7 hours ago, Captainant said:

There's a bunch of angry racists in the DT Houston thread complaining about the "George Soros funded DA office letting criminals out on bond to terrorize cities", completely unaware of the antisemitic origin of that conspiracy theory

This isnt exactly what happened.  One guy posted that.  And he's not so much a racist as he is a dumbass.

 

Posted
32 minutes ago, huge said:

This isnt exactly what happened.  One guy posted that.  And he's not so much a racist as he is a dumbass.

 

That's Icono, he's pretty racist.

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Posted
1 hour ago, bolverk said:

 

 

Biff: I'm obviously no expert, and it feels fairly obscure and certainly outdated. When the law was passed, the First Intifadah was still going on, and the Reagan/Bush administrations considered the PLO a terrorist organization at the time.

I just looked up the list of whom we consider as Foreign Terrorist Organizations to see when they were delisted because I was pretty damn sure they're not considered one now. The listing provided on the State Department website doesn't even show them ever being listed. Still, it also doesn't show anyone listed before 1997, so the designation process may have been different in the 1980s/early 1990s.

So, the rationale for why that law was made in the first place doesn't even apply anymore. That doesn't mean the law won't still be enforced (which is awfully convenient for those domestic groups who continue to oppose the establishment of the State of Palestine). Not only that, it's also created an awfully big hammer to bully the organization to whom Israel ultimately owes its existence: the UN.

Edit: I included 956 in my response so he can correct anything I might have wrong.

The PLF, which was active within the PLO executive committee, hasn’t been delisted even as its activities have dwindled to almost nothing. It’s still been considered a small faction within the PLO.

It may be time to rewrite or repeal the law.  I am curious why an enterprising squad member hasn’t made the attempt to at least start the debate (maybe one has but I missed it.) 

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Posted
14 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

The PLF, which was active within the PLO executive committee, hasn’t been delisted even as its activities have dwindled to almost nothing. It’s still been considered a small faction within the PLO.

It may be time to rewrite or repeal the law.  I am curious why an enterprising squad member hasn’t made the attempt to at least start the debate (maybe one has but I missed it.) 

Also, the practice of designating terrorist organizations and depriving them of certain "benefits" did not become a statutory requirement or possibility until amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1996.  Thus commencement of the practice in 1997.

So, for better or worse, that 1990 legislation was in the same vein but not the same thing.

Posted

There are congressional mandates, statutory laws, that prohibit military assistance to countries that are systematically violating human rights. But yeah, let’s talk in real serious tones about the one that pulls funding from the un over recognition of Palestine and act like any of these laws and congressional mandates matter. lol. 

Posted (edited)
On 5/9/2024 at 3:14 PM, Rex Kramer said:

Fundamentalists aren’t the same as evangelicals though they’re similar. 

That was true ten years ago. Fundis have co-opted the term

image.gif.318c5bdb7438b11cdf07e919e015d5e4.gif


ETA also wrt small minorities driving policies — you literally have 8 lunatics holding the HOR hostage for the past 18 months. 

Edited by Sawbonz
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Posted
On 5/9/2024 at 8:28 AM, Chuckie Finster said:

Cue the "it's too late, still voting for the guy who wants to nuke Palestine" leftist replies...

 

 Correct call by Biden, IMO.

 

I feel for Biden. This is a tough situation. Our policy is mealy-mouthed in the face of a merciless displacement, killing, and starving 100s of 1000s. My opinion has been made clear enough. We're complicit.

I feel for Biden because he has to negotiate a complex problem in a US that wants a simple good-evil presentation. He's also got to worry about taking any stand that makes it any easier for Trump to assume the presidency and finish destroying republic. There is no way Biden loses my vote. No way.

I was driving and listening to NPR. A US government official, probably former, with the State Dept was to be interviewed. I rolled my eyes. As with many of my predictions, I was wrong.

He brought up a hard fact that altered my attitude somewhat toward support for Israel. He used the example of 30% of the missiles fired from Iran were intercepted by the US and allies. I was all for the defensive measures, but I hadn't really thought of the implications. 

One, keeping Israel from being done like Gaza is being done is unacceptable. As unacceptable as what Israel perpetrates this very day. Two, while I still think we should cut off supply of weapons being used in Gaza, I have a deeper understanding  feel for Isael's the Israeli people's dependence on the US to deter devastation. The Israeli goverment can all be kicked out of helicopters over the sea or over Gaza.

Our electorate's binary mindset about conflict, good-guy v bad guy, does not allow for anything but the most simplistic discourse. The GЯP's insistence on turning any issue into a pack of lies to be used as a dagger in the back of American interests makes Biden's position even tougher.

The same concern I have for the Gazans would be there for Israel pushed toward a similar situation. I wish we were not involved at all and that a Jewish State could have been set up somewhere in the West. Utah probably wouldn't work out, but somewhere they wouldn't have been immediately beset.

Another fucking novel. Sorry about that.

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Posted
On 5/9/2024 at 2:18 PM, HenryJames said:

332b4f19-c1fd-4191-8639-aeeb9fe3ec54.png

They're more the pawn in our idiotic political argument. They benefit from that as long as Americans care about Israel. A pawn can be tossed aside and should worry about that.

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Posted
On 5/9/2024 at 3:16 PM, 956 Worldwide said:

Sorry, @TwiceHorn, this is a bit of a mishmash and it’s mostly because of the development of “Evangelical” into a near epithet. 
 

Evangelical is a theological definition and historic tradition that is defined by the centrality of evangelism (preaching and sharing the Gospel message), a belief in a personal conversion experience, and the authority of the Bible.  By any stretch almost all Methodism falls into this category, and John Wesley is universally recognized as a leading, foundational evangelical thinker.  There are conservative, liberal, and even progressive strains within evangelicalism. Independent congregetional church governance is  not core to evangelical theology in tradition or practice and plenty of more organized denominations fall into the broad evangelical tent.

Congregational church governance is organizational although it may have some theological groundings.  Most churches organized on these lines happen to fall within the evangelical big tent, but it’s not synonymous. Some groups like the churches of Christ will dispute that they are evangelical at all due to more sacramental understandings of baptism and communion although they developed in the general evangelical intellectual ferment.

Fundamentalism is a specific view of the Bible, with the “fundamental” being that the Bible is inspired, infallible, and inerrant. Most fundamentalist churches happen to be both evangelical and congregational but not all of them, there exist more formally organized fundamentalist groups as well as fundamentalist groups that co-exist within larger conservative but non-fundamentalist bodies.  Almost all the “let’s speed up the end times” folks DO fall into the “fundamentalist evangelical” group but the big evangelical tent is much, much broader. 

And persons I know that have been involved in the Methodist Church at the national level lament the hard anti-woman and anti-gay right wingers taking over. They couldn't be part of it, and left. It seems kind of like The Schism, but I'm not sure I know what that is.

As a non-believer, I liked the Methodist. If I were a devout believer, I'd aspire to being a Quaker. They seem to be the purest expression of faith in the ways of Jesus. 

I'm no expert. To the outsider, the difference between Catholic and Protestant is akin to that between baseball's National and American Leagues. You've got to get down to ground level to see the various follies of man.

Posted

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/366-urban-warfare-2-0

In retrospect:

1)Yeah, we should have given the Jews one of the states.  I would have chosen Mississippi.

2) We either jettison Isreal as allies or we quietly support their approach to destroying Hamas/getting hostages back.  And loudly loudly support humanitarian efforts that might help non-combatants.

Posted (edited)

It would feel pretty good knowing that I rightly called the settlers out for straight up being terrorists months ago, and it would feel great rubbing in every single one of you dipshits' faces who claimed that was antisemitic sentiment....if real people's lives weren't being affected and/or ended by their actions.

Again, fuck you, you all know who you are. Suck my whole cock.

Edited by Brian Fantana
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Posted

CNN, so not hard hitting journalism. 4 days old, but didn't see posted. There have been some previous links to abuses of West Bank prisoners and Arab Israelis. This is more about removing Gazans into Israeli concentration camps for abusive interrogations. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation attempting to make that last sentence a crime.

 

 

Posted
12 hours ago, Hank_Hill said:

They’re all in the DT protest thread now

Based on their refusal to engage (hell, or even post) in the war thread now, it's obvious don't give a shit about it anymore. Their biggest concern is apparently that college kids or anyone else would have the audacity to call for a ceasefire or deign to suggest that Bibi's government isn't 100% right about everything all the time.

Now, they're complaining that I changed the thread title to "Worldwide Israel/Palestine War Protest thread" to expand its scope after they'd already started posting about shit not taking place on campuses or outside America. They especially don't like it when you bring up protests against the war taking place inside Israel. 

 

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Posted

There's an enormous piece in the NYTimes Magazine that basically details Israel's descent into theocratic fascism. Below is the text of a separate article written simply to give a summary of the key takeaways. Shit sounds dystopian and familiar with how we're seeing the law is unequally enforced in Abbott's Texas.

Here's the gift link to the full piece. If you prefer to listen to it, there's also a 1:38:25 recording that's provided near the top of the article page.

 

Takeaways From the Times Investigation Into ‘The Unpunished’
Radical forces in Israeli society have moved from the fringes to the mainstream and put Israel’s democracy in peril. Here are the takeaways from our investigation.

For decades, most Israelis have considered Palestinian terrorism the country’s biggest security concern. But there is another threat that may be even more destabilizing for Israel’s future as a democracy: Jewish terrorism and violence, and the failure to enforce the law against it.

Our yearslong investigation reveals how violent factions within the Israeli settler movement, protected and sometimes abetted by the government, have come to pose a grave threat to Palestinians in the occupied territories and to the State of Israel itself. Piecing together new documents, videos and over 100 interviews, we found a government shaken by an internal war — burying reports it commissioned, neutering investigations it assigned and silencing whistle-blowers, some of them senior officials.

It is a blunt account, told in some cases for the first time by Israeli officials, of how the occupation came to threaten the integrity of the country’s democracy.

Settlers Pursuing a Theocratic State Have Become Lawmakers
Officials told us that once fringe, sometimes criminal groups of settlers bent on pursuing a theocratic state have been allowed for decades to operate with few restraints. Since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government came to power in 2022, elements of that faction have taken power — driving the country’s policies, including in the war in Gaza.

The lawbreakers have become the law.

Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and the official in Netanyahu’s government with oversight over the West Bank, was arrested in 2005 by the Shin Bet domestic security service for plotting road blockages to halt the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He was released with no charges. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, had been convicted multiple times for supporting terrorist organizations and, in front of television cameras in 1995, vaguely threatened the life of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered weeks later by an Israeli student.

Settler Violence Has Been Protected and Abetted for Decades
All West Bank settlers are in theory subject to the same military law that applies to Palestinian residents. But in practice, they are treated according to the civil law of the State of Israel, which formally applies only to territory within the state’s borders. This means that Shin Bet might probe two similar acts of terrorism in the West Bank — one committed by Jewish settlers and one committed by Palestinians — and use wholly different investigative tools.

The job of investigating Jewish terrorism falls to a division of Shin Bet known commonly as the Jewish Department. But it is dwarfed both in size and prestige by the Arab Department, the division charged mostly with combating Palestinian terrorism.

Jews involved in terror attacks against Arabs over the past decades have received substantial leniency, which has included reductions in prison time, anemic investigations and pardons. Most incidents of settler violence — torching vehicles, cutting down olive groves — fall under the jurisdiction of the police, who tend to ignore them. When the Jewish Department investigates more serious terrorist threats, it is often stymied from the outset, and even its successes have sometimes been undermined by judges and politicians sympathetic to the settler cause.

The two-tier situation has only become worse during the past year. We scrutinized a sample of three dozen cases from the West Bank since Oct. 7 that shows how much the legal system has decayed. In cases ranging from stealing livestock to arson to violent assault, not a single suspect was charged with a crime; in one case, a settler shot a Palestinian in the stomach while an Israel Defense Forces soldier looked on, yet the police questioned the shooter for only 20 minutes and never as a criminal suspect.

Ami Ayalon, the head of Shin Bet in the late 1990s, told us that government leaders “signal to the Shin Bet that if a Jew is killed, that’s terrible. If an Arab is killed, that’s not good, but it’s not the end of the world.”

But Jews have also been targets of ultranationalists. Prime Minister Rabin was murdered after rabbis passed what amounted to a death sentence on him for his support of the Oslo peace process.

Critics Have Been Silenced and Investigations Buried
In 1981, after a group of professors in Jerusalem raised concern about possible collusion between the settlers and the authorities and illegal “private policing activity” against Palestinians in the occupied territories, Judith Karp, then Israel’s deputy attorney general for special duties, was asked to lead a committee to look into the issue. Their report found case after case of trespassing, extortion, assault and murder, even as the military authorities and the police did nothing or performed notional investigations that went nowhere.

The minister of the interior at the time responded to their report with a scolding. “I understood that he wanted us to drop it,” Karp told us.

Another report two decades later met a similar fate. Talia Sasson, who was tapped to draw up a legal opinion on the “unauthorized outposts,” found that in a span of just over three years, the Construction and Housing Ministry had issued dozens of illegal contracts in the West Bank. In some cases, the ministry even paid for their construction.

Sasson and her Justice Ministry colleagues called the separate laws under which they saw the West Bank being administered “utterly insane.”

The report had little impact, powerless against the machine in place to expand settlements.

Security Officials Are Speaking Out in Alarm
In the West Bank, a new generation of ultranationalists has taken an even more radical turn against the very notion of a democratic Israeli state. Their objective is to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish “Jewish rule”: anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews.

It was always clear, Lior Akerman, a former Shin Bet official, told us, “that those wild groups would move from bullying Arabs to damaging property and trees and eventually would murder people.”

This past October, according to a classified document we saw, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the head of Israel’s Central Command responsible for the West Bank, wrote a letter to his boss, the chief of Israel’s military staff, saying that the surge of Jewish terrorism and violence carried out in revenge for the Oct. 7 attacks “could set the West Bank on fire.”

Another document describes a meeting in March, when Fox wrote that since Smotrich took office, the effort to clamp down on illegal settlement construction has dwindled “to the point where it has disappeared.”

Gaza has refocused the world’s attention on Israel’s long inability to address the question of Palestinian autonomy. But it is in the West Bank, in the hands of emboldened settlers, some of whom are now in power, that the corrosive effects of the occupation on both Palestinians and Israel’s rule of law are most apparent.

 

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Posted (edited)

War crimes prosecutor seeks arrest of Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Netanyahu

JERUSALEM (AP) — The chief prosecutor of the world’s top war crimes court sought arrest warrants Monday for leaders of Israel and Hamas, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over actions taken during their seven-month war.

While Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, do not face imminent arrest, the announcement by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor was a symbolic blow that deepened Israel’s isolation over the war in Gaza.

The court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, accused Netanyahu, Gallant, and three Hamas leaders — Yehia Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders condemned the move as disgraceful and antisemitic. U.S. President Joe Biden also lambasted the prosecutor and supported Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas.

A panel of three judges will decide whether to issue the arrest warrants and allow a case to proceed. The judges typically take two months to make such decisions.

Israel is not a member of the court, so even if the arrest warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution. But the threat of arrest could make it difficult for the Israeli leaders to travel abroad.

 

Israel is not a member of the court is because this is included in the list of war crimes: "the action of transferring population into occupied territory." Of course, conservatives in the US have opposed the US becoming a member. Otherwise, W and his cronies knew they could be arrested for war crimes, so they pulled out of the treaty. The Trump administration was so hostile to the ICC that it threatened sanctions on ICC judges and staff.

Notably, the State of Palestine has been a member of the ICC since 2015.

 

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state

Specific charges against the Hamas leaders:

  • Extermination as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(b) of the Rome Statute;
  • Murder as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(a), and as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
  • Taking hostages as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(iii);
  • Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(g), and also as war crimes pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi) in the context of captivity;
  • Torture as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(f), and also as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity;
  • Other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(l)(k), in the context of captivity;
  • Cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity; and
  • Outrages upon personal dignity as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(ii), in the context of captivity.

 

Specific charges against Netanyahu and Gallant:

  • Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
  • Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
  • Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
  • Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);
  • Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;
  • Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h);
  • Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).

 

Arrest warrants would mean no travel to the green countries:

image.thumb.png.c980f2c2f087e21092c6141e9369dbae.png

green: State party

yellow: Signatory that has not ratified

purple: State party that subsequently withdrew its membership

orange: Signatory that subsequently withdrew its signature

red: Non-state party, non-signatory

Edited by bolverk
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