Twitter suspends Israeli MK over call to kill Palestinians
inpalestine.co
inpalestine.co
> Nice and professional work by the fighters in Jenin, keep killing them.
This was in response to an attack on what seems to be terrorists hiding in a refugee camp. The guy has only been part of parliament since November too so this was pretty fast lol
It is sort of interesting to consider the implications of this. Like Ukrainians are able to endorse killing russian solders, so at what point do wars become complex enough we don't give one side leeway? If he had been more clear about killing terrorists would this have been ok? Seems interesting to consider the implications
End of the day all that really matters is whether Twitter thinks advertisers want to have their creative appear next to the content in question. Anything else is ancillary.
Call me capitalist, but I actually believe this is how it should be. Want to post what you want without worrying about what advertisers will think? Pay for the hosting.
In contrast, the situation around "anti-terrorist operations" is ambiguous, largely because people use ambiguous language to describe them. They fail to distinguish between police operations where the suspected terrorists are civilians, non-international armed conflicts (according to the Geneva Conventions) between privileged combatants, and situations where privileged combatants become unprivileged due to their actions. And sometimes people just want to pretend that branding your opponents "terrorists" is enough to strip them (and sometimes also people around them) of their rights.
What could it possibly be called other than a state sponsored terrorist group?
But what does that mean?
Is terrorism a crime? If so, anti-terrorist operations are police operations, with the usual consequences. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty, and the people involved in the operations may face criminal charges for unnecessary violence.
Or are terrorists involved in an armed conflict? Then individual combatants are not liable for their actions, unless a court finds they have breached the rules of war.
Those are the established frameworks we have. There is no widespread agreement on how to deal with the use of armed force against a group that does not follow the rules of war.
They're no freedom fighters; they would be an iron boot upon the necks of the Palestinian people.
They're not proper soldiers or mercenaries, as they kill without discrimination on their own behalf, not as part of a sovereign government under the rules of war.
They have a Martyr's fund that pays families of people killed setting off explosive vests at temples and markets.
Whatever you call them, "terrorist" is a perfectly fitting label.
There may not be a classic framework for how to define the conflict, but that's just moving the goalpost.
The closest thing we have would be for Israel to declare war on their international backers. It would certainly bring the issue to a head, but I doubt it would yield a long term resolution or be an option that causes the least amount of life lost.
Usually it is a crime, possibly many simultaneous crimes under multiple kinds of law.
> If so, anti-terrorist operations are police operations
That…doesn’t follow, legally. For a non-terrorism example, insurrection against the US is a crime, but under US law actions against insurrection may be police actions under normal criminal process, or may be internal armed conflict outside of police process (see 10 USC ch. 13, generally.)
Espionage is a crime (and doesn't stop being one when it is conducted by agents of a hostile belligerent, whether or not they are citizens.) But while action against such espionage may be a police action, sometimes it is very much not; see, for an example in US law, ex parte Quirin, 317 US 1 (1942).
> Or are terrorists involved in an armed conflict?
Almost invariably, whether or not it is a crime, terrorists are engaged in an armed conflict, either of an international character or not, but (where the laws of war apply) engaged in outside of the laws of war.
> Then individual combatants are not liable for their actions
Individual combatants are, in fact, liable for their actions, except in armed conflict that is of an international character (before parties to the applicable treaties by treaty, and between other states, in most views, by customary international law) and where those actions are within the laws of war.
The clean dichotomy you propose between crime and “armed conflict”, where the two are non-overlapping categories and all response to the former are police matters, all those to the latter or not, and personal accountability exists only in the former is wrong on basically every level. It’s abstractly a very neat, clean, model but it has nothing to do with reality, domestic or international law, or, anything else other than being a very tidy ivory-tower abstraction.
The broad structure of the laws we have reflect a (very rough) consensus reification of ethical frameworks. You might prefer to the ethical framework you are describing, but it is by no means a common one when it comes to the subject matter, and it is, I would argue, one that for all its abstract cleanliness at a 30,000’ foot view (e.g., without any definition of what is criminal vs. armed conflict, only the idea that those are the two exclusive and non-overlapping categories of bad behavior) not one which admits of any reasonable application to reality.
Such a basis exists for old-fashioned wars between sovereign states, and for crime and police activity. At least as far as Western countries are concerned. With "terrorists", "heathens", and "heretics", things become ambiguous. Whatever Twitter chooses to do, it becomes political in an ugly way.
Ask anyone who's actually from there that isn't a zealot, the above is what they'll tell you.
This is unfortunately what it still takes ...