Israel tells Elon Musk Starlink can only operate in Gaza with its approval
ft.com
ft.com
> While blocking and filtering measures deny users access to specific content on the Internet, States have also taken measures to cut off access to the Internet entirely. The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from Internet access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. [1]
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access#:~:...
They have no business justification etc for blocking starlink. I know Elon can't/won't go against it, and I know the UN is effectively a dog without teeth, but I'm surprised more human rights activists (and people who support the open internet) aren't angrier.
Seems perfectly within the accepted laws of war to me.
Now, specifically re. Starlink: They do not even offer service in Gaza (or Israel?) at the moment so I don't see how asking them not to start without specific approval could be deemed anything other than business as usual.
I don’t think you know the laws of war at all if you think the actions of Israel before or after October 7th fall within them.
Just a very small example:
> To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/middleeast/casualties-gazas-s...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/23/israels-army-a...
What if I tell your water provider, they can't serve you anymore, and they're yor only viable water provider?
Oh no sorry, I'm not denying you access to water, just access to your only source of water. And my only issue is they were providing water to you. They can keep operating everywhere else.
See the difference?
Sounds like just their opinion, man.
All of this "internet as a right" is honestly just arbitrary opining. Laws have violations, opinions don't. One has teeth, the other doesn't and can be ignored. Hell, even ignore my opinion on this matter :)
But also, since when has Israel cared about violating human rights in occupied territories?
UN exists as the forum for discussing in order to prevent WW3. That's why countries with the ability to destroy the world have veto power.
People just make it out to be more than it actually is.
As an example, UN's human right council composition (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and etc.) is a huge joke.
> The Council's Membership is based on equitable geographical distribution. Seats are distributed as follows:
> African States: 13 seats
> Asia-Pacific States: 13 seats
> Latin American and Caribbean States: 8 seats
> Western European and other States: 7 seats
> Eastern European States: 6 seats
> [...]
> Human Rights Council membership around the world
>
> By 31 December 2022, 123 UN member states will have served as Human Rights Council Members, reflecting the UN’s diversity and giving the Council legitimacy when speaking out on human rights violations in all countries:
>
> - African states: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana,Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia.
>
> - Asia-Pacific States: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam.
>
> - Latin America & Caribbean States: Argentina, Bahamas, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of).
>
> - Western European & others States: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America.
>
> - Eastern European States: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine.
its much worse.
"UNRWA Educators Are Linked To Antisemitism And Support For Terrorism" https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2023/11/icymi-un-watch-fact...
UN Teachers Call To Murder Jews https://unwatch.org/un-teachers-call-to-murder-jews-reveals-...
It's beyond shocking that there is even a discussion about using the internet in Gaza. Using cellphones to post your atrocities on TikTok, eh? Israel should bring it back to the Stone Age at least until the war is over.
In any case, Musk/SpaceX are not going to go against Israel, and in this case ultimately against the US government. Note that if Starlink knowingly allowed the service to be used by Hamas (which is defacto the Gazawi government so any terminal in Gaza would be at risk) that would be a serious offence under US law. Obviously he's going to play ball.
I don't know if it applies to corporations providing services, but all foreign aid to Israel is illegal in the US, since they are nuclear armed and not party to the non-proliferation treaty.
We have a policy of not acknowledging that they are nuclear armed to avoid this.
You can't seriously be suggesting any country would shoot down satellites?
That would be far worse than cutting undersea data cables, which they also would never do.
And it would be obvious who did it and break a lot more treaties.
You might as well suggest they'd send a missile to Elon's house.
Any normal person can be put under pressure given that what you threaten them with is more harmful than anything for retaliation they can dream up.
A sufficient erratic person might retaliate despite suffering themselves. If you have little to gain by your threat and more to loose by the counter attack you can be repelled.
That’s how American badgers win confrontations with grizzly bears.
Let’s assume you go to Musk with a file containing some dirt on him, and tell him :” Switch if your satellites over Tuvalu or the world knows”. Is it so hard to believe the reaction to be a tweet saying:
“Was approach by the Antarctican secret service and told to switch of satellites over Tuvalu, will provide internet over Tuvalu for free!”
My guess is that they either buy him, or the US tells him to do what they want lest he loses government contracts.
All in all this is just a prove that each block needs its own starlink clone, the sky will get crowded.
I wonder if they can reach the height of the Starlink's satellites orbit? How many satellites they need to destroy for Starlink - which adds new batches ~weekly and where a loss of a satellite is a standard situation - for that to be important for the system?
Theoretically, of course. I'm pretty sure SpaceX would cooperate with Israel, with mutual benefits.
Sure, that certainly would solve your burglary problem. But thats what counts right?
Let's not forget the geopolitical neighborhood in which Israel is located. The IDF "solving" the problem in 15 minutes is very likely drawing them into a (very existentially threatening) conflict with the whole region.
And given the fact that roughly a million kids live in Gaza I can only imagine what kind of human it would take to even envision that as "solving" anything.
The truth is that there is no military solution to this conflict.
This is not speculation, this is guerilla warfare 101.
What should have broader support is not to give emotionally uncontrollable and impulsive men the power to decide about the problems their kids will have to deal with — solutions that won't alleviate the problems, but make them worse. Makes you wonder for whom they are doing this, other than themselves.
The Gaza strip was not a ghetto. Its HDI was higher than many nations, and tt had areas described as wealthy. In recent times, Israel, convinced that Hamas was turning over a new leaf, had been giving concessions, and easing restrictions. One may quibble about the pace of this, but remember, this blockage on Gaza is a directly result of fears of what would happen if they were given free reign.
Now, do you think murdering over a thousand people make it more likely that Israel will relax it restrictions on Gaza? If the objective of Hamas was to get Israel to relax its restrictions on Gaza even more, then their attack does not make sense. But, things make sense if you understand that their objective is not to live peacefully side by side with Israel. This is fundamentally a cultural and ideological conflict. It sounds like the very idea of a non-Arab nation right in the heart of the middle east is anathema to them.
And Hamas is not some alien occupier of Gaza. I have watched this crisis for weeks, and have never come across any Gazan denouncing Hamas. If you have some links to an instance of this, I would like to see it. I have also not heard of any Arab nation denouncing Hamas.
So, if your argument is that Israel do nothing, or only do very specific targeting of known Hamas operatives, then you are arguing that a murderous cult be allowed free reign to operate. Was this not the status quo for all these years? I always heard about various wars and incursions into Gaza.
If not, waht would you have Israel do?
The systemic dynamic of this conflict is well understood and the fact that Hamas just happens to attack before a major diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and the Saudis is very likely no accident.
On the Gaza strip: Look at a satellite picture of it and remember that there are two million people there, half of which are below 18, of those 74 percent have no job. Roughly half of the population is in poverty. Hamas has been elected with a anti-corruption-agenda in 2014, roughly a decade ago. Our jobless 18 year old was 4 when that happened. You remember who was in power when you where four?
Maybe you don't know but anti-Hamas protests in Gaza are a thing (as one would expect giving the living conditions). They are also brutally beaten down by Hamas as one would equally expect:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/protests-against-hamas-reemerg...
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-hamas-demonstration-israel-b...
Now we are again in a conflict with its own dynamics, where Israel is realiant on international support and Hamas is reliant on building anger in Palestinanand the rest of the arab worls against the Israelis (instead of anger against them for doing a shitty job at governing/treating their citizens bad). If Israel goes in with the flaming sword, they will produce exactly that anger in the rest of the region, which might be even more dangerous than the anger of the Palestinians. If one considers that Hamas has been originally funded by Israel (https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...) a good strategy would be to:
- not retaliate harshly, but only in very pointed actions, this way Hamas stays the bad terrorists and Israel retains the international support it needs
- try to flare up resentment of the palestinian population against their betters and avoid things that allow a simple redirection of that anger towards Isreal
- fund existing pro democratic/anti-Hamas movements, help with civil infrastructure, again to guide the resentment at Hamas
- expand the partnership with surrounding arab countries, maybe even bring them on board to help with Gaza as a gesture of good will (this is a stopgap against other arab countries solidarizing with Hamas).
So essentially Israel profits if all arab entities are seperated from Hamas with their own interests, while Hamas profits if it is a simple jews against arabs-conflict.
Now the problem with all of these is, that to a understandably traumatized Israeli public that proposal must feel downright absurd and any government that had to implement it might not survive the next election. (My guess is that a part of military Israel understands basic gametheory dynamic as well, which is why we don't have stronger action).
Comparing the current situation to the holocaust is frankly disturbing. If any holocaust there would be, it is more likely to come from Hamas and their ilk, who have made no secret of their intentions on Israelis if given the chance.
Of course they could threaten him personally but I doubt that this would be well received internationally and Israel needs allies.
The real issue is whether Israel can get its backers in the US political and financial establishment to sanction Starlink and Musk.
That will be a test of the power of the Israel lobby in the US.
Personally, I think a forced elimination of the two state solution would be good. The more liberal elements of each society need to realize self determined religious demographic adjusted states are actually the enemy of their own self determination. Without a religious stalemate a more pious than thou ratcheting to a fundamentalist state gradually occurs.