Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaynetics | Hacker News Reader

Another interesting question is, will it end Netanyahu's career if it goes through? It seems like a major deficit for a PM to be unable to travel to the majority of relevant states. Most of his international trips have been to central Europe so far, and I think Europe is too invested in the ICC to circumvent it, even if some member states were to criticize this decision.

View on HN

His career was already over. Nearly all Israelis would support exchanging Netanyahu for hostages, again.

As a former Israeli, I cannot say this enough: please take Netanyahu, dig the deepest hole you can, throw him in there, lock it up and throw away the key.

You mean him, not them?

There are a couple people that should be handed to the ICC.

I do! Thank you

I would strongly suggest handing him over to the ICC and signing the Rome treaty. Let the ICC deal with what to do with him exactly.

You claiming to have been Israeli in the past (what does that even mean?) does not give you any greater validity in criticizing Netanyahu.

A majority of Israelis voted for this government's representatives, including Netanyahu, some specifically voting for him (his party has almost x2 as many votes as the second-biggest voted party).

Democracy doesn't work only when the representatives that you like are elected.

Very strongly doubt it - decisions like these probably only benefit Netanyahu's rally around the flag effect. If it feels like the whole world is against you, you rally to your leaders.

On the other hand, half of Israelis disapprove of Nethanyahu. The "warrant" would also be >something< all opposition would have agaisnt him

https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/artic...

  (grain of salt)

Significant portions of those disapproving are people who want to intensify the war in Gaza, so I doubt an ICC warrant would make them more opposed to Netanyahu.

Think it is easy in the US to think Israeli public opinion somehow mirrors the US but the vast majority of people in Israel right now are pro-war (similar to the US post-9/11) and anti-two state

e: not sure why I'm downvoted for something that can easily be confirmed by googling polls

> Significant portions of those disapproving are people who want to intensify the war in Gaza, so I doubt an ICC warrant would make them more opposed to Netanyahu.

Israel has a multi-party legislature. Netanyahu can be outflanked on the right.

Certainly, but if he is outflanked on the right it won't be because of the ICC arrest warrant. If anything, that might help prevent him from being outflanked on the right.

> Netanyahu can be outflanked on the right

He was outflanked by the right in 2019 when Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu and Lapid's Yamina withdrew it's support for Likud and joined Bennett's and Lapid's anti-Netanyahu coalition in 2021, but Bibi was able to leverage fringe Kahanist and Mizrahi parties to reclaim the top seat.

Hell, Bibi would make a coalition with the Arab List/Ra'am (the Islamist Party in Israel) if it meant remaining PM (and thus retaining immunity)

Traditionally, the hard right Jewish parties would always win around 20 seats in Knesset but would never be a major part of any coalition - but Bibi has alienated just about every single faction in Israel at this point trying to extend his rule.

> half of Israelis disapprove of Nethanyahu

Yeah but part of that half probably supports Gallant, who has split with Netanyahu, but is also charged alongside him.

Nethanyahu is survivalist but he faces uphill battle as time passes.

The fact that Hamas attack was so successful under his watch has not disappeared.

His career is full of scandals and corruption. He is still going to have domestic charges in near future.

His war cabinet is going to collapse soon if he continues without any plans for the future of Gaza.

But he's in power, still. His career has been "over" for years now.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40419037. (Nothing wrong with the reply, but I'm trying to prune the top-heaviest subthreads.)

His career is already in a bad place as far as i understand. If anything it might help him because he could cry that they are unfairly (regardless of if true) out to get him.

The current political situation in the US gives me every indication that the US would provide Netanyahu asylum if these warrants to through. The US has withdrawn from the Rome Statute and therefore has no obligation to arrest him.

Why would he need US asylum? Israel isn't an ICC signatory.

When the horror of what Israel has done dawns on them they might want to hand him over themselves.

I genuinely don’t understand this opinion. Israel was viscously attacked unprovoked (regardless what you think of the history of the two orgs) by the organization that governs the province. They’re states goal is to demilitarize the area while their enemy insists on playing out the war in highly populated urban areas.

This isn’t a guerilla war either, it’s the actual official government party. One who has actively promised sequels of the attack.

What would you do in such a situation?

As a fairly emotionally disinterested party: greater specificity of strikes, focus on Hamas leadership. It seems to me that Israel (and the west more generally) will be facing a generation of motivated terrorists in about 15-20 years, as the young people who went through this come of age.

People say this a lot, for obvious and fair reasons, but it's worth noting that a rational policy person in Israel could look at Hamas as a distinct and unlikely form of militant nationalism: overtly Islamist, funded and trained by the IRGC, and led (since 2017) by a messianic lunatic.

I've been saying, only kind of jokingly, that a more likely outcome than arrest or Israel-directed assassination of Sinwar is Haniya (or his successor) taking him out to a field to talk about the alfalfa they're going to plant, and how Sinwar will get to feed the rabbits. Sinwar really fucked Hamas over here. Easy to lose sight of how good a thing they had going! It had tacit Israeli government support and was making a bunch of Hamas people fairly rich.

Anyways, from that point of view: yes, killing tens of thousands of civilians is certainly going to radicalize people and drive them into militant groups. But those groups might look more like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades than the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Yea,but the thing that changed was Saudi flipping more western recently. It meant that directionally the region was going have a much bigger problem with this kind of behavior in the future and it seems like (as an amateur) they saw the writing on the wall and thought the more messy the region gets the longer it would take to move toward a capitalist ideals motivated region.

After having signed the Abraham Accords, Israel could have gone a long way to keeping their hands clean by pursuing Hamas through a joint effort with Egypt, UAE, KSA, and other states in the region. Israel has a long history working with Egypt regarding Gaza. Several actors in the region that already receive tacit US support are opposed to perceived Islamic dictatorships due to various complicated reasons. There are complicated reasons why Israel didn't and continue not to, a lot of which comes down to having a direct line to US support, but this option was something they could have done and chose not to. Though full disclosure, I'm not an unbiased party here, but I can view this situation from a realpolitik lens as well.

I mean, I agree. I'm a 2-stater. Netanyahu and his governing coalition have for a decade now been redlining "culpability" as far as I'm concerned!

(I'll say again though that Hamas in 2018 is a different entity than Hamas in 2016. They're both very bad organizations, but only one of them was literally working to bring about the end of days.)

IMO Israel is digging its own grave in the region by being so unwilling to work with their neighbors. KSA and UAE are brutal to opponents and KSA's own meddling in the region shows that they'd do anything to keep militant Islamism from gaining a larger foothold in the region. All they had to do was to open up a dialogue with their neighbors, it would have stopped Muslims from unifying around this issue, probably normalized relations even further between these states, and would have given Israel significant leverage in the region as a bulwark of diplomatic stewardship. Now even though the US is doing everything they can to tow the line between supporting Israel and stopping a bloodbath, Israel itself has probably lost any and all support from its neighbors sans maybe Egypt, and the US will be hard-pressed to offer support in further instances of aggression against Israel.

I'm less sure. I think the most salient conflict in MENA is between the Arab states and Iran, not Israel and Palestine (look no further than the grim track record of the surrounding states at actually helping Palestinians for evidence).

It's hard to look at October 7th and its aftermath as anything but a setback for literally every party in the region. Even Iran seems to have been caught flat footed.

It would end up in a proxy war, surely. Iran would back Hamas and a coalition of KSA, UAE, Egypt, and Israel would spearhead the Gaza situation from the other side. It's still a shitty outcome but IMO a better one. For one, regional actors are incentivized to deal with the situation in a way that spillover doesn't affect them (Lebanon and Egypt have both been vocal about not accepting refugees), but most importantly it wouldn't be as affected by the US political news cycle and the heart-rending imperialism that creates (essentially American domestic interests and politics affecting regional politics in the Middle East, meaning Palestinians have no say over their own politics in any meaningful way, unlike American college students.) The biggest risk would probably be Russian and Chinese interests coming into the region which would surely prompt a US reaction, but I'm not sure how much Russia or China would have to gain here if the US were not involved.

It would have probably ended in a civil war type situation but at least you wouldn't have widespread famine or the bombing of hospitals or further civilian atrocities. Also forcing regional states to allocate their own resources to the conflict means there's a direct incentive to wind it down since their resources are a lot smaller than the resources of the US. Israel would eventually face domestic pushback over wartime spending and the autocratic states in the region would have to balance their funding of the proxy conflict against their own ambitions and budgets. Iran is somewhat democratic and they too could only fund Hamas so far before looking after their own affairs. A civil war would also create a generation fatigued by conflict and more open to compromise. The unilateral nature of this conflict will guarantee that Palestinians and dissidents in the region will hold this as a grudge over Israel and the US for decades and might even open the possibility of further terrorism against the US.

The US's own nation building efforts in the Middle East after 9/11 flagged due to outrageous spending that materialized in minimal results. The same effect with poorer governments would naturally circumscribe the conflict in the area.

In one respect, October 7th was a success for Hamas. Before then, it looked likely that most of the Arab countries would have made peace with Israel without Israel having to concede an iota on the Palestinian issue. After the attack and Israel's response, Israel probably has to make visible progress on the issue before the current holdouts would move forward, or at least wait 10, 15 years before everything is forgotten.

It's a victory for militant Islam that didn't need to happen. KSA, UAE, Oman, and Turkey could have been great examples of Muslim countries with high standards of living that engaged in the international diplomatic process, as opposed to the pariah states of Iran and the wartorn Yemen and Syria. Since the decline of ISIL Islamists have achieved little save the Taliban taking Baghdad in Afghanistan. But with this new round of aggression in Palestine, Islamist movements once more have a grievance to look at.

>...Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades than the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Can you tell me more about the difference here?

The former is the former armed wing of Fatah, the latter of Hamas. Fatah is a (notoriously corrupt) secular nationalist organization. The story goes that Netanyahu tacitly supported and helped fund Hamas for many years as a check against Fatah consolidating power into a coherent Palestinian state.

The first is Fatah/PLO, who are in many ways much closer to, eg, the IRA (also nominally religiously inspired) than what we understand as modern Islamist terrorist groups.

> but it's worth noting that a rational policy person in Israel could look at Hamas as a distinct and unlikely form of militant nationalism: overtly Islamist, funded and trained by the IRGC, and led (since 2017) by a messianic lunatic.

Funded and trained by Mossad and others too, at times. In fact, Netanyahu was approving tens of millions a month to Hamas to stay militant and provide a more extremist opposition to Arafat and the PLO who were calming down and more peaceable in their old age.

This is the thing that really gets frustrating.

Israel's hard right is as opposed to a two state system as Hamas is. People point to "from the river to the sea" as "proof" of Hamas' genocidal intent (and I won't pretend they haven't said other things to that end, either), ignoring that it was literally Likud's platform slogan since the 1970s.

> Easy to lose sight of how good a thing they had going!

Some millions from Qatar with no political engagement towards 2SS isn't good by any measure. It was most certainly good for the Israelis: the Abraham Accords and recognition of the Western Golan Heights + Jerusalem by the US, with practically no opposition.

Sinwar may be a lunatic, but we'd be lunatics just the same to assume Hamas were happy with the status quo. They are not PA for a reason.

Not if they win decisively and eradicate not just the terrorists, but the terrorist indoctrination as well.

Note: there hasn't been a "generation of motivated terrorists" coming out of Japan and Germany after WWII, those populations were entirely subdued.

Having your parents, or your children, “eradicated” by someone is a powerful motivator.

> Having your parents, or your children, “eradicated” by someone is a powerful motivator

But again, Japanese and Germans aren’t blowing up Americans and Indians aren’t blowing up London. Claiming this will create more terrorists is saying the Palestinians are irredeemably violent. I don’t think that’s right.

Both Japan and Germany were left with their home countries and were given substantial aid to rebuild after the war. That aid was given by their former enemies.

Unfortunately I don't see it as very likely that Israel will give back all the territory in Gaza and provide aid to the Palestinians to rebuild.

Oh my this is not true

I’m pretty sure that, unless some time traveler really screwed up, this is how it played out on this timeline.

This has been the case for the past decade - Israel has been financing Gaza and providing it with resources (e.g. electricity) as well as jobs.

Gaza was quite beautiful! And given its prime location on the mediterranean sea, I don't see why it couldn't be built up again.

https://twitter.com/InsiderWorld_1/status/178854608101537840...

But of course the massive mistake was not eradicating the evil terrorist genocidal mentality of its nominal leadership, Hamas. Israel (and the world) shouldn't make that mistake again.

Is it true that the Likud was helping to finance Hamas’ opposition to the Fatah as a way to ensure a two-state solution would remain non-viable?

Israel was financing Gaza but not providing Gazan Palestinians political representation. Germans and Japanese were "given" a state where they had full rights as citizens. Political representation is an important way to defuse tensions and provide political legitimacy to a new regime. Even autocratic governments like China or Iran are beholden to the whims of their people, even if they can afford to ignore some. Israelis don't have to care about Palestinians at all. They can turn the strip into a tourist destination and no matter how much the Palestinians protest they have no representation to affect the government's course.

Gazan Palestinians don't even have limited local rule the way Chinese autonomous regions or Puerto Rico do.

Note that despite aid and the occupation, Japan had significant unrest following the war. The Communist Party of Japan's candidate Inejirou Asanuma was assassinated by an imperial revanchist on Oct 12, 1960 [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Inejir%C5%8D_...

This statement about Israel creating a new generation of terrorists is said a lot but I think we have pretty strong counterexamples. Germans didn't become motivated terrorists after WW-II despite great devastation and killing of civilians by the Allies. Neither did Japan. I'm sure there are similar WW-I examples. One might argue that not fighting this war until the enemy surrenders is a much stronger motivation for terrorism. A more recent example might be Russia's campaign against Chechnya or Sri Lanka's campaign against the Tamil Tigers, both fought until the enemy was crushed and both seemingly have for now resolved the terrorism issue.

With respect to your proposal. Can you be more specific about how Israel is supposed to target Hamas leadership when they are in tunnels underground below civilian populations and holding hostages? That Hamas leadership is not dead is not due to lack of Israel trying to target them specifically. I don't think it's possible to get at Hamas without taking over the entire Gaza strip which leads me to repeat the OP's question of what would you do. Another question is whether you're suggesting to give free pass to the Oct 7'th attackers and kidnappers (which seems to be implied by saying "focus on Hamas leadership").

> Germans didn't become motivated terrorists after WW-II despite great devastation and killing of civilians by the Allies. Neither did Japan. I'm sure there are similar WW-I examples.

Heh this is funny because this was an explicit concern for the US after WWII. This is the reason behind the creation of the Marshal Plan and directly the reason why the US occupied both Germany and Japan and assisted in nation building there. The idea that losing a war leads to radicalism is as old as WWII, but probably even older, as the UK came to a similar conclusion when divesting its colonies in South Asia.

For more recent cases on how political instability and sectarian conflict leads to a rise in terrorism, look at what happened in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the dissolution of the Baathist party.

An absolutely wild video from the time about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=821R0lGUL6A

If you've never seen "Your Job In Germany", bookmark and it and make sure you do at some point. It is pretty unreal.

Of course, the counterpoint here is: the reason we worried about German terrorism but didn't see it is because we trained our forces with videos like this, and we were the nice guys about it compared to the Soviets.

Germans were hung from streetlamps after the war in some places. I think you're referring to after the Germans were defeated? We're not at that stage yet.

See the preceding comment, "after WW-II".

Right. But first the Germans were defeated totally. They were forced to surrender. Imagine if the war was halted with massive German casualties but with the Nazis still in power. Which option results in more radicalization?

> Israel [...] will be facing a generation of motivated terrorists in about 15-20 years

The Palestinians are taught from primary school to hate Jews[1] (books paid with western money). They couldn't possibly hate Jews more.

[1]: https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value...

Well that’s what happens when you cowardly murder people in the middle of the night and turf them out of their ancestral homeland

As the other person stated, more targeted attacks. Israel is well known for their assassinations of Iranians. Why not Palestinians too?

I promise you, Israel does plenty of targeted assassinations in Palestine. For instance [0] (mildly graphic, shots are fired by Israeli assassination squad into car) - stuff like this is very common in WB and now Gaza.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17p7mfx/bett...

> Israel was viscously attacked unprovoked

Unprovoked is a stretch.

Settlers have been given free rein to commit terror acts all throughout the Palestinian Territories.

And Hamas has been propped up by the Netanyahu government for years.

> Settlers have been given free rein to commit terror acts all throughout the Palestinian Territories.

Not quite:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_G...

This is not to say that Israel permitted Gaza to have any reasonable sort of economic development (as a simple example, it’s effectively a country with two not-very-open land borders and no port, which surely made trade rather challenging).

If you want an analogy, imagine roughly the population of San Francisco plus San Mateo County, but with under half the land area, hostile relations and extremely limited travel across the land border with Santa Clara County and points South, with no bridges and no port. Throw in a near-complete dependency on Santa Clara for water and electricity, and nowhere near enough agriculture. (At least San Mateo County has a decent amount of farming to the West.) Take out the hot tech scene as well, and the economic situation would not be awesome.

Palestinians in Gaza were not provoked and there were no settlers in the Gaza strip. Not sure about your last statement there, Hamas being propped up by Netanyahu was how Israel provoked them to attack?

What was the total number of Palestinians killed by Settler terrorist attacks in 2022? Do you have that handy? What was the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorist attacks during that time?

Gaza is under military occupation by most definitions, that is provocation.

167 Palestinians and 12 Israelis in the west bank. All deaths, not just by settlers etc.

You're evading my question. For good reasons. It doesn't support your case.

If a Palestinian attempts to stab someone and is shot that's not the same situation as "settler" terrorist attacks.

I think you should answer my question.

Also please count Israelis in Israel killed by Palestinians from the west bank.

Gaza was not under military occupation by any definition. That is a fact that anyone can verify for themselves. Gaza was put under a blockade in 2007 after Hamas came to power (still has a border with Egypt, maybe Egypt is actually occupying Gaza by your definition). A blockade is not an occupation.

Maybe by "is" you mean since Oct 7th. But again that's not provocation, that's after the fact. If you think Gaza was occupied how come the IDF needs to re-occupy it?

>A blockade is not an occupation.

Killing people and children along the border is NOT a characteristic of occupation. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230513-gaza-israel-confe...

Counting calories of food consumed by Gazans is not occupation : https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE89G0NM/

Restricting water supply is most definitely not an act of occupying power : https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occu...

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2021-0...

All these are before the Oct 7.

Unprovoked, really?

60% of homes destroyed, 80% of schools, all universities, 31/35 hospitals.

What Israel [0] could have done was to not create this situation in the first place, but their goal was never solve it anyway.

[0] I mean the current government in power and right wing extremist settlers

They killed and raped kids at a concert. If calling that unprovoked terror is too far across the aisle, it’s hard to imagine an intellectually honest conversation, no?

Its not unprovoked because its an ongoing conflict and occupation, it cannot be viewed in isolation no matter how horrible it was.

What? They targeted innocents at a music festival, the people you’re talking about are dying during war time in the actual theatre of war. Can you seriously not agree that the target and method of killing is very different?

I believe we're talking about the provocation for the Oct 7th attacks and you are giving us the outcome of the war that was a result of that attack? Is there time travel involved here?

Israel withdrew from Gaza. Is your proposal that Israel should not have withdrawn to "not create the situation in the first place"? Or re-taken Gaza when Hamas took it over from Fatah by force in 2007 after winning the elections?

The provocation is the continued blockade and military occupation of Gaza, as that is what most consider it to be. With the exception of the US and Israel of course.

Not to mention the continuation of apartheid in Israel itself and expansion of settlements in the west bank.

This situation was created because Netanyahu has supported Hamas for a long time, even before 2005, as a classic divide and conquer strategy, to not allow PA to control both territories. But the US also helped as Bush forced elections early when PA had a reputation of being corrupt, and when they lost the election they tried to get PA to do a coup and Hamas kicked them out from Gaza.

You're mixing stuff up. Why are you looking at "what most consider it to be"? How can you be military occupying a place where your military is not and you are not. There is no way there was a military occupation of Gaza by any normal definition of this term. Gaza was under the authority and control of the government of Hamas. Not of Israel. The rest is politics.

There's no apartheid in Israel itself but let's not get into that.

Expansion of settlements in the west bank. True. I don't understand how that's a provocation to Gazans to rape and murder random Israeli civilians. It's also true that Netanyahu pursued a divide and conquer approach. Again you're trying to claim that Israel's support of Hamas' rule in Gaza is provocation for Hamas to launch attacks on Israel civilians which makes no sense.

EDIT: To be fair the legal question of "when does an occupation end" is complicated. Gaza was occupied from Egypt and Egypt does not want it back. The uni-lateral withdrawal of Israel without a peace agreement left Gaza in a weird legal situation. This is why despite Gaza being under Palestinian control and not occupied the legal state of occupation is perhaps not fully resolved. There's reality on the ground though (not occupied) and international law status (debated).

I mean the UN, Amnesty, other organizations like them. Israel has controlled their land borders, even the one to Egypt, their water and airspace. They control what goes in and out, people and goods. They might have left but Gaza is not free.

No apartheid? I guess Palestinians enjoy the right to return then? https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...

The west bank is part of the whole situation, of course it matters to Gaza what happens there. It also shows exactly what would happen if Hamas did not exist, Israel would continue to allow settlers to take land and homes. I'm not saying that Hamas should exist, but its very much a situation created by Israel themselves and Hamas has support from Palestinians because of Israels actions.

May the hasbara be strong in you.

Do Germans that were expelled from the Sudettes have a right to return? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudeten_Germans

Does this make the Czech Republic an Apartheid state?

Is Russia an Apartheid state? Can Ukranian refugees return to their homes? What about the millions of other refugees from random places?

There is zero connection between the right of return (which does not exist, refugees have no right to return after they lost a war) and Apartheid.

It's not "Hasbara" (which means explaining in Hebrew, so yes, I'm explaining). It's just common sense.

> Do Germans that were expelled from the Sudettes have a right to return?

With both the Cezchs and the Germans being in the EU, they very much do, yes.

> Is Russia an Apartheid state?

Sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagestan, etc. are explicitly set up as ethnostates within Russia.

>which does not exist, refugees have no right to return after they lost a war

Really? The entire point of the Aliyah for return to Israel is that they lost against Romans, and they expelled them. Or is it selective injustice to the Palestinians?

Well if you believe it was unprovoked then I can understand why this point of view would be so confusing.

I don't understand why you say "unprovoked". Gaza has been under occupation for decades (yes, it's technically an occupation, regardless of whether there are settlers or not). It's been periodically bombed, each time with as many victims as an October 7th. It's been under a complete blockade for 16 years. The fact that everything was fine in Israel on October 6th doesn't mean that there was a peace- it just means that they weren't expecting their victims to be able to fight back.

> What would you do in such a situation?

The situation is that Israel is an oppressor and an occupier, so what should it do? Well, first of all it should have made different choices in the past, honest and fair and peaceful choices. Which it didn't make, and it's its fault. But it's never too late. It should have made honest, fair and peaceful choices also in this occasion- mourned its deads, vowed to bring those responsible to justice, and engaged with Palestinian counterparts to withdraw within the 1967 borders and promote the birth of a Palestinian state.

Of course, it didn't do any of those things. It did exactly what Hamas expected.

And, as a result, Hamas has been gone from a rent-extracting governing authority with 16 combat-effective brigades, deep connections to the IRGC, and ongoing funding not just from the Gulf States but from Israel itself(!) to an international pariah with military leadership hiding in tunnels and its last 2 allegedly combat-effective brigades preparing to make a valiant last stand behind a wall of civilian refugees in Rafah.

Yes: Israel did exactly what Hamas expected. The problem for Hamas is twofold:

* Hamas thought the urban combat to root them out of Gaza City and Khan Younis would be a Vietnam-scale bloodbath that would tie the IDF up indefinitely until they were forced to make a truce.

* Hamas's messianic nutbag leader genuinely believed that he was ushering in the end of days, and that the IRGC's other assets would immediately commit to full scale combat operations against the IDF. Instead: Hezbollah noped the hell out, and Iran launched a large scale drone attack that ended up providing a Boeing and Lockheed-style fireworks display in which other Arab states, even as Israel was massacring Palestinian civilians, pitched in to help. Then Iran "declared the matter resolved". Gulp.

Sometimes, if only strategically, it makes sense to do what your enemy wants you to, because your enemy is stupid.

> Hamas's messianic nutbag leader genuinely believed that he was ushering in the end of days

This is more or less why Israel has so much support between Evangelical Christians. A relatively large number of these people actually want the world to end because they really believe in the Rapture and that they’ll be saved.

People overindex on this. Israel enjoys overwhelming support in both parties, and, for those unfamiliar with US politics, evangelicals belong overwhelmingly to just one of them.

In the US, not supporting Israel is political suicide.

That said, a lot of evangelicals do believe the world is about to end and are willing to pay to hasten the process.

Telling a pollster you support Israel isn't political suicide, and Americans consistently do that. It's political suicide for a politician to oppose Israel, because Americans like Israel.

There’s an immense gap between supporting Israel and a two-state solution and supporting Netanyahu and those positions should be confused. I fully support the two-state solution, but I don’t support Netanyahu and his genocidal policies.

Hamas was designated a terrorist organisation and the Gaza strip was subject to a total blockade since 18 years because of Hamas having won regular elections (at the time). So much for becoming an international pariah.

No, the real news here is of course the news: the ICC seeks to arrest Israeli top leaders as much as the Hamas leaders. The subject that is going from being everyone's darling to international pariah is Israel, absolutely no doubt about this. This is a massive win for Palestine and those who claim to fight for it, including Hamas- with the potential for historical consequences.

My take is that this was the intention behind the October 7th attack- to drive Israel to such a violent retaliation as to force the world to take notice and to condemn Israel. I might be wrong and the victory might be entirely an unintended consequence. However your interpretation essentially requires Hamas to have zero knowledge of the real ratio of military force between Hamas/ Iran and Israel, and zero knowledge of the fact that the US have always been ready to commit their entire military for Israel. And even your imagined "win" scenario for Hamas is Israel committing to "a truce"- which is what they already had before Oct 7.

* Iran's fireworks display is the result of Israel, not Hamas, trying to drag Iran into the war.

> My take is that this was the intention behind the October 7th attack

I see very strong parallels between this and the Dublin 1916 rising. I don't believe the leaders of the Irish rebels could beat the British - it was seen as a "blood sacrifice" and a way to show the world the brutality of British colonial power. The Brits duly obliged and brutally put down the rising and set the wheels of an independent Ireland in motion.

I have to say though, that the 1916 rebels didn't go out of their way to kill civilians like Hamas clearly did on the 7th ...

It has not been "technically" occupied. There's no such thing. Either a place is occupied, or it's not, and Gaza was not. What is true is that most in the international community refused to accept Israel's withdrawal from Gaza as the end of Israel's occupation. That's a political statement.

You're missing an important part about tens of thousands of rockets and mortars being fired from Gaza at Israel and terrorism originating from Gaza at Israel. Israel didn't just randomly attack Gaza.

Here's what really happened in Gaza: Israel completely withdrew in 2005 and was not occupying Gaza any more. It handed the entire Gaza strip to the Palestinian Authority. There was even an agreement for safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_freedom_of_movemen...

Not to mention that even before 2005 Israel handed control of most of the Gaza strip to the PA as part of the Oslo accords (and agreement to hand Gaza and Jericho over to the Palestinians predates the Oslo accords).

In 2007 following Palestinian elections Hamas took control of the Gaza strip by force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007) Israel only imposed a full blockade of Gaza as a result of this change because Hamas' stated goal is/was the destruction of Israel. Despite Israel's blockade Gaza has a border with Egypt and had no shortage of goods (and weaponry) through smuggling and other means. There was also plenty of travel in and out of the Gaza strip (both towards Israel and the West Bank and towards Egypt) and there were plenty of good going into Gaza through Israel. Gazans also worked in Israel. Gaza also had a power station and a water desalination plant. It has billions of dollars of aid and investment flowing into it (Ismail Hanyah needs to be a billionaire after all).

So Israel was neither an oppressor nor an occupier in Gaza. It took actions to try and prevent Hamas from arming itself.

The other part wrong with your premise is that Palestinians want to live in peace with Israel within the 1967 borders. They do not. Maybe some of them do. But many do not. When the Oslo peace process was accelerating towards that goal Palestinians started a suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians which results in the killing of Rabin, the rise of the right, and the termination of the peace process.

EDIT:

Bombings by Hamas starting 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at...

Rabin's assassination 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin

1993: Oslo accords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

2007: Blockade of Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip

2005: Disengagement from Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...

Rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...

Gaza-Israel barrier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_barrier

It's not technically occupied. Israel just controls their border with Gaza. And their coastline. And their airspace, also bombed their airport. Oh and the border to Egypt as nobody can visit Gaza without Israels approval. Israels continued denial of a Palestinian state and the basic rights of statehood, like the control of their own borders, is what makes it an occupation.

Netanyahu has supported Hamas long before 2005 as part of a divide and conquer strategy. The elections were pushed by Bush at a time when PA were seen as corrupt. When they lost Bush tried to get them to coup and Hamas took over and kicked them out as a reaction to that.

>In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman's noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, "Death to Rabin"

Should tell is everything we need to know about the people in power now.

Maybe the Palestinians were not happy with the deal, them losing their land. Not to forget previous atrocities perpetrated by Jewish terrorists and the nakba.

Israel does not control the Egypt border and almost all of this is opinion through implication not fact. This type of post does not belong on this message board.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing

> Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval.

This is Egypt's choice. Egypt has the control. If they choose to let Israel have a say it's their choice. Their making an agreement with Israel != Israel controls the border. Plenty of tunnels too but that's besides the point.

Are you even able to criticise Israel for anything?

Maintain civility.

> This is Egypt's choice.

Doubly untrue today; Israel took complete control of it on May 6.

> It has not been "technically" occupied. There's no such thing. Either a place is occupied, or it's not, and Gaza was not.

Gaza is considered an occupied territory by all international bodies with the power and authority to make such a determination, for excellent reasons that you can look up. End of the story. What you do (and Israel does, for propaganda purposes) is to confuse the civilian settlement with the military occupation, or to pretend that since soldiers are not inside Gaza but just all around its borders, Gaza is free. Which is like saying that a prison camp is free if the guards are all outside the fence.

> Israel was viscously attacked unprovoked

Are you denying Nakba with 'unprovoked'? I recommend you read through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_denial

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Neither is the US nor most countries in the World.

The only major countries/blocs that are ICC members are the EU/EFTA/EU ascension candidates, UK, Canada, Mercusor (lowkey surprised Venezuela's still a signatory), Mexico, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and NZ.

Edit:

Yes. 124 nations did initially sign the Rome Statute.

I meant regional powers/countries that matter.

If anyone here is from the US and doesn't like Israel scoffing at the ICC, they should read up on the American Service-Members' Protection Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...

> The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Act authorizes the president of the United States to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court". This authorization led to the act being colloquially nicknamed "The Hague Invasion Act", as the act allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody.

It was introduced in 2002 when the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and hasn't been rescinded. So if the US ever committed war crimes in those countries, or any other ones; too bad. The US so totally and completely doesn't recognise the ICC's jurisdiction that it will literally invade the Netherlands in order to not be bound by it in any way, shape or form.

What's frustrating about that is that a lot of the US's early efforts to not get involved in the ICC was to protect Henry Kissinger from prosecution, who, most objective observers tend to agree did commit or authorize multiple war crimes, from assassinations of Chilean leaders, to the carpet bombing of Indochina, particularly Cambodia, and others.

> What's frustrating about that is that a lot of the US's early efforts to not get involved in the ICC was to protect Henry Kissinger from prosecution

No, it wasn't; the ICC (which the US had a lead role in negotiating and initially signed despite never ratifying it) was never going to have retroactive authority, and the US knew that was not an issue long before it “unsigned” the Rome Statute.

Both the unsigning and the “Hague invasion act” were in 2002, during the runup to the 2003 Iraq War; it was about protecting people then in office from consequences in the war of aggression they were about to launch, to the extent it was about protecting specific people and not just the broad idea of American exceptionalism and opposition of the US government of the time to the idea of international institutions not fully subordinated to the US.

> No, it wasn't; the ICC (which the US had a lead role in negotiating and initially signed despite never ratifying it) was never going to have retroactive authority, and the US knew that was not an issue long before it “unsigned” the Rome Statute.

The ICC was formed out of the ICJ, to tackle matters that rose beyond 'dispute' between states. The ICJ came out of the IMT, which was the Nuremburg trials, which defined war crimes and crimes against humanity for the first time, so it would not have been really retroactive. These things were already crimes, there just wasn't a body capable of prosecuting them.

> The ICC was formed out of the ICJ

No, it wasn't. In any sense.

It was a permanent successor to ad hoc criminal tribunals like the International Military Tribunal, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

> The ICJ came out of the IMT, which was the Nuremburg trials

No, it didn't, it was the UN system's successor to the League of Nations system's Permanent International Court of Justice (the ICJ statute is modelled on that of the PICJ, the PICJ transferred irs assets and archives to the ICJ on its dissolution, the ICJ was headquartered in the Peace Palace that had held the HQ of the PICJ, and the ICJ even adopted the PICJ seal.)

The ICJ—like the PICJ, a court for disputes between nations—was in no respect a successor to International Military Tribunal, which dealt with crimes by individuals (and, indeed had most of its lifespan during that of the ICJ, starting work only a few months before the ICJ.)

Is this all that weird? The ICC is fairly Eurocentric. India and China aren't signatories either.

The "Hague Invasion Act" is performative silliness enacted in the immediate wake of September 11. The truth is that no major European country is going to arrest an American, Indian, Philipino or Israeli politician. There's kind of a deus ex machina thing happening with the ICC; you still have to do standard-issue diplomacy.

What do you mean they wouldn't arrest? Israel's foreign minister Tsipy Livny had arrest warrants issued against her by courts in the UK and in Belgium.

The UK literally apologized to Livny for doing that; that's how not toothy these things are.

That depends on who is in power. I don't think Jeremy Corbyn's Labour government would have apologized.

A real shame a Corbyn Labour government isn’t a reality.

> nor most countries in the World.

Wikipedia says there are 124 states party to the Rome Statute and there are 193 sovereign states that are members of the united nations. Thats 64%, which is most countries.

The State of Palestine is a State Party of the Rome Statute but only a non-member observer state of the UN, so treating the parties to the Rone Statute as a subset of the UN members is not quite right.

There are 124 state parties to the Rome Statute, which is more than a majority, counting standardly.

And? It's not a vote. Pick a person from the world out at random; it's a coin flip whether they live in a country that has or hasn't ratified Rome.

Considering China, India, and the US didn’t sign it, the odds are considerably in favour of not being in a country that ratified it.

I did a quick tally with my calculator and tallied up the population of each country above 10 million which isn’t among the 137 countries which are current signatories to the Rome Statute. My final tally was 4,6 billion which is around 57% of the world, leaving around 43% of the world population living in a country which is at least a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Non-signatories are overwhelmingly represented by a handful of countries with very large populations. None of the 5 most populated countries in the world are signatories, and out of the 10 most populated, only 4 are signatories (Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Mexico). Out of the top 20 most populated countries, 10 are signatories.

Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey have all previously expressed intentions of signing the Rome Statute, if only these countries would do so, it would bring over 60% of the world’s population under it.

>Neither is the US nor most countries in the World.

The standard semantics of ‘most countries’ counts countries, not the people in them. Of course the related claim that the majority of /people/ do not live in state parties to the Rome Statute has different truth conditions.

"How far will the US and/or Israel go to threaten or discredit the ICC leadership?"

I think the US would not comment on the matter. Candidates for Office (Trump) would loudly comment about it.

The US has deep political and geopolitical ties with Israel. It will never go agaisnt Israel (the country) when it matters.

I could see the US pulling back on Israel if it starts to cost them soft power elsewhere, but you're fundamentally correct. Israel is the primary instrument of US hegemony in the middle east, and they aren't going to risk losing that.

Biden has already started drawing lines though. He has been actively been distinguishing between defensive and offensive use cases and basically saying that US aid isn’t for the latter

Likely just political nonsense to help stop the (supposed) bleeding from the swing states. As it stands, if the election were held today polls show a massive loss for him.

What even is his plan anymore? Keep beating the "im better than Trump" drum and hope for the best?

Yes, that appears to be his plan.

Personally I'm no fan of the two party duopoly and 2020 was my first time voting for a mainstream party in a national election (after decades of voting). Lest we forget, the last Trump term had a paralyzed federal government incapable (unwilling?) to respond to national or international crises, the polar opposite of leadership with the bully pulpit used to divide as if still campaigning, and culminated in an economic catastrophe of massive inflation that we're still reeling from today. And that was all before the chode embraced wholesale-reality-rejecting big lies, and grew a massive chip on his shoulder indicating a desire for straight revenge on his political opponents. So at least to me, affirmatively supporting the conservative option of Biden simply so we continue to have a country to criticize, despite all of the abhorrent status quo military industrial surveillance complex shit continuing to go on, has a pretty strong appeal. If "I'm better than Trump" can't carry the election on its own, then frankly we're doomed.

All of what you said basically indicated your elite status in a country where a majority of people are in so much trouble that they cant scrounge up 500$ for an emergency expense.

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/31/63percent-of-workers-are-una...

There is an argument to be made that the country is not thinking about any of this stuff at all and they will base their vote on how they feel come election time.

On the flipside, there is also evidence to indicate that Trump has completely lost the independent vote which you need to win the election.

You know what would help save the country? If Biden did not seek re-election. After all, he originally called himself a 'transition' president in 2020. His selfish behavior is the reason we are even having a discussion. There still might be time to swap him out at the convention if things get really bad but there is an argument to be made that the large Muslim community in Michigan would rather punish him for Israel/Palestine and accept Trump than give him the satisfaction that he so desires of being a two term president.

Thats all Biden seems to really care about and by making him the president that lost the country to Trump, it will be a greater way to get payback than anything else they can try.

I certainly do understand that dynamic of economic stress causing poor decisions. It's just a terrible setup when a president/party can trash the economy, and then pin the results on their opponent-successor as the effects play out over several years. See also the ongoing Trump income tax increases that were baked into law in 2017. To the extent voters are gullible enough to fall for this, as I said, we're doomed.

In general I don't see why the Israel situation should be laid at Biden's feet specifically, as opposed to the Israeli lobby that has had a stranglehold on US politics for quite some time. Short of waiting for generational change, the only way to sidestep that would be to paralyze the US government's foreign policy, but that also means the end of US hegemony, USD as a reserve currency, and the generally high standard of living we take for granted. Frankly it's odd to attack such conservatism as a "privileged" position, when the fact of the matter is that people with wealth will be generally fine regardless of what happens.

As for Biden, his personal aspirations, and internal party jockeying, I've got little opinion. Swap in another not-Trump candidate and I'll vote for them instead. Personally at this point I'd likely support someone even if they were a blue-flavored extremist, because the incumbent power structure would be inherently set to resist them, whereas at this point a reelection of criminal Trump would essentially be throwing in the towel on our system of government. But obviously another extremist would turn a lot of people off, and let so called "conservatives" maintain their cognitive dissonance that Trumpism is about conserving anything at all.

Ultimately I think if we want to throw off the chains of the military industrial surveillance complex, we've got to take that bottom-up from the grassroots (eg decentralized communications tech) rather than thinking a power vacuum at the top will lead to anything good.

I don't see evidence of any lines drawn

Rather relevant: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

>Statement from President Joe Biden on the Warrant Applications by the International Criminal Court

>The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.

> The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.

This is the hypocrisy of the West, when the same court issued a warrant for Putin, it was praised but when it involves a U.S. ally, it's labeled as "outrageous". This only fuels the sentiment prevalent in many Global South countries about us (the west) "rules for thee but not for me".

Some actors in the "West" might have some credibility but certainly not the USA. In recent decades our state department has been openly Machiavellian, which I wouldn't have minded if they weren't also utterly incompetent.

Not sure why it’s hypocritical just because you praise one action by a group but not another. It’s not as if the circumstances are identical.

I think motives matter. Putin and Hamas decided to rape and kill for the sake of it.

Seems unlikely that Israel would be causing this much destruction if the group that they were seeking to retaliate against wasn't using civilians as shields (which is a war crime in itself).

Seems weird to put all responsibility on Israel here.

But in general I agree that a world government criminal court is a political joke that nobody takes seriously

> I think the US would not comment on the matter.

Sitting US officials, up to and including the President, have already strongly condemned the pursuit of the warrants.

> The US has deep political and geopolitical ties with Israel.

Which is fine as a basis for opposing things like this as long as the US doesn't ever want anyone to believe any of its claims that its policies are based on principals beyond bloc interest.

It didn’t end Putins career to have arrest warrants issued for him. So I doubt it would effect Netanyahu

Reply on news.ycombinator.com