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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> It's fake.

It’s not fake any more than any ither court is fake.

> It gives the illusion to people that "international justice" exists, while enabling governments to point to the ICC and pay and do nothing (or next to nothing).

It doesn't the opposite: it highlights failures in international justice and draws added attention to government inaction.

It is a relic of the high point in international humanitarian interventionism, created specifically so that created so that the drag of creating and winding down ad hoc international institutions for accountability in each conflict wouldn't be needed.

> And indeed, as Dutchbat and the entire Yugoslav conflict illustrates, they are HIGHLY selective in what justice they provide

The ICC didn't exist in the Yugoalav conflcit.

> They are an excuse for governments to do nothing

They aren't; governments who preferred to do nothing did nothing with less friction before the ICC existed.

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You're arguing semantics. We seem to agree they're a bunch of politicians that are bought and sold for propaganda purposes, and that they do essentially nothing.

Okay ... if that's "every other court", and it's just par for the course that governments both commit the worst atrocities imaginable and do nothing about accountability afterwards, then I just failed to consider just how incredibly cynical you are.

I, however, call that a fake court, I also call their other actions corrupt (both in what they DO, like when it comes to Israel, as what they DON'T DO, like acting against governments where it comes to Putin, or frankly most of their other cases). Their very existence is a lie (in that countries create this court, but have ZERO intention to actually provide any justice). You may claim this is all just normal, but that is certainly not what they say on TV, what their website says, what they argue in the UN. That's lying, at best. They selectively enforce their agreements for political reasons, frankly for money, e.g. again against Israel. Their elected official got caught committing slavery, rape, theft, tax evasion. They didn't even get fired for that. And, of course, they take a massive amount of money for all this "government service". Again

And, like in WW2, Israel and the Jews are once again having the same function of a canary in a coal mine. Racism. Corruption. Selective justice. Justice for sale. Bad governance. For some reason Israel and Jews keep being the first victims or should I say targets, much more apt. But like in WW2, they quickly move on to everyone else if their case against Israel moves even a nanometer forward.

Someone parroting the far-right propaganda that British-Pakistanis are culturally serial rapists also believes the hasbara that Israel is a perpetual victim that was forced to convince (i.e. terrorise, via the Irgun and Haganah) the British into giving them a land in 1948 because their holy book said they were there 3000 years ago, and that this also justifies the tens of thousands of Palestinians they've killed since then. Colour me surprised.

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