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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.

Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?

I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.

Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.

Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.

Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.

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The Hague Invasion Act covers Americans and allies.

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

In international institutions Israel is weak. It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN compared to any other country.

It's receiving criticism in the UN because of the horrible crimes it's committing

When Israel was starving Gaza it was allowing in 3 times as much calories per person as the United Nations is supplying 400,000 Sudan refugees per person. Is the UN commiting crimes? The UN said is had food to increase what Israel was letting in, so the UN said it had resources to provide more than 3 times what it is providing Sudan refugees to 5 times the population (2 million verses 400,000).

Israel controls all in and outflows into Gaza. The UN does not control those in Sudan. You know this and present the situation misleadingly

>It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN

How is this anything but DARVO? Israel receives criticism in the UN for reasons that are easily verified and quite understandable - namely its deliriously racist, brutally violent, textbook illegal, and long-lived occupation of Palestine and attempts to annex its territory.

Blaming Muslim countries writ large for the UN complaining about Israel's blatant and continuous violation of the UN Charter and various other international laws is shockingly racist.

Muslims are not a race.

Race is an invention, people assign themselves and others to races based upon nothing but their own beliefs.

It's just a way of "othering" some group of people, which certainly seems to fit the facts, regardless of whether you personally think some set of characteristics should be called a race.

Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel, many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been, and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.

This includes countries that have ethnically cleansed their Jews, and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.

> Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel

OTOH, why would anybody not be biased against an agressive, xenophobic theocracy bent on illegally occupying and annexing its neighbour, all the while whining that "they want to destroy us and deny the existence of the Israeli state", and then with the other side of their mouth "all Palestinians must die and their homeland belongs to us"? The mind boggles.

> many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been

Here we go.

> and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.

Israel following up on their promise and actually applying the treaties they signed never got them any condemnation. Them doing the exact opposite obviously does.

> This includes countries that have ethnically cleansed their Jews, and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.

Someone being oppressed does not justify them then oppressing others. I can’t believe this still needs to be said.

> Someone being oppressed does not justify them then oppressing others.

That’s not the point. A country that has a history of hatred against a group, to the point of ethnic cleansing, and has not changed on the matter, has no legitimacy in critisizing or making judgments on that group.

I think this would be obvious in any other context.

Many countries were also "biased" against Apartheid South Africa, the bias was disapproval of apartheid, much like the one enacted on the West Bank and Gaza.

The bias predates the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

The litmus test is if they were just opposed to the policies of the South African government, or did those countries also hate South Africa and South Africans?

Did they have a history of persecution of South Africans in their own country?

Were they funding armed groups to attack South Africa?

Did they believe that South Africa has no right to exist anyway?

> Countries tend to dislike and boycott apartheid states

> Ah but what about many many decades ago in history the minority ruling the apartheid state were treated badly! In other places! Did you think of that?

Disagree wholeheartedly.

The only relevant litmus test is:

"Did the accused party commit the offense they are accused of?"

...everything else is whataboutism, red herring, ad hominem, and DARVO.

If the worlds worst person says 2+2=4, you still can't evaluate that claim by testing how many people like or hate the person. Only by whether the content of their words is true or false.

We don’t rely on the judgements of racist juries.

Isn't it difficult not to be biased against an apartheid, rogue nuclear state with a history of terrorism that is currently carrying out a genocide?

See, that's exactly the bias. The adjectives you used are all entirely subjective and politically charged. None of these represent an objective quality.

Is Israel an apartheid state? of course not; 25% of its population are Arabs who enjoy equal rights by the law (in comparison, 0% of Saudi Arabians are Jewish).

Is Israel a "rogue nuclear state"? It is a nuclear state, but so are France and Britain. What makes it anymore rogue than them?

Does Israel have "an history of terrorism"? You'll need to expand this one as I'm not sure what is the terrorism you mean.

Is Israel "carrying out a genocide"? Well the number of people in Gaza increased during the war. Don't believe me, hear out Hamas leaders [0].

Israel is in a tough neighborhood. Never before has any country faced such a campaign of ongoing hostility and delegitimization from its neighbors and far away countries alike. Israel is doing very well though.

[0] https://youtu.be/3qp_oXxzrcM?t=40

> It is a nuclear state, but so are France and Britain. What makes it anymore rogue than them?

The fact that Israel refuses inspections, something that no other country on Earth is permitted to do.

> Well the number of people in Gaza increased during the war.

This is just absurd holocaust denial. Israel has murdered almost 400,000 under the age of five https://x.com/i/status/1968772985227010398

Only Israel can be accused of murdering more kids (400,000) than there were actually living pre-war (330,000) [0], with the accusations made by no other than the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.

[0] https://x.com/arikouts/status/1968935650263978009/photo/1

Utterly shameless drivel.

> Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel, many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been, and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.

"regardless of what Israel does" they haven't tried ending the occupation yet; do you really think they would be condemned for doing so?

> and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.

Which countries are these exactly?

In 2005 Israel end the occupation in Gaza by evacuating all Jews from the strip and leaving it in Palestinian Authority control.

Next came Hamas, then the rockets, then the incursions and finally October 7th.

>In 2005 Israel end the occupation in Gaza

This is misinformation. Although Israel did pull its settlers from most of Gaza in 2005, it retained air, sea, and land border control. That is still a military occupation. The reality is, Israel never ended the occupation in Gaza.

No, the misinformation is yours. Israel pulled out Jews from all of Gaza, going back to the pre-1967 line. Gaza shared a land border with Egypt (Rafah crossing) which Israel did not - and could not - control.

While Israel retained air and sea passage control, the blockade as we know it only came after Hamas was elected as the Gaza government and not before.

(this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become)

Gaza has been considered occupied by the UN, the ICJ, the ICC, the EU, and pretty much any body which studies international law, since 1967. Israel is the only entity who claims they have not been occupying Gaza during this period.

> this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become

Even in 2005, after Israel's removal of their settlers and before Hamas came to power in 2007, Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling, based on Israel continuing to exert control over Gaza.

> Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling

That's not what the court said. Its language was

> In light of the above, the Court is of the view that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has not entirely released it of its obligations under the law of occupation. Israel’s obligations have remained commensurate with the degree of its effective control over the Gaza Strip.

As it often does, the court used intentionally ambiguous language to try to get a majority of judges on board. But the most natural reading seems to be a novel idea that occupation is non-binary, and Gaza lies somewhere on a spectrum of being occupied or not.

https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186...

So your argument is that from 2005-2007, there was a window where Gaza was maybe not technically occupied?

From 2005-2023, the whole period where there were essentially zero Jews or Israelis in Gaza. Of course parts became occupied in response to Oct 7.

No, Gaza was considered definitively occupied again starting in 2007, after Israel instituted air and sea border control, and control of its 2 land borders with influence on its Egypt border as well

Considered by who? Earlier you claimed by the ICJ, but as I pointed out, their opinion did not in fact say that.

UN reports have consistently referred to Gaza is occupied; your point about the ambiguity of the ICJ's 2004 ruling is noted, but it looks like UN's policy was to provisionally consider that a claim that Gaza is still occupied, while in 2022 or early 2023, requesting the ICJ put out a clarifying advisory opinion.

This predates the occupation.

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