ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire

Honestly I'm not trying to mis-read the verdict which is why I asked the question. I think all of Israel's strategies to date include the death of Palestinians. Since that's explicitly forbidden with that ruling, how will they continue to fight? Will they just ignore the ruling or change tactics?

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> They just asked Israel to try hard to minimize damage, which they already demonstrated they do.

Where, other than with mere hand waving? How did they explain away blowing courts and universities with rigged explosives? Soldiers bragging about "occupation, expulsion, settlement, annexiation"? All the talk about how there are no civilians in Gaza? How many people who said that has Israel prosecuted so far?

You've been using HN primarily* to conduct political battle on this topic for a long time now. You've already taken to doing this again, repeatedly, in this thread.

That's not in the intended spirit of what we want on HN, and especially not the spirit which I attempted to describe in my pinned comment at the top. Therefore, please stop.

* In fact, it looks like you've been doing nothing but that. I've already explained to you repeatedly and at length why that's not ok on HN. If you keep it up, we're going to have to ban you. (And lest anyone worry: no, this has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with your views. You're plainly breaking both HN's rules and intended spirit, that is all.)

Sounds like you’ve been spending a little too much time on TikTok.

Please don't cross into flamewar, regardless of what anyone else is doing.

The measures ordered by the UN court are in references to Article II of the Genocide Convention [0], which limits the scope to “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, where the court identifies the group as “Palestinians in Gaza”. So it’s the intent of genocide towards that group which is the deciding factor. As long as the actions do not carry that intent (and are plausible as such), they are not prohibited.

My reading is that the court is basically saying “You are presently running the risk of committing genocide, please take all measures in your power to prevent that.”

[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...

No, that was from south africa's request. That wasn't the wording the court used in its decision

They will claim they are attempting to kill Hamas militants and any non-Hamas Palestinians deaths are incidental. You can do anything with this excuse. Did the court close this loophole?

Any accusation of genocide will be for the relevant courts to decide. False pretexts (excuses) can be identified as such. The present court order is a shot across the bow. The court is explicitly saying that the intent of genocide appears plausible at this time, and explains the reasons for that assessment. Meaning that Israel will have to show with their actions if they want to turn it implausible.

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Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146853.

Do you mean from page 2? Because that is the court just saying what each side requested. The actual order that the court gave is much later in the document.

Ah ok, I see. You are correct, I did misread that part.

Its not really a loop hole but kind of the main intention of the law.

Too many civilian deaths is for war crimes & crimes against humanity, not the crime of genocide.

I don't think it's really a loophole. For example, the Nazis could not possibly claim that the people they killed in death camps were merely collateral damage.

You are allowed under international law to lead war with significant amounts of civilian casualties. The issue being judged is claims of Israel committing a genocide. This is just a preliminary order while the full case is considered, and it might be bad PR to disregard it, but nothing else will come of it.

When hearing 'genocide', most people immediately jump to the Holocaust, but the definition used by the ICC and IL in general is far more permissible:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

A to E are horrible acts by themselves, but what makes a genocide is intent, and intent is very hard to prove. Personally, I think SA brought a very strong case forward, the genocidal tendencies of key Israeli decision makers and exeters are well published. In the US and Europe, the political class and general public just ignore the evidence currently, and a ruling of the ICC might help people 'wake up', but not much tangible consequences will result from it otherwise.

Generally the proportion of civilians in a hospital vastly outweighs any fighters. Bombing a hospital does in no way count as reasonable steps to prevent collateral damage. Shooting people queueing for food aid similarly does not count.

I don't believe this and the court found reason to further investigate genocide. The statements from Israeli leadership alone contradict what you're saying.

Up is down!

Does killing over 25000 Palestinians in 3 months and starving the rest not involve deaths of Palestinians civilians?

You might find this to be an interesting read, even if it may not change your mind. “What Did Top Israeli War Officials Really Say About Gaza? Journalists and jurists point to damning quotes from Israel’s war cabinet as evidence of genocidal intent. But the citations are not what they seem.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/01/is...

Archive version: https://archive.ph/GV14c

So Israel told people to move to avoid collateral damage and you call that ethnic cleansing?

Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

I'm sure that you have legitimate reasons to feel the way you do, but you're posting to this thread in a way that is against the intended spirit, as I tried to explain it in the pinned comment at the top. Please don't do that. If you can't post in the intended spirit, that's understandable, but in that case please don't post until you can.

(Exactly the same thing, of course, goes for the commenters you're in disagreement with - for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39150923)

Regarding starving, they are getting aid but Hamas steals it for their own us (fighters and black market), so it’s Hamas that starves the Palestinians, not Israel.

The previous poster said the Palestinian dead are collateral while targeting Hamas terrorists. Not from direct action of Israel trying to kill uninvolved. He didn’t say there are no dead civilians. Any war has civilian casualties

The source for that is Gazan eye witnesses, Same one that argues that Israel killed 500 people bombing Al Ahli hospital, that was eventually found out to be from a failed Hamas rocket.

Even if what they claim is true, as you can see from multiple sources, al Shifa hospital still stands and operational. The article has multiple inaccuracies. It glosses over the fact that many weapons were found inside the hospital (https://www.npr.org/2023/11/15/1213145028/israel-hamas-gaza-...), It ignores the fact that there was armed Hamas forces fighting Israeli military on hospital grounds (https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/13/hospital-gaz...). And just plain inaccuracy telling that the solar panels were the only source of electricity for the hospital, since the hospital was operating from the start of the war, up until today, with generators.

Whether or not weapons were found is not the point here, this is evidence. We can debate credibility such as whether days of the week are terrorists but again, that's not the point. The ICJ found enough evidence of merit to show the plausibility of genocide, I'm displaying evidence here that says eyewitness accounts of attacks.

Additional, evidence for shelling: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/world/middleeast/israel-g...