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

I do think that their future Feb ruling is going to call for a ceasefire. If they called for one now, Israel & especially the US were just going to ignore it and reduce the power of the court.

Israel has created a beast that I don't think they can control themselves. I do think that the court is going to get more legitimacy after they explicitly tell Israel to __chill__, for Israel not to chill, and then get the ceasefire ruling against them & potentially an intensification of the genocide case.

Meanwhile, unfortunately, real people are suffering so these political games can be played.

I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here. They're throwing away a lot of the good work they've done, and are actively getting Trump elected. People, naturally, do not want to participate in an election that is giving them a choice between ${person_currently_helping_a_genocide} and ${person_that_will_intensify_genocide}. You're just going to get voter apathy, and the consequences from that.

Does Hamas have to adhere to an ICJ ordered ceasefire?

I can assure you Israel will most likely ignore any resolution that does not involve the hostages returning.

Is that even possible procedurally? the preliminary hearing is done. They are meeting in feb to discuss the report on the things ordered, but i dont think they can just randomly make more orders at that point that aren't related to the granted orders.

[Ianal]

The US, under whichever administration, is in a very difficult position here. If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel. Would that be just? I see a president carefully dancing on the thin line of supporting the Israel state while using the US leverage to stop the war (latest example: sending the CIA chief to the negotiating table). But this needs to be done without enabling Israel's biggest adversaries that support a Jihad against the people of Israel.

> If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel.

How would Israel disappear? Palestine is clearly no match for them - who else is expected to suddenly move in?

I certainly think we could stop funding their military while still pledging to support them if someone actually tries to invade.

Keep in mind, Israel has it's own defense budget - it's not like it's military just disappears when US funding dries up

Trump wouldn't intensify the genocide. Not just because Israel currently has carte blanche to do what it wants, but also because of personal animosity with Netanyahu.

It's a common fallacy that money equates to purchasing power. That is only true so long as there continues to be a market with stable supply and stable prices. After COVID-19, many people had plenty of money, but you simply could not buy masks or vaccines at any price if there simply were no longer any to be sold.

Militaries are just as interconnected as anybody else. They depend on supplies of weapons and munitions. If the supply is gone, the size of the budget doesn't matter.

No. Because they are a terrorist organisation.

Israel is expected to because they are not.

Iran is who is expected to suddenly move in under this scenario.

Israel has nuclear weapons. By the logic of even developing them, there's no reason not to deploy them if it faces conquest. Any existential crisis facing Israel will not come from outside.

Israel can face defeat without everybody dying (which is what would happen if they tried to use nuclear weapons). The US has enough control over Israel to make sure that never happens. We are a far greater military power than Israel.

> I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here.

What do you expect him to do? With or without any assistance, Israel has more than enough weapons completely annihilate Gaza. Don't forget that they likely have nuclear capabilities. Israel believes they are demonstrating restraint and this restraint is the first thing to go if Israel feels like it's being backed into a corner.

Hamas is democratically elected government in Gaza.

I don’t love Trump, but there’s no denying there was far less war, and especially US-funded war, when he was in office. Ukraine-Russia massively escalated as soon as someone in the pocket of the military industrial complex got put in power, as Putin knew it would, and Israel followed suit soon after.

Israel has quite a lot of domestic defense industry.

If they cared about the hostages, they wouldn't be bombing them to death on a daily basis, shooting those that escape, or gassing them in tunnels. The hostages are nothing more than political pawns to Netanyahu.

Keep in mind that Hamas reiterated their ceasefire deal recently, which includes the release of all hostages, and Israel rejected it.

Things like this are bad: https://apnews.com/article/us-israel-gaza-arms-hamas-bypass-...

More public denouncement of what Israel is doing.

Get the Department of State to start sanctioning heads of state of Israel that are actively calling for a genocide.

He's effectively done nothing other than "handling it in private."

Really? Democratically elected? Elections in Gaza, over a decade ago, are the bar for democracy now?

> What do you expect him to do?

At least as much as Ronald Regan: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/12/A-shocked-and-outrag...

> How would Israel disappear? Palestine is clearly no match for them - who else is expected to suddenly move in?

They've had wars with all their immediate neighbours since the modern state was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab–Israeli_conflict#Notable_...

Some of those countries are more friendly now, but loss of USA support would be huge. Such a removal of support would IMO be extremely unlikely due to how USA internal politics looks like from outside.

American foreign policy wasn't parodied as "world police" for nothing.

> I certainly think we could stop funding their military while still pledging to support them if someone actually tries to invade.

Subtly and nuance? Oh how I wish any politics cared about that.

I'm assuming, from the PoV of Israel and the Jewish diaspora in the USA, that because the specific attack that set this in motion was much much worse (proportionally speaking) than the 9/11 attacks were to the USA, anything less than 100% uncritical total support will look like "a betrayal" or "giving in to terrorism", to enough of the Jewish electorate in the USA, as to make that kind of talk unviable for at least a decade.

Real people aren't Vulcans. Emotions are raw, and will remain that way for a long time. And so the cycle will continue until either one side or the other is dead, or some absolute negotiating genius steps in and manages something even more impressive than the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

(Makes me wish for Mo Mowlam to be reincarnated; good luck to you if she was an inspiration!)

I'm not sure what I will do, but I'm not voting for Trump either way.

There is a lot written about civil disobedience through not partaking in electoral politics, and that's _likely_ the direction I'm going to go if Biden does not change his tone (and hopefully actually do a proper apology for his actions so far).

This sucks, and I'll participate in local and even congressional elections, but for president I can not really find myself voting for Biden. I do not expect myself to agree 100% with any candidate, but there are certain red-lines that a candidate can not cross. I have a few of those, being anti-abortion is not something I can tolerate in any candidate. Being pro-mass-killing-looking-like-genocide is also one. I suspect this feeling is not unique to me.

They don't even share borders. How "suddenly" could they possible cross Iraq and Syria?

Calling it a Muslim ban is pretty disingenuous, and always was. The ban left out some very large Muslim countries, such as Indonesia and Pakistan for example.

If they were being successfully invaded, and facing defeat, the US would not be able to stop them from using nukes. What is the US going to do otherwise? End its support of a country that no longer exists?

While that's technically true, they were elected in 2006 and since then no elections have been held. Not only that, members of the Hamas murdered Fatah rivals in the years that followed. Not to mention that most of the population today in Gaza are so young that they didn't even vote Hamas in.

So while they have majority support, it's not like they've had any real alternative.

From my understanding, if Israel doesn't show that they're able to reduce civilian deaths, they can grant South Africa's ask on the case which (from my understanding) is effectively ordering Israel to stop the attacks, and asking the world to help enforce it.

Please put some more effort into researching your talking points.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-electe...

I find it hard to believe there’s correlation between the beginnings of Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas and who the US president is.

If anything, Russia and Hamas are each less likely to spark each conflict (in the specific sense of invading Ukraine and 7 October, not the preconditions) knowing that the US is more likely to provide arms to Ukraine and Israel.

The US has a military with deep intelligence ties. They would stop Israel from using nuclear weapons even if that meant invading Israel and taking out all of the leaders. There's no way the US would allow Israel to use a nuclear weapon.

A major difference is that Israel instigated the first large scale attacks in the 1982 War, whereas Hamas instigated the ongoing war.

Biden apparently wants to lose. Watch every single campaign event be protested (many protesters are Jews). Yeah, that's definitely going to lower turnout on the DEM side.

Biden is not only going to lose, Trump might even get a trifecta.

It doesn't matter. Hamas is not a member of the ICJ. The state of palestine is a member but hamas aren't recognized as the representive of the state of palestine.

Additionally, the state of palestine is not a party to this case.

So no, the icj cannot tell hamas to do anything. The only people it can give orders to in this case are israel and south africa.

Hamas's crines are the juridsiction of the ICC.

Not entirely true. Yes, they were elected in 2007 but they have not allowed the Fatah after that. The last election may have been 2012. So considering the amount of time elapsed I wouldn’t consider them legitimately elected.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

Netanyahu and Trump been best friends since the '80s. Netanyahu was even friends with Trump's dad.

I wouldn't put too much stock in any kayfabe between them.

The court didn't even order them to reduce civilian deaths.

They do have to submit a report on their implementation of the orders, but reducing civilian deaths wasn't on the list of things they had to report on.

You're gonna just guess that's true? That they will have perfect intelligence and a perfect capability to prevent a determined decision? What we do have some evidence for is Israel's ignoring the US calls for moderation.

Yes, I'm totally confident that Israel will not be allowed to use nuclear weapons and the US's vast military apparatus can stop them.

>> Israel believes they are demonstrating restraint

From the section of the ICJ ruling dealing with dehumanizing language used by Israeli officials:

> "I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals"

-- Mr Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister of Israel

Ok but they haven't literally released all restraints because no nuclear weapons have been used.

I'm not sure the protestors will be a net negative, lots of people protested trump in 2016 and them getting thrown out only encouraged his base. If you watch the videos of the Biden interruptions the crowd stays firmly on Biden's side.

Biden's issues at the moment are that economic sentiment is a lagging indicator of some variables that have only recently recovered to their normal values (inflation etc.). If these issues fix themselves we will have a better sense of whether Israel-Hamas War has meaningfully impacted him.

>If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel

I doubt it, Israel would nuke Iran before letting this happen.

Why would they use nuclear weapons on territory they intend to annex and settle?

He campaigned on banning Muslims. He then tried three different times to ban a large amount of Muslims. He regularly denigrates Muslims and blames them for our problems. According to his own people, he wanted to ban Muslims and wanted a fig-leaf to do it legally [1].

This kinda comes down to a case of who are you going to believe, a notorious fraudster and conman or your own lying eyes?

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/tr...

Hamas/Al-Qassam Brigades outright said today that they would willingly comply with a ceasefire order.

Considering Hamas' plan all along was to martyrize the Gaza population by feeding it to the lions, subsequently sabotaging Israel's relations with its neighbors and the global community, it does make sense they decided to provoke a war during Biden's term, a very outspoken zionist.

I’m not a fan of Trump’s domestic policies, but I’m absolutely sure that he has the moral high-ground over Biden right now. Trump used to be a supporter of Israel and to some extent still is, but he did during his presidency see that the Palestinians want peace more than the other side. I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-i-thought-israelis-would....

Apparently, those still supporting Biden will throw human lives under the bus for a more comfortable home life.

Hostages are undesireable for Israel, as earlier they die/be killed the lesser leverage hamas will have. Besides, they will all be dangerous to official narrative, as they seem to have been treated ok by the militants.

Modern nukes don't have lasting radiation fallout

I think its reasonable to expect the same level of adherance to such a ceasefire that was also in place prior to Oct 7th.

I am not so sure. I believe Israel only exists by the mercy of support from their Allies. The minute they lose that support Israel is doomed. The country is surrounded by enemies on all sides. Sure their military could win a conventional war with their nukes against any of their neighbors. But on the long term a small country with a small population and limited natural resources needs friends to run an economy big enough to support the huge military it needs to defend itself. And Israel is running out of friends fast. Sympathy for Israel in the West is surely declining at lightning speed with the current situation, I would not be surprised if this conflict is the start of the end of the country

Not to mention these guys would have heard of the absolute cruel and unusual torture directed at the female civilians before the rest of the world.

Iran was pretty miffed when some weapons of unspecified origin recently hit Iraq and Syria because they happened to land on the heads of Iranian operatives.

The concept of nations and borders in the middle east is a bit... different from the western variant.

You mean they were raped ok by the militants? https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/there-wasnt-a-moment-freed-h...

After 9/11, the united states president at least tried to say "hey not all muslims, alright?"

And we should believe that why? They have also said they would do Oct 7th again as many times as they could.

The conflict didn’t start on October 7th. There were still innocent kids being shot by IDF soldiers before then.

This is before October 7th, from September 2023. ‘ 2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank“

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...

You only have to believe what you want to believe. I'm just answering the GP's question in the most direct possible way, by referencing the answer of a primary party.

Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-says-it-will...

Personally regardless of any other stance I will always vote along the abortion lines. I would hope others would be able to prioritize that as well. I dont want to see the US turn into a theocratic dictatorship.

I think that the statement by the head of the military that Israel is acting without any restraints is incompatible with the idea that Israel believes it is demonstrating restraint.

This is only the interpretation if you ignore the various killings of palestinians and journalists prior to October 7th at the hands of IDF: https://cpj.org/reports/2023/05/deadly-pattern-20-journalist...

Or when Israel bombed Gaza two months after the previous cease fire: https://abcnews.go.com/International/israel-bombs-gaza-city-...

Please make your substantive points without swipes.

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

That's why I'm still going to be voting in congressional elections.

Faster than starving the gazans to death

> I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.

I absolutely 100% can imagine it. I would go so far as to characterise him as:

1) Pro-Israel:

> On December 6, 2017, the United States of America officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital city of the State of Israel. American president Donald Trump, who signed the presidential proclamation, also ordered the relocation of the American diplomatic mission to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv [...]. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision and praised the announcement by the Trump administration.

> Trump's decision was rejected by the vast majority of world leaders; the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on December 7, where 14 out of 15 members condemned it, but the motion was overturned by U.S. veto power.

2) Non-cooperative with Congress:

> The United States federal government shutdown from midnight EST on December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019 (35 days) was the longest government shutdown in history.

> The shutdown stemmed from an impasse over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall.

3) Loving to go behind backs:

> Trump reportedly keeps finding a way to meet the Russian leader privately.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_recognition_of_J...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_United_State...

[3] https://www.vox.com/2019/1/29/18202515/trump-putin-russia-g2...

My point is to make it clear that it was obviously a rhetorical speech rather than some ongoing military policy during the war. You know perfectly well what I meant by restraint.

But Israel is far more likely to want conflict to occur. Evidence of such desire would take the form of ignoring intel from international community stating that an attack was planned, and allowing human-sized slow moving targets to pass through the air defense systems unassailed.

I agree with your major point, but just point of fact that 20% of Israel's military budget is from foreign military aid-- nearly all of that paid by US tax payers (although it was France that likely supplied Israel with the technology for their nuclear arsenal).

A US official stated that at the rate Israel is bombing Gaza, Israel would have run out of munitions in 3 days without US aid. An Israeli official said the same, but he said their arsenal would only have lasted one day. Even if either/both were engaging in a degree of hyperbole, the gist is, that the bombing continues at the will of the Biden administration.

Yes, Israel would not cease to exist if the US withdrew support for genocidal murder and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but it would halt this most recent massacre of Palestinians by Israelis.

And, if the US stopped running cover for Israel in the UN Security Council, Israel would find it untenable to continue its belligerent disregard of international humanitarian law and past UN resolutions-- it might actually become the democratic state it claims to be, but to do so it will necessarily no longer be an ethno-religious state.

They (Hamas) broke the first temporary cease fire several times. I highly doubt their sincerity.

Hamas is the elected body of Gaza. It also has over 75% support according to several polls post 10/7. By all means it represents the interest of Gaza’s people whether anyone wants to admit that or not.

Imagine making excuses for breaking the nuclear taboo. That is the level this discourse is at.

Abortion is probably one of the leading causes of the demographic destruction (and by extension, destruction of political influence) of the black American community.

https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2020/02/25/abortion-the-over...

Not only religious fanatics oppose it in its current form in America.

Israel seems to be optimizing for the short win at the cost of losing who they are.

Granted Hamas attacked them first but their actions give Jews worldwide a bad rep.

What is nuts is that the Zionists have convinced everyone that that they speak for all Jews. I have so much respect for the activists in Israel that must face immense social and political pressure.

You have sources for that?

From everything I’ve studied all super bombs (hydrogen fusion bombs) are also fission bombs. Since it is a chain of different kind of explosion stages that finally get the fusion reaction started.

First convention explosives then fission then fusion.

If they put it on Hamas, the radiation fallout would hit Israel pretty hard depending on winds.

It would fuck up Middle East in an awful way. Pretty much guarantee the Middle East Muslim countries ganging together to wipe out Israel completely.

Lol yeah George w bush at least just focused on killing 1m people in the middle east instead of being yucky!

All the US has to do is: nothing. Stop sending over tank shells [1], Fighter jets and attack helicopters [2], deploying aircraft carriers [3] and stop vetoing UN Security Council resolutions trying to impose a ceasefire [4]

1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/09/biden-admini... 2. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-25/ty-article/.p... 3. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-aircraft-carrier-to-remain-in-m... 4. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-un-resolution...

Far and away the greatest opposition to abortion is religious in nature. Certainly other groups might oppose it for varying reasons but they are an extreme minority.

I would even venture to say that those other groups oppose it in part because of cultural effects of religious ethics infecting the rest of society.

Not this claim in particular, but existing claims of rape allegations have been debunked:

https://x.com/jonathan_k_cook/status/1748390405173842099?s=4...

Meanwhile, Josh Paul, a former US State Department official, detailed how a 13 year old kid was raped in an Israeli prison and “The State Department's inquiry into the case resulted in Israeli officials shutting down the charity involved in bringing the case to light.”

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231205-resigned-us-state...

I am for choice of people to decide if they have kids. These arguments have no effect on me.

Are you talking about the Netanyahu quote at the end of the article only?

Otherwise there isn't a direct rape claim in there, but a witnessed missed period which they say could be due to rape or the witness also says it could be due to the harsh conditions (malnutrition is a real cause of it in some cases; Washington Post has reported on worries of refeeding syndrome in some of the released hostages so some were severely malnurished). I found an article with longer excerpts of the testimony and the dolls on a string quote was about inappropriate clothing provided and claims of abuse but the testimony excerpts there also didn't directly allege rape. Is the full transcript of the hearing out there somewhere?

It also included the release of the thousands of terrorists that were captured in Israeli borders in oct 7th. People with actual blood on their hands, and a guarantee for hamas to stay in power.

Moreover, Israel offered hamas a ceasefire if they release all the hostages and exile their top 6 leaders. That offer was rejected by hamas.

So please don’t present such a one sided view

That has no relavence to if they have signed the icj treaty or if the UN recognizes them as the government of palestine.

You could argue they should be, but what is and what should be are entirely different things.

> Moreover, Israel offered hamas a ceasefire if they release all the hostages and exile their top 6 leaders. That offer was rejected by hamas.

That wasn't a serious ceasefire offer, and you've left out the reasons why: it was a pause of 2 months, not a ceasefire offer at all! Furthermore, Israel wouldn't release the hostages they are holding. Why would anyone agree to release the hostages in exchange for nothing but a brief pause of genocide?

Netanyahu knew Hamas wouldn't agree to it; he only even made the offer because he'd turned down the Hamas offer first, and so needed a different story for the media to run with. Which worked just fine of course - MSM ran with "Hamas reject ceasefire" without even mentioning the Hamas offer.

And a ceasefire offer from Hamas that releases thousands of killers while absolving Hamas from any wrong doing is a serious one?

"thousands of killers" is just rhetoric; Hamas could argue that the IDF hostages they hold were "killers".

Meanwhile, many of the hostages held by Israel are held without even being charged. From what I've seen, it's quite obvious that many are innocent civilians, and hundreds of them are children.

We've also seen evidence that Israel tortures its prisoners, and that rape is endemic - which is probably why Israel won't let the Red Cross near them (something else it complains Hamas won't do).

Israel is behaving like a rogue state.

1 year old baby can be argued as a killer? Meanwhile the actual killers were caught live while killing Israelis in their homes in oct 7, they even filmed themselves and bragged about it. Pretty damning evidence. Conflating the hostages to the Israeli prisoners is terrorist rhetoric, not genuine rhetoric. Palestinian prisoners had access to the Red Cross up until oct 7, at which point the Red Cross was pretty useless and one sided against Israel.

Do you have any proof of rape accusations being endemic?

There are Hamas rape videos, you can easily find them using a simple reddit search. Please stop spreading propaganda.

> 1 year old baby can be argued as a killer?

Strawman - I explicitly referred to those hostages that were members of the IDF.

> Conflating the hostages to the Israeli prisoners is terrorist rhetoric

Ah, so anyone who disagrees with you is a terrorist? I see you.

You're also implying that all hostages held by Israel were involved in the attack on 7/10 - blatantly untrue. Several Israeli soldiers are on camera saying they take Palestinians hostage purely so they have something to exchange with Hamas - this has been going on for years.

> Red Cross was pretty useless and one sided against Israel.

I'm sorry, but this is the kind of nonsense that spokespeople (like Eylon Levy) and career racists (like David Colier) like to espouse - everyone who disagrees with Israel's genocidal actions is an antisemite and/or Hamas lover. "The Red Cross are Hamas". "The UN are Hamas". Honestly, it's pretty pathetic.

On Israeli guards torturing and raping Palestinian prisoners, including children, there is a wealth of evidence and many, many video interviews with victims. Here is just one story: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-cr...

These have not independently confirmed. There is a history of passing by israel of Mexican cartel videos and photos of military women perished in other Middle Eastern conflicts as atrocities commited by Hamas .

I am not saying that Hamas did not (or did) commit the crimes on videos, it just the source is so reliably untrustworthy, so the videos cannot be taken seriously.

So what I shared, a well thought out article by Johnathan Cook and others, is propaganda but you telling me to watch unverified, often debunked videos that are actually from cartels or ISIS, isn’t propaganda? What’s next, should I search 4chan?

Is deploying nuclear weapons against a close ally of Russia really a feasible scenario?