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

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517 points xbar | 6 comments | 26 Jan 24 14:35 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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locallost ◴[26 Jan 24 21:36 UTC] No.39148816[source]▶
My views on the situation aside, the clearest I saw anyone communicate the issues from a global angle was the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin

Translated here: https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1718201487132885246

Viewed from the angle of the West, I think the message it needs to avoid isolating itself from the world is very unusual for Western media and important.

Quote:

"Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers."

And

"This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle."

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pgeorgi ◴[26 Jan 24 21:43 UTC] No.39148909[source]▶
All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?

Spend tons of money on iron dome to shoot down the rockets and hope that Hamas won't manage to conduct another massacre, even if "only" half the scope of October 7?

This mess features not one but two parties who currently reject the concept of a cease fire.

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ajross ◴[26 Jan 24 23:11 UTC] No.39150129[source]▶
> All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?

It remains a mess, but less of a mess? Look, it's all bad guys running the show in that hell hole of a desert. There are no trusted entities anywhere able to run a government that isn't somewhere between actively antagonistic and actively genocidal toward half the local population.

Nonetheless a status quo with less shooting and death is better than a status quo with more. Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is, so... yeah, I guess. An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is. Incrementally. But none of this is going to get better, likely within our lifetimes.

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aurelien_gasser ◴[27 Jan 24 00:15 UTC] No.39150769[source]▶
> Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is

That's an understatement, Hamas killed less than 1,000 civilians, Israel killed 20,000+

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1. gafferongames ◴[27 Jan 24 02:31 UTC] No.39151820[source]▶
Hamas directly and intentionally targeted civilians. Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas. Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.
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2. Lord-Jobo ◴[27 Jan 24 03:38 UTC] No.39152279[source]▶
> Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas.

You should really read the parent article at the top of the page. It doesn't support this statement and the court ruling was created from a mountain of evidence.

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3. Sabinus ◴[27 Jan 24 05:06 UTC] No.39152770[source]▶
How close does it come to intentionally targeting civilians?
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4. slowturtle ◴[27 Jan 24 07:05 UTC] No.39153337[source]▶
> Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.

If there's a command center under a hospital, then you don't bomb the hospital. The fact that your enemy is using "human shields" doesn't mean that it's justified to bomb and kill everyone, including the shields. Now every relative and friend of the innocent people you killed has a reason to pick up a gun against you.

Obviously this puts you at a disadvantage. Instead of bombing targets on a screen from the comfort of an air-conditioned office in Tel Aviv, you'll have to send special forces in on the ground and probably take a lot of casualties. But you demonstrate to the civilians that you're not just killing them indiscriminately.

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5. ImPostingOnHN ◴[27 Jan 24 16:04 UTC] No.39156648{3}[source]▶
They hunted down, shot, and killed multiple of their own, underwear-clad civilian citizens who were all the while waving white flags and loudly surrendering in hebrew [0]

Imagine the sort of intentional targeting we don't get to see, because the journalists are killed [1] or the internet is cut [2] or the power is cut [3] or because everyone hiding is terrified to even move, knowing anything moving will be shot on sight [4], even surrendering Israeli hostages [0]. What a nightmare.

Known (indeed, willing) indiscriminate killing of civilians (especially in civilian areas, yikes) is as much a war crime [5] as "intentionally targeting civilians", even if one shouts "get out of there!" or "human shields!" or "terrorists!" or "it's comin' right for us!" in a Calvinball-style declaration whilst doing it.

For more detailed analysis of how Israel seems to be ignoring their obligation to protect Palestinian civilians, I recommend consulting the full ruling [6] from the ICJ, the literal judges of this matter.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/world/middleeast/israel-h...

1: https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-...

2: https://www.wired.com/story/israel-gaza-internet-blackouts-w...

3: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67073970

4: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-ch...

5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack#The_1977...

6 (PDF warning): https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...

6. LegitShady ◴[27 Jan 24 18:38 UTC] No.39158401[source]▶
>If there's a command center under a hospital, then you don't bomb the hospital.

Thats not what the geneva convention says.