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

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."

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.

Israel must face the reality that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land. There is no solution until that happens. Just like apartheid South Africa was dismantled, Israel has to face the same fate or forever be locked into warfare and oppressing Palestinians.

Isn't that exactly the view of reality that the Israeli right wing holds? They would agree that the choices are either dismantling the state of Israel, or eternal warfare. Since they don't want to dismantle the state of Israel, they elect for eternal warfare.

It's funny how on some questions, the most extreme people on both sides agree on the answer. Hamas and the Israeli right wing both agree that the only viable solution is for one ethnic group to control all the land from the river to the sea.

I feel that's an extremely naive view. How many Jews live peacefully and enjoy human rights under Arab rule in the middle east? Zero. How many in Gaza under Hamas? Zero. How many live in the west bank in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority? Zero.

So "Hamas" only wants Tel-Aviv "returned", Jersualem "returned", Haifa "returned", from the river to the sea, but somehow in that vision all the Jewish population lives peacefully and enjoys human rights that don't exist anywhere in the middle east?

This just isn't true. There are even (a few thousand) Jews living in Iran, and the Ayatollahs have come out in defence of Judaism proper.

The main problem for Jews in the region is the fact that the certain Israeli factions aggressively conflates Judaism with Israeli nationalism/Zionism, sacrificing the former to protect the latter. Above all else, that makes it dangerous to be Jewish outside Israel or one of its Western sponsors. And even inside. Because uninformed people, and actual antisemites, buy into that cynical framing.

There were definitely persecutions and ethnic cleansing campaigns following 1948 in the neighboring Arab countries, especially in Iraq, Syria, and following 1967 in Lebanon, which drove a lot of Arab speaking Jews to Israel. Israel’s immigration policy was also very aggressive in inviting Jews from Arabic countries into Israel. Some even believe Israel went as far as stealing people from Ethiopia. So a lot of Jewish communities that once existed outside of Israel have now been absorbed into Israel.

That said, I think it is a mistake—and honestly a bit racist—to claim that Jewish people can’t live and prosper in smaller communities among certain ethno-religous majorities today.

> That said, I think it is a mistake—and honestly a bit racist—to claim that Jewish people can’t live and prosper in smaller communities among certain ethno-religous majorities today

How is it racist ? There are indeed entire areas where Jews can't really live normally due to harassment. Even in Europe.

It is racist to zero in on a specific ethno-religous group and say that they in particular are unable to maintain a functioning democracy accommodating of certain minorities. It is the sort of crap that colonial Europe did to justify the horrors of the colonial period.