Image is of legal adviser to Israel’s foreign ministry Tal Becker and British jurist Malcolm Shaw at the ICJ hearing.

The ICJ case against Israel might not achieve much for the Palestinian cause directly, given that Israeli politicians have explicitly stated that the Hague will not stop them - and I believe them. The Resistance will be what stops them, and they are doing quite well for themselves. Hezbollah has hit highly sensitive and important Israeli military sites over the last couple weeks, and in general persist in several border attacks every day. The battles in Iraq and Syria also continue. Hamas remains largely intact, and is successfully forcing Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip to retreat, and other parts of the Gazan Resistance are continuing to battle down in Khan Yunis. And, last but not least, Yemen is firmly dedicated to the blockade, warding off another ship literally minutes before I started writing this paragraph.

What the ICJ is battling over isn’t Palestine and Israel - not really - but the legitimacy of international law itself, and to what degree victimized countries can rely on it to solve problems, versus needing to take more militant routes for justice. In a weird sense, it might be an L for Israel either way. If international law sides with Palestine, then when Israel refuses to stop, it will invalidate international law. If international law sides with Israel, then it will invalidate international law. There is no conceivable way for the West to come out of this looking good.

The South African portion detailing Israeli atrocities against Gaza was largely ignored by the western media. They have instead, obviously, decided to focus on the Israeli portion. Their defense appears to amount to “We didn’t do it, Hamas did it. And if we did do it, it doesn’t matter, because that’s just urban warfare for you. Please get this whole thing thrown out on a very dubious technicality so we don’t have to advance to the next stage.”

From Craig Murray, who has been physically going to the Hague:

It is important to realise this. Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute, unilateral assurances and jurisdiction. The obvious nonsense they spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media.

…I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s “no dispute” argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means “no dispute”. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…

What do I think will happen? Some sort of “compromise”. The judges will issue provisional measures different to South Africa’s request, asking Israel to continue to take measures to protect the civilian population, or some such guff. Doubtless the State Department have drafted something like this for President of the court Donoghoe already.

I hope I am wrong. I would hate to give up on international law. One thing I do know for certain. These two days in the Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights. I still believe action by the court could cause the US and UK to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza.

The weekly update is here on the website.

The Country of the Week is South Africa! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    94·
    11 months ago

    twitter thread

    I just got back from Ukraine, where I was visiting some friends. Everything we have heard about what’s happening in Ukraine is a lie. The reality is darker, bleaker, and unequivocally hopeless. There is no such thing as Ukraine “winning” this war.

    • By their estimates, they have lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone.

    Nazis and destroying the demographics of their own people, name a better duo

    • Even in the Southwest, where the anti-Russian sentiment is long-standing, citizens are reluctant or straight-up scared to publicly criticize Zelensky; they will go to jail.
    • In every village and town, the streets, shops, and restaurants are mostly absent of men.
    • The few men who remain are terrified of leaving their homes for fear of being kidnapped into conscription. Some have resorted to begging friends to break their legs to avoid service.
    • Army search parties take place early in the morning, when men leave their homes to go to work. They ambush and kidnap them off the streets and within 3-4 hours they get listed in the army and taken away straight to the front lines with minimal or no training at all; it is “a death sentence.”
    • It’s getting worse every day. Where I was staying, a dentist had just been taken by security forces on his way to work, leaving behind two small children. Every day, 3-5 dead bodies keep arriving from the front lines.
    • Mothers and wives fight tooth and nail with the armed forces, beg and plead not to have their men taken away. They try bribing, which sometimes works, but most of the time they are met with physical violence and death threats.
    • The territory celebrated as having been “won back” from Russia has been reduced to rubble and is uninhabitable. Regardless, there is no one left to live there and displaced families will likely never return.
    • They see the way the war has been reported, at home and abroad. It’s a “joke” and “propaganda.” They say: “Look around: is this winning?”.
    • Worse, some have been hoaxed into believing that once Ukrainians forces are exhausted, American soldiers will come in to replace them and “win the war”.

    There is no ambiguity in these people. The war was for nothing - a travesty. The outcome always was, and is, clear. The people are hopeless, utterly destroyed, and living in an unending nightmare. They are pleading for an end, any end - most likely the same “peace” that could have been achieved two years ago. In their minds, they have already lost, for their sons, fathers and husbands are gone, and their country has been destroyed. There is no “victory” that can change that.

    Except the peace offer then (see under the The Objectives and Strategy of Russia section) was incredibly favorable for Ukraine (and naive on Russia’s part), basically just security guarantees and no NATO membership, without any territorial changes. That ain’t happening anymore.

    Make no mistake, they are angry with Putin. But they are also angry with Zelensky and the West. They have lost everything, worst of all, hope and faith, and cannot comprehend why Zelenky wishes to continue the current trajectory, the one of human devastation. I didn’t witness the war; but what I saw was absolutely heart-breaking. Shame on the people, regardless of their intentions, who have supported this war. And shame on the media for continuing to lie about it.

    agony-deep

    also lmao at the fucking community note

    nerd um actually the US says that only a few Ukrainians have died (based on propaganda fed to them by the Ukrainians)

    • 420stalin69@hexbear.netEnglish
      55·
      11 months ago

      NAFOs on Twitter confident that they know the situation better because they read about it on Reddit

      • cricbuzz [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        11 months ago

        seriously each of these nafo fuckers needs to off themselves (i’m sorry and can NSFW this if needed). But fuck. These ‘heckin reddit army zelensky is a mcu hero’ fucks have blood on their hands.

        shit is just a game to them and now that the war has gotten ‘boring’ they’re off to a new toy.

        i just logged into my lemmy.ml account i created to troll the lemmyworld fucks and none of them have logged on in the last 6 months since the ukranian counteroffensive. now that the war is ‘boring’ they’ve moved on. FUCK THEM

    • GinAndJuche@hexbear.netMEnglish
      51·
      11 months ago

      Just once, it would be nice to be vindicated without all the misery required for libs to realize we’ve been telling them the truth.

      • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        24·
        11 months ago

        Many (most) Won’t even reflect long enough to realize how profoundly wrong they were, or at least not enough to prevent them from doing it again in another 10-15 years.

      • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        13·
        11 months ago

        Cult of Bandera vs. Cult of Zelensky is like a reproduction of U.S. national “party” politics. LOL. They don’t exactly oppose each other, and they’ll slaughter each other for failure to nationalism hard enough. Similar aesthetics to elephants vs. donkeys, too.

    • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      11·
      11 months ago

      I don’t doubt that the situation in Ukraine is bleak but this is a random twitter post making some pretty big claims. Who is “by their estimates”? The estimates of the aforementioned friends? How would they know? Did they count?

      1 million dead would be 2% of the entire population of Ukraine. “Scared to publicly criticize Zelensky because they might be arrested” and “Army search parties nab random men off the streets and ship them directly to the frontlines with no training” sounds like some Yeonmi Park shit.

      I agree with the core of the message, “Ukraine is losing, the West is coping and Ukrainians just want the war to end” but this post makes it sound like Ukraine is doing Enemy At The Gates.

      • CommunistBear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        11 months ago

        Army search parties nab random men off the streets and ship them directly to the frontlines with no training

        I can’t confirm how much training they receive but I absolutely have seen UA soldiers carrying men off into vans with heavy protest from both the guy being taken away and from bystanders

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        “Army search parties nab random men off the streets and ship them directly to the frontlines with no training” sounds like some Yeonmi Park shit.

        Western and Ukrainian news have reported this for a few years now. And liberals usually support this, saying that the men shouldn’t have dodged the draft in the first place and that a Russian victory is worse than beating or two.

        I don’t know anything about people getting arrested for criticizing Zelensky, but they’re definitely being kidnapped in the streets.

      • BovineUniversity@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        OP is uber chuddy too, praising people like Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk. Definitely take her post with a heap of salt.