Forum Topic

Israel: the making of an outlaw state

"The Guardian view on Israel v the UN: the making of an outlaw state - Editorial""Israel’s rightwing government is recklessly steering the nation toward rogue-state status, with deeply troubling, escalating attacks on the United Nations that fuel a dangerous drift from international accountability. From its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, down, it exhibits a brazen contempt for the global norms that govern human rights, conflict and diplomacy.Hamas’s murderous attack last year in Israel, which left 1,200 people dead, ignited the current crisis. However, Israel’s response has been wildly disproportionate. Schools, hospitals and shelters have been struck, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths.""The US and its allies have shielded Israel from the consequences of its actions. Washington could end the war tomorrow by stopping its arms flows and forcing a ceasefire deal on both sides that would see Israeli hostages go home. It should do so forthwith. But American politics has been paralysed by the need to win an election in which criticism of Israeli actions is deemed beyond the pale.The UN asserts, correctly, that the US’s double standards undermine international law enforcement. This hypocrisy creates competing justice standards, weighing crimes against humanity against a state’s strategic value."https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/28/the-guardian-view-on-israel-v-the-un-the-making-of-an-outlaw-stateToo late, chum.

David Ainsworth ● 58d60 Comments

'The crime against humanity of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute and customary international law is committed when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.Apartheid can best be understood as a system of prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group'.Rather than sending out yet another trawled link to a not necessarily unbiased organisation perhaps you might briefly explain why you think Israel is committing apartheid and has 'the intention to control (a) second racial group'.It does not exclude Palestinians from living in its sovereign state and becoming citizens and Parliamentarians.Such exclusion was the extreme form of apartheid in South Africa as was forcing one racial group to live in a separate designated area.In fact do the Palestinians not want their own separate state ?I understood they did but extremists in their midst just don't want the state of Israel to exist.And it seems to me that providing it is not a threat to them, Israel is accepting of the state of Palestine - Gaza and the West Bank.Nor, apart from the actions of a few fanatics does it try to occupy Palestinian territory.Finally, would you give me a link to the Amnesty website that shows where and how it condemned the Palestinian invasion of Israel last October and the gross human rights violations they inflicted and still do on Israeli women, children and the elderly.

John Hawkes ● 26d

US President Joe Biden has called an International Criminal Court war crimes arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister “outrageous”.The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu's now sacked defence minister Yoav Gallant, and a Hamas commander, Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed in July.Judges said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the three men bore "criminal responsibility" for crimes during the war between Israel and Hamas.Europe and the US were split in their response to the warrant, with several European countries saying they respect ICC decisions. The British government said it respected the independence of the court.  (NB Shifty Starmer's fence sitting)."Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence - none - between Israel and Hamas," Biden said in a statement, external. "We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security."Ironically, the court's prosecutor involved seems no angel as the Guardian report shows.'The International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor who issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over “war crimes” in Gaza was accused of trying to suppress a sexual misconduct investigation against himself.Karim Khan, 54, faced accusations that he tried for more than a year to push a female aide into a sexual relationship and then groped her against her will.During the investigation, which was launched amid the probe against Israeli and Hamas officials, multiple ICC staff claimed Khan and an ally at the court repeatedly pushed the woman to recant her statements to protect his reputation, the Guardian reported'.Meanwhile....Israel has repeatedly been accused of war crimes for denying access into Gaza of UN food convoys for the relief of refugees fleeing the Israel- Hamas conflict.However "Almost 100 Gaza food aid lorries violently looted, UN agency says" - BBC News.'A convoy of 109 UN aid lorries carrying food was violently looted in Gaza on Saturday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) says.Ninety-seven of the lorries were lost and their drivers were forced at gunpoint to unload their aid after passing through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing with southern Gaza, in what is believed to have been one of the worst incidents of its kind.Eyewitnesses said the convoy was attacked by masked men who threw grenades.

John Hawkes ● 34d

'It is and will remain a real issue, I think'.Very good Wiki trawling, but what has it to do with the price of fish ?Or even the right of Israel now to be left alone to exist in the territory it occupies and Palestine to do the same and attempt to reach the heights in society the former has achieved politically, socially and economically.I know this will not be appreciated by the members of the Palestine Liberation Front - Putney Branch, who will have to find another issue to fume over.Perhaps the situation in China as it persecutes the Muslim  Uyghurs - 'China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang.Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps", and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms'.Source -BBC NEWSNo IDF involvement.Or the persecution of Christians in Nigeria where many of the attacks were carried out by the militant Islamist group, Boko Haram.Many young girls were abducted as was the case in the  invasion of Israel by Hamas last October.Many are still held.One dreads to think how they were treated.Source - BBC NewsNo IDF involvement.Or the factional fighting in Sudan'In April last year, Sudan was thrown into disarray when its army and a powerful paramilitary group began a vicious struggle for power.The war, which continues to this day, has claimed more than 15,000 lives. And in what the United Nations has called one of the world's "largest displacement crises", about nine million people have been forced to flee their homes.There have been warnings of genocide regarding the western region of Darfur, where residents say they have been targeted by fighters based on their ethnicity.After the 2021 coup, a council of generals ran Sudan, led by the two military men at the centre of this dispute:Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces and in effect the country's presidentAnd his deputy and leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as "Hemedti".They disagreed on the direction the country was going in and the proposed move towards civilian rule.The RSF was formed in 2013 and has its origins in the notorious Janjaweed militia that brutally fought rebels in Darfur, where they were accused of ethnic cleansing against the region's non-Arabic population.Source - BBC NewsNo IDF involvement.All forgotten (even forgiven ?) by Palestinian fellow travellers yet their criticism and attacks on Israel just go on and on and on.

John Hawkes ● 46d

"perhaps it was just overgrown egos by both the French and Israelis ... but sometimes those minor things disclose the real issues bubbling under the surface that everyone wants to contain ..."It is and will remain a real issue, I think."The Fischer-Chauvel Agreement (or Fischer-Chauvel Agreements) is an agreement made in 1948 and 1949 between the French and Israeli governments involving the status of a number of French institutions in the newly-founded State of Israel and claimed by France as domaine national français. The agreement was signed for Israel by Maurice Fischer (1903–1965), an Israeli diplomat in France at the time.Israel holds the view that the Israeli Declaration of Independence created a new international personality that is not a successor state of the Ottoman Empire or the British Mandate and so it is bound only by those former international obligations affecting the territory as Israel might accept. Under Israeli law, the Knesset must ratify international agreements before they become part of domestic law, which it has never done in the case of the Fischer-Chauvel Agreement. Nevertheless, Israel has maintained the previous tax exemptions and privileges of the sites claimed as domaine national.The French claims are based on claimed acquisitions predating the formation of the State of Israel, specifically in the Accords of Mytilene of November 1901, the Agreement of Constantinople of 18 December 1913, and the Fischer-Chauvel Agreement of 6 September 1948 to 31 January 1949.""On November 7, 2024, a new diplomatic incident between France and Israel occurred at the Church of the Pater Noster when Israeli soldiers arrested French gendarmes protecting the Catholic place of worship, de facto not recognizing its jurisdiction as a French domain."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Chauvel_Agreement

David Ainsworth ● 47d

Have those that support the campaign accusing Israel of all manner of atrocities against the Palestinians, Israel of course claiming to be acting in self defence after being invaded by Hamas and Hezbollah, forgotten that China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other MOSTLY MUSLIM ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang ?'Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps", and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms'. Source - BBC NewsAnd does not the numbers of deaths Israel has also been accused of causing in a nation on nation war bear little comparison to the horrific racial cleansing, genuine genocide, carried out in Rwanda obviously then a truly apartheid state ?'A court in France has sentenced a Rwandan former doctor to 27 years in jail for crimes relating to the 1994 genocide in his country.Eugène Rwamucyo was found guilty of complicity in genocide, complicity in crimes against humanity and of conspiring to prepare for those crimes by spreading propaganda and attempting to cover up evidence of mass murder.The 65-year-old - who was acquitted of charges of genocide and crimes against humanity - denied any wrongdoing. Local media reported that his lawyers said they intended to appeal.His trial was the eighth in France relating to the genocide in 1994, when an estimated 800,000 people were killed.Ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were targeted in the 100-day massacre by Hutu extremists'.Source - BBC NewsWhere is the sense of perspective of the anti-Israeli tendency ?Do they suffer from  white 'self loathing' or could their attitude be considered something more sinister ?

John Hawkes ● 56d