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.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
There’s been a lot of talk about the production capacity gap between Russia and NATO as it relates to artillery rounds specifically. Russia has retooled its economy and invested heavily in wartime production and is currently seeing it pay dividends both on the battlefield but also in the overall health of their economy. Meanwhile the NATO nations have refused to make the investment in restarting mass production of rounds, a capability liquidated and sold off under the guiding principles of neoliberalism, and instead has solely relied on draining existing stockpiles bits at a time. The result has been catastrophic for the Ukrainians tasked with dying on NATO’s behalf ever since the initial blitz push from the RusFed was repelled and the war has settled into a WWI style trench and artillery game of attrition.
I think though that we shouldn’t confuse an unwillingness with an inability. There’s no reason to believe that the US or Germany are incapable of making the investment to restart the mass production of artillery shells (or any mass produced weapon of war rather than the big ticket, hyper specialized war toys they prefer now). There’s an entire point to be made that in this moment of profitability crisis the only industries that are succeeding are the ones hand chosen by the state to be made so with direct subsidies and funding (re: Brenner & Riley’s Seven Theses in which they attempt to coin “political capitalism” as the new economic model post-neoliberalism). The general consensus seems to be that there’s so far been an unwillingness to commit to the production process because it’s been thought that the Russo-Ukrainian war will end before the investment will be worthwhile and then the general style of combat will return to anti-insurgency missions relying on drones and laser guided munitions rather than mass produced dumb bombs and shells. My fear is that if this calculation changes and there is heavy investment in restarting the NATO war machine it puts us on the path towards another world war. The European nations may see the success of the Russian economy under wartime policies and see the return of a military Keynesianism as an appealing out to their financial woes but, as we know from the start of the previous century, you can only build up your stock of weapons for so long before the imperative to use them arises. I’m worried that the long duree trends of the 21st century see the return of both multipolarity as well as great powers conflicts, but this time we have nukes. Guess there’s nothing to really do about it tho but enjoy the view
A big question really is whether Biden represents the beginning of an industrialization trend, or instead a high water mark that will be reversed by the Republicans, whether they come into power in 2024 or 2028. I genuinely don’t know.
While I think there’s a ton of inertia in the imperial core that prevents much industrialization and production of actually effective mass-produceable military gear occurring, it’s also a tremendous mistake to believe that countries are forever locked into their current path and that fundamentally nothing will change; basically hardcore capitalist realism. I think Kaplya is correct in saying that it would require a revolution (of the industrialists overthrowing the financialists; essentially a different form of fascism) for this to actually occur. The US can do bits and pieces of industrialization here and there, but as soon as the green shoots start to grow above a certain height, the lawnmower of financialism cuts them down for immediate profit. I also agree that therefore the US will try as long as physically possible to fight China and friends via financial methods; maintaining staggering levels of debt, cutting off countries from financial institutions, etc etc. I’m much more optimistic than Kaplya is about it, but even I admit that the ultimate victor is far from certain. It’s like saying to somebody in early 1914: “Alright, there’s gonna be a massive war soon that engulfs Europe. Give me your predictions for the next 40 years.” How many people would predict the state of the world in 1950, even moderately correctly, even with the superpower of historical materialism and Marxist analysis? An entire fucking communist superpower rises up out of a feudal backwater and is the primary rival of the United States, the major capitalist power on Earth, unseating the British Empire! For all we fucking know, the current war in Palestine leads to the fall of Israel and then the propagation of communist revolutions across the Middle East, leading to a federated superpower that goes to war with Europe or something, and virtually nobody is predicting that that’s going to happen.
Will the US be the Russian Empire of WW1 and just collapse under the weight of a system that cannot adapt and develop its productive capacities fast enough before internal forces rip it apart, or will it be the British Empire of WW1, and break economic orthodoxies like the gold standard to become an industrial juggernaut and extend its reign for another few decades longer?
as a side note, It’s been pretty interesting to see how journalists and analysts have largely gotten behind government subsidies and nearshoring/friendshoring given that the last three decades (as in, virtually entire adult lives of even your typical middle-aged analysts) has been dominated by “free markets” and globalization. it’s not surprising, western media exists in total subservience to the US government as it’s all state propaganda, but even given that, it seemed to me a rather painless shift from “the free market will solve everything and if you think governments should have any economic role then you’re a commie” to “yeah actually the government investing hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure and factories is cool and good”