You're right, but that linked piece isn't. Or, at least, the authors are either unaware, misinformed, or after some agenda. It's making a de jure argument. The ICC simply doesn't exist from the American perspective, because America is not a party to the treaty. The law it cites is, instead, congressional preauthorization to act if an American or an ally is captured.
The future solution will tjen be that the winner in a conflict will race to nab all enemies and execute them. That will be the only way to ensure "a punishment". Interring Putin, for example, would lead to pressure from Trump an Xi, in that order, to release him.
Looks like our future will be more bloody and violent as a result.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Israel was an overreach for the court - hell, everything about Israel and international bodies is blatantly biased, if you try to take any baseline whatsoever. Africa's conflicts, Ukraine, previous wars etc. It works only if you consider Israel in a void, or in a category of its own. There were conflicts in Africa this summer that killed more people than died in all of Gaza's recent conflict, and got exactly 1% of the public indignation and UN resolutions.
International bodies are incredibly useful, but only if they avoid being used as political tools. And lately they've been delivering failure after failure. ICC, UN, WHO...
The correct solution in Israel was always UN troops. But that'd involve UN getting their hands dirty and doing something other than giving resolutions.
The number of people who have listened to a religious nut at the door, versus the number of people who have converted to that religion. Until they make a single concession, it's only a symbolic willingness to talk about it, nothing more.
I cannot imagine the pressure the US is exerting on all kinds of international systems due to temper tantrums at the top of the chain of command, but based on history and everything we see in the news it's a lot. The wise diplomatic choice would be to start up exploratory negotiations to reduce pressure (no doubt on completely unrelated systems, like cooperation in tertiary education). If talks can be dragged out for two years, maybe it'll all just go away.
Israel has set humanity back so far. All of the progress toward human rights that have developed since WWII have been shredded in favor of Zionism. They were mostly just an illusion but that illusion is gone.
The genocide continued unabated under Biden. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and complete subservience to Apartheid Israel are bipartisan issues in the US.
64,000 children killed and counting just so the war criminal Natenyahu could stay in power. I really hope the illusion is gone, but as long as the US keeps supporting that government it's going to be very hard to take a proper moral stance on it for anyone else.
> 64,000 children killed just so the war criminal Netanyahu could stay in power
No, this is an intentionally reductive framing. Palestinians are killed to realize the objectives of Zionism, which have shaped Israel since before its foundation. The entire country and its history are behind it, not just Netanyahu.
That's correct, but it's a chain of events and people who are invested in making it continue this way - Natenyahu knows that embracing hardcore Zionism is the way to stay in power so he continues doing it. But he wouldn't be able to do that without a huge amount of support across both the political spectrum and the population.
You have read the treaty of Rome? The ICC only applies to nations who agree to have it applied. And even then it's not followed by countries. Well, and they make it apply to Israel, of course, because changing and special-casing laws to convict Jews is an old European tradition [2].
Meanwhile the UN GA keeps screaming for 3 things:
1) for the ICC stay away from "internal affairs" (stuff happening in countries who haven't agreed to the treaty of Rome)
Even the Netherlands demanded the ICC stay away from the siege of Srebrenica (because a Dutch commander and deployment, "Dutchbat", oversaw the massacre they were there to prevent. The commander who oversaw this total disaster was promoted and knighted instead, and then de-knighted some years later) [1]
2) to convict Israel (Which has retreated from the treaty of Rome)
3) to convict Russia (which is guilty of crimes in Ukraine, which do fall under the treaty of Rome)
At least the Russia stuff is somewhat admirable. Until you start looking at what happens on the ground (gets to the UN SC, where Russia and China and sometimes France object to do anything to Russia, and of course the UN GA refuses to do anything for money reasons)
The UN, like it's predecessor the League of Nations, just does nothing. Worse: it is constantly used as an excuse to do nothing about serious situations, like currently Sudan, for example. The UN is a great ideal, a "world police", that countries DO NOT WANT, especially not dictatorships and muslim countries. And the organization is in practice constantly used as the exact opposite of the ideal it supposedly represents. The world, very much, does not want peace at this point, or at the very least you can say, it's not willing to give up any economic reward for peace, certainly not elsewhere. Of course, these days, the UN's predecessor (same buildings, same people), the League of Nations, is not just blamed for doing nothing, but was the organization behind the treaty of Versailles, now generally considered the cause of WW2, as it caused the decades-long economic disaster that remade the Weimar Republic into the third reich.
And when the UN does interfere, well, the last 3 places they interfered were Lebanon, Haiti, and Sudan. I wonder how things are going in those 3 places? The first one was "the Congo problem", Katanga in Congo in Africa. I wonder what happened there when the UN withdrew ...
[2] the Dreyfus affair (which, by the way, is a particularly egregious instance of this happening as part of a systematic campaign to do so in France, not an isolated incident)
Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine are not too different really. In both cases the former is being persecuted for the crimes on the territory of the latter. What's different is that Israel is a democracy with an independent judicial - ICC shouldn't interfere with such countries IMO
Palestinians that were ethnically cleansed from their homes can’t vote in the state that was created on top of Palestine, so it’s not really a democracy.
Even if you see it this way, it's not a prerequisite for being a democracy. Athens were a democracy, USA were a democracy before 1865. The point here is their rulers are not above the law and they have their own judges to persecute them
First, Palestine has terror organizations which it HAS to fight according to UN rules. Does it really even need to be stated that there's problems there? (no doubt it's all Israel's fault according to you, but ...)
Second, if territory is in dispute, even just in practice, ALL parties must agree. Neither party agrees (not even Hamas: they have very publicly declared they will never deliver anyone at all to the ICC). Palestine has made it very clear they're only interested in using the ICC to get sanctions on Israel, and consider everything they do internal affairs.
Third, the whole deal of the UN is that redrawing borders is not allowed, and if for any reason you do want to redraw borders, you need support of the whole UNSC. No change was ever accepted (not by Israel or Palestine either btw). Which has the result that according to the rules, there is no Palestinian territory (unless you mean Jordan).
Fourth, Palestine has accepted the treaty of Rome, then publicly declared, on TV, and on the internet, and ... that they were never going to respect it (never deliver anyone from their side to the ICC). The treaty of Rome states that unless a commitment is made, no complaint can be accepted.
I would add that Palestine is not exactly fighting on their own, and to put it mildly if they achieve any progress at all, the result will not be freedom for Palestinians. In other words, the whole conflict is a lie, and was from the very beginning. Nobody, least of all other muslims, are interested in helping Palestinians. They're interested in destroying "Israel" (but really Jews).
But these sorts of issues are a very common problem with the ICC. Russia is (well, was, given what happened last month) ALSO trying to use the ICC to get Zelensky convicted for human rights violations. And they're not the only one. UN members, even security council members are only interested in using the ICC as a weapon, and could not care less about any principle of justice. South Africa, also involved in the Israel/Palestine case, deliberately hosted Omar Al-Sharif, directly violating their ICC obligations. Venezuela has also declared that the ICC has no standing in Guyana, for example, because Guyana is really Venezuelan territory (a big piece with oil, I forgot the exact name). Mongolia hosted Putin, and even got a "guru" to put on a show advising Putin to use nuclear weapons ... As I pointed out, even the Netherlands destroyed an ICC persecution. The US ... and so on and so forth.
Alternative take: Human rights have not progressed since WWII. If a facade shatters the moment you put any pressure on it, it wasn't made out of anything stronger than sugar candy.
Bet this will be flagged within 8 hours. The lack of "vouch" for submissions is really convenient for flag-trolls. Maybe they'll restrict my account too.
Edit: only took one hour - it's even within the editing window for this comment!
Not only did my reasonable comment in this thread get flagged (after being upvoted!). I can no longer vouch for comments. The link is there, it just doesn’t do anything. Some site huh!
This usually means your account has been shadowbanned from casting flags and vouches. You'll also find yourself limited to posting 5 comments in a row.
It's because you posted what the moderators have determined is wrongthink. It was probably because you said Israel was bad, but there's no way to know for sure. You can email hn@ycombinator.com but they probably won't tell you.
Why does every country capitulate to the US? Let them sanction the Netherlands and see how much they enjoy not having access to EUV machines…
Like, is Europe just completely fucking asleep? You can play China and US off against each other, then the US will think twice when their supposed allies run to their enemies.
Europe is divided and conquered, even though it looks like a single entity, US can buy some politicians in some parts of the EU and they would go against any resolution against US.
You can't win a battle when you have 20 generals and require the force of 20 in the way, when each has its own agenda and incentives and some of them are easy to buy
How does kompromat even work nowadays with the rise of generative AI? If any bad pictures or videos about you surface, you could just say "that's AI" and shrug it off.
Who even needs generative AI for that? With Trump-esque lies he just has to say it's FAKE NEWS by VERY BAD people and it just kind of....goes away. True or not.
US was already "de facto" immune from the court.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...
This is done just to please some foreign pals.
You're right, but that linked piece isn't. Or, at least, the authors are either unaware, misinformed, or after some agenda. It's making a de jure argument. The ICC simply doesn't exist from the American perspective, because America is not a party to the treaty. The law it cites is, instead, congressional preauthorization to act if an American or an ally is captured.
The source is not without controversy in the Netherlands.
> The restrictions that would be under discussion include:
> a) granting immunity to heads of state;
> b) excluding the Court's jurisdiction over nationals of non-state parties, even when they commit crimes on the territory of a state party; and
> c) denying the Court's jurisdiction over cases covered by national legislation.
Basically, no skin in the game for the decision makers, a will to power for the foot soldiers, and a panopticon for everyone else.
This may be a hard sell as 2/3rds majority is required to bring any Rome Statue amends into force.
The future solution will tjen be that the winner in a conflict will race to nab all enemies and execute them. That will be the only way to ensure "a punishment". Interring Putin, for example, would lead to pressure from Trump an Xi, in that order, to release him. Looks like our future will be more bloody and violent as a result.
No balls. Humiliation continues.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Israel was an overreach for the court - hell, everything about Israel and international bodies is blatantly biased, if you try to take any baseline whatsoever. Africa's conflicts, Ukraine, previous wars etc. It works only if you consider Israel in a void, or in a category of its own. There were conflicts in Africa this summer that killed more people than died in all of Gaza's recent conflict, and got exactly 1% of the public indignation and UN resolutions.
International bodies are incredibly useful, but only if they avoid being used as political tools. And lately they've been delivering failure after failure. ICC, UN, WHO...
The correct solution in Israel was always UN troops. But that'd involve UN getting their hands dirty and doing something other than giving resolutions.
“ Diplomatic sources: ‘The Netherlands is negotiating the dismantling of the International Criminal Court’”
The title is wrong. Negotiating to do something is not the same as doing the thing.
Negotiating means, lets hear what you want and lets see what we can do. Which means there is a willing to listen.
Would you listen someone if they come to your house and start claiming it? Would you negotiate with them?
The number of people who have listened to a religious nut at the door, versus the number of people who have converted to that religion. Until they make a single concession, it's only a symbolic willingness to talk about it, nothing more.
You are giving an example of someone offering you something, you can take it or don't, I am giving an example of someone taking something from you.
Dismantling ICC is taking something from all of us.
I don't get the rethorical question. I am merely pointing out the title is wrong because it says "x does y" instead of "x is considering doing y".
I cannot imagine the pressure the US is exerting on all kinds of international systems due to temper tantrums at the top of the chain of command, but based on history and everything we see in the news it's a lot. The wise diplomatic choice would be to start up exploratory negotiations to reduce pressure (no doubt on completely unrelated systems, like cooperation in tertiary education). If talks can be dragged out for two years, maybe it'll all just go away.
Israel has set humanity back so far. All of the progress toward human rights that have developed since WWII have been shredded in favor of Zionism. They were mostly just an illusion but that illusion is gone.
Spot on.
Trump is the one pushing for this. And Fox News are the people who put Trump in power.
So maybe we should be dismantling the Murdoch empire.
The genocide continued unabated under Biden. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and complete subservience to Apartheid Israel are bipartisan issues in the US.
Trump, Biden and nearly every other president other than JFK have been Zionists. Israel bribes and blackmails our leaders.
...and JFK got a different solution than bribe or blackmail.
64,000 children killed and counting just so the war criminal Natenyahu could stay in power. I really hope the illusion is gone, but as long as the US keeps supporting that government it's going to be very hard to take a proper moral stance on it for anyone else.
> 64,000 children killed just so the war criminal Netanyahu could stay in power
No, this is an intentionally reductive framing. Palestinians are killed to realize the objectives of Zionism, which have shaped Israel since before its foundation. The entire country and its history are behind it, not just Netanyahu.
That's correct, but it's a chain of events and people who are invested in making it continue this way - Natenyahu knows that embracing hardcore Zionism is the way to stay in power so he continues doing it. But he wouldn't be able to do that without a huge amount of support across both the political spectrum and the population.
Anti-Zionist parties got ≈15% of the votes in the recent legislative election, so it's a bit reductive to claim that the entire country is behind it.
85% electoral victory is as close to unanimous as it ever gets.
You have read the treaty of Rome? The ICC only applies to nations who agree to have it applied. And even then it's not followed by countries. Well, and they make it apply to Israel, of course, because changing and special-casing laws to convict Jews is an old European tradition [2].
Meanwhile the UN GA keeps screaming for 3 things:
1) for the ICC stay away from "internal affairs" (stuff happening in countries who haven't agreed to the treaty of Rome)
Even the Netherlands demanded the ICC stay away from the siege of Srebrenica (because a Dutch commander and deployment, "Dutchbat", oversaw the massacre they were there to prevent. The commander who oversaw this total disaster was promoted and knighted instead, and then de-knighted some years later) [1]
2) to convict Israel (Which has retreated from the treaty of Rome)
3) to convict Russia (which is guilty of crimes in Ukraine, which do fall under the treaty of Rome)
At least the Russia stuff is somewhat admirable. Until you start looking at what happens on the ground (gets to the UN SC, where Russia and China and sometimes France object to do anything to Russia, and of course the UN GA refuses to do anything for money reasons)
The UN, like it's predecessor the League of Nations, just does nothing. Worse: it is constantly used as an excuse to do nothing about serious situations, like currently Sudan, for example. The UN is a great ideal, a "world police", that countries DO NOT WANT, especially not dictatorships and muslim countries. And the organization is in practice constantly used as the exact opposite of the ideal it supposedly represents. The world, very much, does not want peace at this point, or at the very least you can say, it's not willing to give up any economic reward for peace, certainly not elsewhere. Of course, these days, the UN's predecessor (same buildings, same people), the League of Nations, is not just blamed for doing nothing, but was the organization behind the treaty of Versailles, now generally considered the cause of WW2, as it caused the decades-long economic disaster that remade the Weimar Republic into the third reich.
And when the UN does interfere, well, the last 3 places they interfered were Lebanon, Haiti, and Sudan. I wonder how things are going in those 3 places? The first one was "the Congo problem", Katanga in Congo in Africa. I wonder what happened there when the UN withdrew ...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutchbat
[2] the Dreyfus affair (which, by the way, is a particularly egregious instance of this happening as part of a systematic campaign to do so in France, not an isolated incident)
Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine are not too different really. In both cases the former is being persecuted for the crimes on the territory of the latter. What's different is that Israel is a democracy with an independent judicial - ICC shouldn't interfere with such countries IMO
"democracy" makes israel immune from their war crimes and history full of terrorism?
Democracy, and in particular independent justice system, means that it's up to Israel to presecute its terrorists and war criminals
Palestinians that were ethnically cleansed from their homes can’t vote in the state that was created on top of Palestine, so it’s not really a democracy.
Even if you see it this way, it's not a prerequisite for being a democracy. Athens were a democracy, USA were a democracy before 1865. The point here is their rulers are not above the law and they have their own judges to persecute them
I don’t “see it this way”, it’s factually what happened. I assure you the people who can’t vote in their homeland don’t consider it a democracy.
There's 4 problems with that.
First, Palestine has terror organizations which it HAS to fight according to UN rules. Does it really even need to be stated that there's problems there? (no doubt it's all Israel's fault according to you, but ...)
Second, if territory is in dispute, even just in practice, ALL parties must agree. Neither party agrees (not even Hamas: they have very publicly declared they will never deliver anyone at all to the ICC). Palestine has made it very clear they're only interested in using the ICC to get sanctions on Israel, and consider everything they do internal affairs.
Third, the whole deal of the UN is that redrawing borders is not allowed, and if for any reason you do want to redraw borders, you need support of the whole UNSC. No change was ever accepted (not by Israel or Palestine either btw). Which has the result that according to the rules, there is no Palestinian territory (unless you mean Jordan).
Fourth, Palestine has accepted the treaty of Rome, then publicly declared, on TV, and on the internet, and ... that they were never going to respect it (never deliver anyone from their side to the ICC). The treaty of Rome states that unless a commitment is made, no complaint can be accepted.
I would add that Palestine is not exactly fighting on their own, and to put it mildly if they achieve any progress at all, the result will not be freedom for Palestinians. In other words, the whole conflict is a lie, and was from the very beginning. Nobody, least of all other muslims, are interested in helping Palestinians. They're interested in destroying "Israel" (but really Jews).
But these sorts of issues are a very common problem with the ICC. Russia is (well, was, given what happened last month) ALSO trying to use the ICC to get Zelensky convicted for human rights violations. And they're not the only one. UN members, even security council members are only interested in using the ICC as a weapon, and could not care less about any principle of justice. South Africa, also involved in the Israel/Palestine case, deliberately hosted Omar Al-Sharif, directly violating their ICC obligations. Venezuela has also declared that the ICC has no standing in Guyana, for example, because Guyana is really Venezuelan territory (a big piece with oil, I forgot the exact name). Mongolia hosted Putin, and even got a "guru" to put on a show advising Putin to use nuclear weapons ... As I pointed out, even the Netherlands destroyed an ICC persecution. The US ... and so on and so forth.
Why does it being a democracy make a difference? If Russia all voted to invade Ukraine would that make it wrong to fight the invasion?
Alternative take: Human rights have not progressed since WWII. If a facade shatters the moment you put any pressure on it, it wasn't made out of anything stronger than sugar candy.
Bet this will be flagged within 8 hours. The lack of "vouch" for submissions is really convenient for flag-trolls. Maybe they'll restrict my account too.
Edit: only took one hour - it's even within the editing window for this comment!
Not only did my reasonable comment in this thread get flagged (after being upvoted!). I can no longer vouch for comments. The link is there, it just doesn’t do anything. Some site huh!
This usually means your account has been shadowbanned from casting flags and vouches. You'll also find yourself limited to posting 5 comments in a row.
Yep, that’s the state my account is in. Why would they do that and why show me the option if I can’t use it now? Pretty anti-social product design.
HN carries water for the billionaire and wanna be class.
HN is literally, in the most neutral definition of the words, a billionaire's propaganda operation.
It's because you posted what the moderators have determined is wrongthink. It was probably because you said Israel was bad, but there's no way to know for sure. You can email hn@ycombinator.com but they probably won't tell you.
I’m sure this is what it is because habitually pro-Israel accounts can definitely post more than 5 messages in a row.
Looks like couple of Israeli terrorists and p*dophiles in the US are taking over the world, what are the ways to stop them?
What's next after ICC, start of slavery?
It never went away. See prison factories in USA, and forced labour in China.
At least, its not in the law today, imagine they make it official and being born to a slave family and being slave forever, including your kids.
Heard of wage slavery?
Reality is more important than law and a lot of times it's already like that, just not in the law
Way more than a couple.
Why quote Law to men who carry Swords?
Because they love their children too?
Why does every country capitulate to the US? Let them sanction the Netherlands and see how much they enjoy not having access to EUV machines…
Like, is Europe just completely fucking asleep? You can play China and US off against each other, then the US will think twice when their supposed allies run to their enemies.
Europe is divided and conquered, even though it looks like a single entity, US can buy some politicians in some parts of the EU and they would go against any resolution against US.
You can't win a battle when you have 20 generals and require the force of 20 in the way, when each has its own agenda and incentives and some of them are easy to buy
My first thought is that it's because every country that doesn't capitulate to the US gets invaded by the US and destroyed. See Venezuela.
so much for principles huh
I wonder what Israel has on Trump to make him dance like their puppet. It‘s embarassing and ridiculous.
Epstein files and video tapes?
How does kompromat even work nowadays with the rise of generative AI? If any bad pictures or videos about you surface, you could just say "that's AI" and shrug it off.
Who even needs generative AI for that? With Trump-esque lies he just has to say it's FAKE NEWS by VERY BAD people and it just kind of....goes away. True or not.
Almost the entire US political system?
Watch them vote for their uniparty again. They never learn.