It did not decide that it was likely. The wording is very specific and deliberate: The preliminary ruling states that "at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention". Notice how careful the wording is: "At least some", "alleged", "appear to be capable of falling within" - this kind of wording is being used to express a great deal of uncertainty.
They established that South Africa has a case, that the case falls under the jurisdiction of the court and that "at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention". Notice how careful the wording is: "At least some", "alleged", "appear to be capable of falling within" - this kind of wording is being used to express a great deal of uncertainty. Legal language like this is incredibly precise and it demands to be read with the same amount of precision.
Thank you for this. I noticed that there are no photos or other material that show any of the restraints, just the closed body bags with Hebrew tags. You would think that they would immediately photograph or film such restraints, but for some reason, they did not and they are only mentioned in the article text in both this article and the Al Jazeera source. The article on Al Jazeera's website, which includes a video overlayed with ominous music (not something a reputable outlet would do), includes the lie that the men stripped and restrained for processing a while ago were out in the cold, even though one could easily access weather data for Gaza that showed it wasn't cold at all at the time.
From a logical perspective, it would make no sense for Israel to leave the bodies behind with restraints, whereas burying bodies they come across is perfectly reasonable for the purposes of preventing disease. If the goal of this burial had been to hide executions or a massacre, then they wouldn't have tagged them, which would place the blame entirely on them.
The most reasonable explanation, in absence of more concrete evidence, is that these are either civilians found in the rubble or killed in the crossfire - or Hamas fighters who died in combat. They could also be people killed by Hamas (who just murdered a pro-peace activist after abducting and torturing him). I think what happened here is that IDF cleanup crews buried these people, likely without identifying them beyond checking if any hostages are among them, and now returning Palestinians are exhuming the bodies again in order to find missing relatives.
I also have a really hard time believing random unnamed eyewitness reports of mass executions. Given the enormous prevalence of smartphones and their extensive use to document this conflict, one would expect that an act this significant, this unquestionably monstrous would be filmed. It would be the single greatest rallying cry for the Palestinian cause imaginable. Watch any video of the aftermath of a bombing raid in Gaza and you see more people with cameras than people trying to help the wounded. If a random Belgian with a bulky camera can secretly film executions of civilians by German forces during WW1, then surely so can Gazans with much more readily available, much more concealable smartphones.
We should have seen this coming. These same tankies have been claiming that North Korea is a workers' and peasants' paradise for years, that any non-flattering information on this country is just evil Western propaganda. I wish I was making this up. Even moderate tankies who acknowledge that NK is in a very poor shape by any metric try to blame this on Western sabotage, which is 1:1 a lie that the regime tells its own citizens.
Out go the experts, in go the yes-men. Xi has always used corruption, both real and made-up (there's plenty of either), as an excuse to get rid of people who might endanger his grip on power. With totalitarian regimes like his, expertise and experience are a considered a threat instead of being encouraged.
Yes, from the Ottomans and also from local landowners, especially after the British took over. They preferred purchasing land with few Arab tenants in order to evict as few people as possible. This meant that much of the land was of poor quality for agricultural use, which they solved, after the founding of Israel, by coming up with innovative irrigation methods.
The reason why I read your comment that way is because America wasn't exactly an ardent supporter of Israel in its early days beyond recognizing it first, even going so far as to enforce an arms embargo against it. The UK also enforced this embargo. The most significant support out of Europe came from France, which had very strong ties with Israel, including in particular in regards to both nations' atomic weapons programs. West Germany became a supporter of the young state starting in the early 1950s, when its Holocaust reparations became a major source of funding (and free imports of vital goods) for the government in Tel Aviv.
American Evangelical support of Israel really only started to take off and become a force in American politics in the wake of the Six-Days war, when America, in order to counter Soviet influence in the region, began to back Israel directly. This was also when economic ties started to intensify. Evangelicals, while having voiced support of Zionism earlier (just like more moderate American Christians), more or less rode the coattails of this development.
No, but it ended for the Palestinians as a political entity with their own agency that day. Future historians will cite this event as the one that sealed the fate of the Palestinians as the losers of this conflict forever. October 7 showed Israel that Palestinians can not be trusted to govern themselves, that the only way the Israeli state can ensure its safety is by having a tight grip over Palestinian affairs, like in the West Bank.
I'm stating this as an observation, not as an expression of support of how Israel is conducting itself in the West Bank. However, I do believe that nothing Israel has ever done justifies the atrocities of October 7 and I sure hope that you were not trying to justify those either.
Can you describe who these supposed fundamentalists are supposed to be, how large this group and their influence was? Because it can't be the Haredi, who were far too small and insignificant a group in 1948.
I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but the persecution of Jews didn't start with WW2 and neither was it limited to areas controlled by Nazi Germany. There are very good reasons why Jews wanted to return to their home country.
Not to mention, even if he or any other of the leading figures of his time had been fundamentalists, how would this be a good reason for denying Israel the right to exist right now? Why should that be a criteria? The Palestinian leader at the time, Amin al-Husseini, was most definitely a fundamentalist by modern stadnards, so does this mean that a Palestinian state should not exist either?
No, I've literally seen people say that specifically the American and British bombings of the Houthis were genocide. These same people were completely unaware of the ongoing civil war in Yemen.
That’s what racists say about the word racism.
I get what you mean, but it is a real problem. If you are shouting wolf too many times, at some point, nobody is going to believe you.
I don't think I can agree with this conclusion. Hamas has considerably lower approval ratings and there is also far less support for violent action like October 7 in Gaza compared to the West Bank. If what you said were true, then we would see the opposite effect. Here's a fascinating poll from a Palestinian research organization on this:
I think directly experiencing the enormous discrepancy in fighting power between Hamas and the IDF, especially at the scale of a full-on war, has been a sobering moment for many Gazans.
Reminds me of people immediately shouting "GENOCIDE!!!" when the first bombs were dropped on Houthi pirates. It really has lost all meaning and I think that's deliberate. Actual genocides will be much more difficult for people to accept after this ridiculous propaganda campaign, which is something China and Russia in particular, who are pushing narratives like these through their troll armies, are benefiting from.
It did not decide that it was likely. The wording is very specific and deliberate: The preliminary ruling states that "at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention". Notice how careful the wording is: "At least some", "alleged", "appear to be capable of falling within" - this kind of wording is being used to express a great deal of uncertainty.