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The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements. Any country that has one of its citize

The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements. Any country that has one of its citizens (or leaders) convicted by the ICC cannot be compelled to honor the judgement, it can only do so voluntarily, whether it’s a signatory or not. If a country chooses not to comply, the only option is for the ICC to wage a war to enforce its judgement, which it can’t do, and is unlikely to convince others to do. The name of the ICC does not describe what it actually does. The only role it’s ever actually fulfilled is to punish people who have already lost wars. Which is why it’s pretty much only ever been used to prosecute WWII losers, Yugoslavian civil war losers, and random African warlord losers. The most optimistic outcomes for the ICC here are sanctions (which Israel’s closest allies wont participate in) or restricted international movement for the involved parties (which Israel’s closest allies will also ignore), and I still think that’s rather optimistic.

andy_ppp 2y ago
Well I think the ICC disagrees with your assessment of them, and they are in fact proving you incorrect by doing the exact opposite of what you’re claiming; attempting to try people who have potentially committed war crimes even though they are allies of western countries. I think this is an excellent thing personally and while it might be a new development for the court I think it’s very reasonable to follow the evidence and come to a conclusion despite huge political pressure.
- AmericanChopper 2y ago
  Of course they would disagree. Their entire existence is based upon this fiction. The fact that they are attempting to reinforce this narrative doesn’t prove anything. If Netanyahu appears in handcuffs in The Hague I’d be forced to reassess my position, or better yet one of the too-many-to-count US war criminals. But I’m quite confident that’s never going to happen. Talk is cheap, and it doesn’t matter what the ICC says, its role is defined by what it actually does. Which is as I’ve described.
  - VagabundoP 2y ago
    We all thought the ICTY would never get their hands on Milošević. I'm old enough to remember the day he appeared in handcuffs. We can only hope that the law catches up with these fucks.
    - AmericanChopper 2y ago
      Milosevic was sent to The Hague after being ousted by a political revolution. I guess you could say that's not exactly the same as losing a war, but certainly within the theme of international law only applying to history's losers (as opposed to history's criminals).
      - ignoramous 2y ago
        No matter how you spin it, a court created in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials has ironically sealed Israeli leadership's outcast international status. Win or lose, History won't be kind.
        Etherlord87 2y ago
        It hasn't sealed it yet. It's a start of the process, there's no arrest warrant yet.
  - sharpshadow 2y ago
    Absolutely right and there didn’t changed much in the last 100 years. Here a quote from a old book: ‘It is true that there exists a vast body of what is termed “international law”; but this bloodless caricature lacks the first essential foundation of law in capitalist society, the existence of a sovereign power capable of enforcing it…’[1]. 1. World Politics 1918-1936 R. Palme Dutt
llamaimperative 2y ago
Eh, a conviction would make domestic US political support a a lot dicier to maintain.
- Xylakant 2y ago
  A conviction would also require signatory states to arrest the convicted persons - or give up the support for the ICC. Almost all of the EU is member of the ICC. A conviction, or even just an arrest warrant would lead to massive political complications for the EU-Israel relations.
- lozenge 2y ago
  This the US that passed the Hague Invasion Act?
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    If you’re suggesting “the US” is one monolithic entity, then no.
bawolff 2y ago
> The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements. Any country that has one of its citizens (or leaders) convicted by the ICC cannot be compelled to honor the judgement, it can only do so voluntarily This misunderstands how icc works. Generally the accused has to be in ICC custody for the case to go forward. Once the accused is in custody, the ICC has all sorts of power over them. Perhaps you mean arresting people is hard. That is true, but the merit part only cones after that part. > Which is why it’s pretty much only ever been used to prosecute WWII losers, Yugoslavian civil war losers Neither of those were the ICC. ---- You're not entirely wrong of course. The ICC has trouble enforcing warrants against powerful people from powerful countries.
- AmericanChopper 2y ago
  You’re right about that, The ICC has actually only ever prosecuted Africans (and recently issued a couple of warrants against Russians). But The ICC, The ICTY and the IMT/IMTFE all have essentially the same authority when it comes to enforcing “international law”, which is none at all. International laws aren’t real, there is no international government, international police or international armed forces. All international legal or military actions take place only with the voluntary cooperation of all countries involved. If any country decides to withhold that cooperation on any particular issue, then there is no enforcement mechanism. Which is why all of history’s “international courts” have only ever prosecuted the losers of wars.
  - skissane 2y ago
    > International laws aren’t real, there is no international government, international police or international armed forces What you are expressing here is essentially a variant of the philosophy known as "legal realism" – laws only exist to the extent they are enforced, so a law lacking a sufficiently effective enforcement mechanism isn't really a law at all. However, that perspective was rarely heard prior to the 20th century. Historically, international law grew out of the work of early modern European scholars such Grotius. Many of them (Grotius included) were natural law theorists – they saw the law of nations as grounded in human nature, and ultimately established by God. In those days, much of Europe – even in the purely domestic sphere – was still governed by customary law: laws evolved due to custom, whose content was never entirely clear, and which were never perfectly enforced. The continental legal tradition was founded on ancient Roman law, which continued to be studied as a kind of abstract intellectual system in universities long after it had ceased to be enforced in practice – however, rather than an exercise without any practical relevance, lawyers and judges would apply its provisions to every day cases, but only when they could get away with doing so – an attempt whenever they could to impose some neat Roman order on the anarchic mess of royal decrees and Germanic pagan custom. Against that historical background, the idea of international law without any clear lawgiver or law-enforcer made much more sense than it does to you.
piokoch 2y ago
"The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements." - tell this to Slobodan Milošević
- dagw 2y ago
  Milošević died before any judgement could be rendered. So we have no idea what would have happened if had been found guilty.
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  He was delivered to the court by his own country who was heavily pressured by the United States. That is obviously not going to happen to Netanyahu considering both US political parties back Israel.
DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
> If a country chooses not to comply, the only option is for the ICC to wage a war to enforce its judgement not just does the US criminal elite not recognize ICC but they took it one step further with spelling out[1] what might happen if a US criminal is being charged by the court: "The Hague Invasion Act", allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody. ... so not only should Israeli and Hamas war crimes be prosecuted, but in order not to appear utterly hypocritical, and "to do right by history", should US/UK war criminals like Dick Cheney, G.W. Bush, Tony Blair, and all other despicable criminal soldiers face the music for what they did in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other places. Kidnapping from a sovereign country, torture, etc ... Just utterly barbaric. But the US especially is a lost cause considering how they treat the worst transgressors and war-criminals like the execution without trial as in the case of Osama bin Laden. So just imagine if anyone would propose having US war criminals meet that very same fate? It would get you banned on every Internet site for "hate speech" LOL. Which is why it's pointless to cite laws, the justice system or pen and paper to solve something that is immune to that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
- gengwyn 2y ago
  - You act like it’s unreasonable for the United States to not want US citizens held by bodies the United States doesn’t recognize the authority of. No sovereign country would accept this. - What crimes and under whose jurisdiction are Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, and George Bush guilty of? Osama bin Laden was indicted by a US grand jury under US jurisdiction and refused for extradition by the Taliban, not to mention his Interpol arrest warrant from Libya. You also linked the Wikipedia page for the Hague Invasion Act but didn’t bring up this paragraph from the Abu Ghraib one: > In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits. England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison. Let’s not act like the United States not being party to the Rome Statute means that US soldiers can commit crimes with impunity and not be punished under policy like the UCMJ.

andy_ppp 2y ago

Well I think the ICC disagrees with your assessment of them, and they are in fact proving you incorrect by doing the exact opposite of what you’re claiming; attempting to try people who have potentially committed war crimes even though they are allies of western countries. I think this is an excellent thing personally and while it might be a new development for the court I think it’s very reasonable to follow the evidence and come to a conclusion despite huge political pressure.

AmericanChopper 2y ago
Of course they would disagree. Their entire existence is based upon this fiction. The fact that they are attempting to reinforce this narrative doesn’t prove anything. If Netanyahu appears in handcuffs in The Hague I’d be forced to reassess my position, or better yet one of the too-many-to-count US war criminals. But I’m quite confident that’s never going to happen. Talk is cheap, and it doesn’t matter what the ICC says, its role is defined by what it actually does. Which is as I’ve described.
- VagabundoP 2y ago
  We all thought the ICTY would never get their hands on Milošević. I'm old enough to remember the day he appeared in handcuffs. We can only hope that the law catches up with these fucks.
  - AmericanChopper 2y ago
    Milosevic was sent to The Hague after being ousted by a political revolution. I guess you could say that's not exactly the same as losing a war, but certainly within the theme of international law only applying to history's losers (as opposed to history's criminals).
    - ignoramous 2y ago
      No matter how you spin it, a court created in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials has ironically sealed Israeli leadership's outcast international status. Win or lose, History won't be kind.
      - Etherlord87 2y ago
        It hasn't sealed it yet. It's a start of the process, there's no arrest warrant yet.
- sharpshadow 2y ago
  Absolutely right and there didn’t changed much in the last 100 years. Here a quote from a old book: ‘It is true that there exists a vast body of what is termed “international law”; but this bloodless caricature lacks the first essential foundation of law in capitalist society, the existence of a sovereign power capable of enforcing it…’[1]. 1. World Politics 1918-1936 R. Palme Dutt

llamaimperative 2y ago

Eh, a conviction would make domestic US political support a a lot dicier to maintain.

Xylakant 2y ago
A conviction would also require signatory states to arrest the convicted persons - or give up the support for the ICC. Almost all of the EU is member of the ICC. A conviction, or even just an arrest warrant would lead to massive political complications for the EU-Israel relations.
lozenge 2y ago
This the US that passed the Hague Invasion Act?
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  If you’re suggesting “the US” is one monolithic entity, then no.

bawolff 2y ago

> The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements. Any country that has one of its citizens (or leaders) convicted by the ICC cannot be compelled to honor the judgement, it can only do so voluntarily This misunderstands how icc works. Generally the accused has to be in ICC custody for the case to go forward. Once the accused is in custody, the ICC has all sorts of power over them. Perhaps you mean arresting people is hard. That is true, but the merit part only cones after that part. > Which is why it’s pretty much only ever been used to prosecute WWII losers, Yugoslavian civil war losers Neither of those were the ICC. ---- You're not entirely wrong of course. The ICC has trouble enforcing warrants against powerful people from powerful countries.

AmericanChopper 2y ago
You’re right about that, The ICC has actually only ever prosecuted Africans (and recently issued a couple of warrants against Russians). But The ICC, The ICTY and the IMT/IMTFE all have essentially the same authority when it comes to enforcing “international law”, which is none at all. International laws aren’t real, there is no international government, international police or international armed forces. All international legal or military actions take place only with the voluntary cooperation of all countries involved. If any country decides to withhold that cooperation on any particular issue, then there is no enforcement mechanism. Which is why all of history’s “international courts” have only ever prosecuted the losers of wars.
- skissane 2y ago
  > International laws aren’t real, there is no international government, international police or international armed forces What you are expressing here is essentially a variant of the philosophy known as "legal realism" – laws only exist to the extent they are enforced, so a law lacking a sufficiently effective enforcement mechanism isn't really a law at all. However, that perspective was rarely heard prior to the 20th century. Historically, international law grew out of the work of early modern European scholars such Grotius. Many of them (Grotius included) were natural law theorists – they saw the law of nations as grounded in human nature, and ultimately established by God. In those days, much of Europe – even in the purely domestic sphere – was still governed by customary law: laws evolved due to custom, whose content was never entirely clear, and which were never perfectly enforced. The continental legal tradition was founded on ancient Roman law, which continued to be studied as a kind of abstract intellectual system in universities long after it had ceased to be enforced in practice – however, rather than an exercise without any practical relevance, lawyers and judges would apply its provisions to every day cases, but only when they could get away with doing so – an attempt whenever they could to impose some neat Roman order on the anarchic mess of royal decrees and Germanic pagan custom. Against that historical background, the idea of international law without any clear lawgiver or law-enforcer made much more sense than it does to you.

piokoch 2y ago

"The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements." - tell this to Slobodan Milošević

dagw 2y ago
Milošević died before any judgement could be rendered. So we have no idea what would have happened if had been found guilty.
quickthrowman 2y ago
He was delivered to the court by his own country who was heavily pressured by the United States. That is obviously not going to happen to Netanyahu considering both US political parties back Israel.

DyslexicAtheist 2y ago

> If a country chooses not to comply, the only option is for the ICC to wage a war to enforce its judgement not just does the US criminal elite not recognize ICC but they took it one step further with spelling out[1] what might happen if a US criminal is being charged by the court: "The Hague Invasion Act", allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody. ... so not only should Israeli and Hamas war crimes be prosecuted, but in order not to appear utterly hypocritical, and "to do right by history", should US/UK war criminals like Dick Cheney, G.W. Bush, Tony Blair, and all other despicable criminal soldiers face the music for what they did in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other places. Kidnapping from a sovereign country, torture, etc ... Just utterly barbaric. But the US especially is a lost cause considering how they treat the worst transgressors and war-criminals like the execution without trial as in the case of Osama bin Laden. So just imagine if anyone would propose having US war criminals meet that very same fate? It would get you banned on every Internet site for "hate speech" LOL. Which is why it's pointless to cite laws, the justice system or pen and paper to solve something that is immune to that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

gengwyn 2y ago
- You act like it’s unreasonable for the United States to not want US citizens held by bodies the United States doesn’t recognize the authority of. No sovereign country would accept this. - What crimes and under whose jurisdiction are Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, and George Bush guilty of? Osama bin Laden was indicted by a US grand jury under US jurisdiction and refused for extradition by the Taliban, not to mention his Interpol arrest warrant from Libya. You also linked the Wikipedia page for the Hague Invasion Act but didn’t bring up this paragraph from the Abu Ghraib one: > In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits. England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison. Let’s not act like the United States not being party to the Rome Statute means that US soldiers can commit crimes with impunity and not be punished under policy like the UCMJ.