“Israel has struck Syria more than 350 times since Bashar Al-Assad fled the country Sunday, and encroached on the demilitarized zone along the Golan Heights”

Turkey is also bombing targets in Syria, maintains thousands more troops on Syrian territory than Israel does, has seized more Syrian territory than Israel has and has held it for longer than Israel has, and is also arming, training, and financing a multitude of militias in Syria to fight on its behalf, which Israel is not.

Just thought I’d mention it, since today is the second day in a row Slog has covered Israel’s entry into Syria but nothing about Turkey’s much larger, longer-lasting, and more violent presence in Syria. Oh well, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. 😉

@1 why aren't you railing against an Islamic terrorist organization overthrowing the Syrian government and trying desperately to excuse Assad's crimes against humanity, like you consistently do when it comes to Hamas and Netanyahu? Oh well, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation.

Unfortunate for us, Getty had a stock photo of someone eating chicken wings.

There is something disturbing about describing a murderer as a heartthrob.
I’m sorry, alleged murderer.

there is something
Disturbing about spending
Oodles on one's 'Health' insurance
and then being denied Coverage when ill.

multiply that by Millions
and see where your
Empathy for filthy
rich CEOs goes

do they 'deserve'
to Die? nah.

Both you guys @4 and @5 are correct. No reason to duke it out.

@1: and the US has been striking ISIL locations.

if you're Israel, destroying as much of the Assad regime's military assets as possible is simply prudent.

no one knows just how crazy Mohamed's Dad from Golan is going to get, or whether the Alawites are going to start their own guerilla war using munition caches.

are they killing "innocents" by bombing Syria's navy or bunkers? IDK, maybe.

Spotts was outstanding. He prioritized all the right things (transit, cycling, pedestrians) and got a lot done. He will be missed.

@2: There is indeed a reasonable explanation, thank you for asking. 😂 The Syrian government sponsored international terrorism for 50 years, including terrorists that killed Americans, both military and civilian. I'm not railing against Assad's overthrow by terrorists because it is a richly deserved and ironic fate. 😆 If Hamas somehow landed in Tehran and overthrew the maraji, I would be similarly tickled. 😃 Serves 'em right, ha ha!

As for Netanyahu personally, I've never spoken a word in his defense. You have a weird, conspiratorial obsession with Netanyahu, but I do not. 😘

@5 lol if you think universal healthcare provided by the government doesn't deny coverage as well. It's an unfortunate truth and we can debate specific cases but if you do not triage care whether its private or public the system will collapse. Here is an example of the NHS denying care

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3xz9gw4no (from the article)

"Lawyers for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London, where he was being cared for, argued the burden of treatment "outweighed the limited benefits he could enjoy" from prolonging his life - while his mother opposed the bid, saying he still smiled despite his condition.

The High Court ruled it was not in Ayden's interests to continue his treatment and his life support was turned off on Thursday."

Barth,

Katie Wilson writes in today's Stranger:

"Before the slow collapse of American civic life that’s taken place in the past half century-plus, far more people belonged to organizations that involved at least a semblance of internal debate, deliberation, and democracy."

That collapse of civic life would include, but not be limited to, the ability and interest to discuss practical civics topics like what rights and obligations one has during a police traffic stop, or what rights and obligations one has as far as behavior toward others in a public space based on the laws that we voters have had our elected officials enact.

Some find it weird to have that discussion in any analytical way based on the legal pronouncements voters have caused legislators and courts to make.

Have a great day.

@5
I didn’t say anything about who was killed, just that people who see murderers as sex symbols are disturbed.
I had never heard of Brian Thompson before he was killed and I don’t know how much of what is being said about him is true. I do know that it isn’t my place or yours to decide who deserves death.

@9, Be careful what you wish for. :)

"New boss, same as the old boss." - Peter Townsend, of The Who

New boss, worse than the old boss?

@10

"lol if you think universal healthcare
provided by the government
doesn't deny coverage
as well."

lol if you think
GB's defunding of its
NHS is anything other than
Neolibs and Cons stripmining the
Citizenry for the Benefit of the OnePercenters

for how Long
will we Continue to
Suffer the Insufferable?

What the cluck did the Ohio Supreme Court just do?

@2: In the many years of Hezbollah's illegal occupation of southern Lebanon, the only time the Stranger, and supportive commenters, got upset about it was when Israel recently started ending said illegal occupation. Prior to that (and still ongoing), the Stranger said nothing about the suffering of Lebanese under Hezbollah's occupation, or why Lebanese should have to live in a failed state for the convenience of Iran's regime.

@9: "You have a weird, conspiratorial obsession with Netanyahu, but I do not."

For some of the Stranger's supportive commenters, it's an amazingly short jump from hearing, "Israel has a right to exist, and an obligation to defend itself and citizens," to saying, "you're in bed with Bibi."

@12

which's
why I didn't address
my comment specifically to you.

"I do know
that it isn’t my
place or yours to de-
cide who deserves death."

but
That was
Precisely the
CEO's JOB. HE
is - was - the one-man
'Death Panel' 'republicans'
have been Warning us of for eons.

are
WE
Here
simply
for The
Harvesting?

'republicans'
say fuck,
Yes.

All health care is rationed. It has to be. Medical technology is at the point where we could keep almost anyone alive forever, but there is more to life than having a pulse. Keeping someone on indefinite life support with an incurable, progressive disease is not a practical use of scarce resources.

Rationing is not the problem. It’s having a for-profit industry making healthcare decisions for people without adding anything of value to the transaction, and not having any kind of basic level of access we can guarantee to everyone regardless of their income or employment status. We all pay more for lesser quality care than countries with taxpayer funded health insurance.

@11, That’s nice but it remains extremely unusual to put this much energy into knowing when it’s legal to kill people. It’s just not a thing most people want to think about at all, but if your commenting history here is any indication, you think about it all the time.

“folk hero/heartthrob/back pain sufferer/Goodreads user suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian”

I don’t think the sectarian / vigilante violence is going to end well for us all. Maybe just maybe, don’t idolize an alleged cold blooded killer (regardless of how much his victim was rightly loathed).

@14 it seems you are saying government officials act just like CEO's of private companies when it comes to healthcare. So it seems pointless to try and pass universal health care and create more bureaucracy for the same results.

@18 do you honestly think a government official is making better decisions or adding value? At least with profit driven companies you understand their motivation with the government it's just a black hole.

22, Yes, I absolutely think a government employee is making better decisions than someone working at a for-profit company who has shareholders to think about in addition to the patient, and there is no value to be added by simply brokering the transaction so that’s not a concern at all. Government healthcare is more cost effective because you’re not paying for the profit margin, and when everyone has access to health care it drives down costs for everyone. We pay more than other countries yet our public health metrics do not reflect this at all.

So no one here is concerned that Trump will sell out what is left of our clean environment for 1 billion smackers? Where does the 1 billion dollars go? I see so much wrong with the "You get to do whatever the hell you want" price tag. Metaphorically, it's like saying, "For 1 billion dollars you can desecrate the body of any drunken prom date you choose and there are no consequences!" I suppose raping the environment is Trump's second choice to his first choice of assault. Oh yeah, I wrote that.... And just a shout out because it feels good... FUCK TRUMP, FUCK THE GOP, FUCK THE SOUTH AND FUCK YOU.

@16: "For some of the Stranger's supportive commenters, it's an amazingly short jump from hearing, 'Israel has a right to exist, and an obligation to defend itself and citizens,' to saying, 'you're in bed with Bibi.'"

lol, I've noticed! 😂 I think it's because, in their heart of hearts, they do not believe Israel has a right to exist, nor a right to defend itself and its citizens. They just wish Israel would disappear, although they are a little bit squeamish when it comes to the details of what such a disappearance should look like. 😜

Anyone who thinks otherwise about Israel, they suspect must be in cahoots with some kind of dark, international conspiracy financed by...well, you know the rest. 🤪

@23: Agreed, the profit a for-profit healthcare company makes is simply the difference between the amount of money you pay them, and the cost of the healthcare you receive. Said profit to shareholders and executives, not to doctors, medical researchers — and, especially, not to you.

@22: And, as our current President -Elect seemingly exists to prove, government officials are no worse than private CEOs when it comes to making life-and-death decisions.

@22 "do you honestly think a government official is making better decisions or adding value? At least with profit driven companies you understand their motivation"

So you want to privatize the police right? And firefighters? And roads and transit? All these services would be improved if run with shareholder profit first in mind right?

@25 "I think it's because, in their heart of hearts, they do not believe Israel has a right to exist, nor a right to defend itself and its citizens"

The difference, you clown(s), is that literally anything Israel does you describe as defending it's right to exist. So when Assad tortured, killed or disappeared thousands of his citizens was he not just, in your opinion, defending Syria's right to exist? And if not what's the difference between the two? Is it really just that the US is allied with Israel but not Syria?

@28: "literally anything Israel does you describe as defending it's right to exist"

Not so, but bombing Hamas and Hizbollah is certainly something Israel is allowed to do to defend its right to exist.

If Hamas and Hizbollah unlawfully embed their fighters and weapons amid the civilian population, then the resulting civilian casualties are rightly laid at the doorstep of Hamas and Hizbollah. Israel does not have to curl up and die just because terrorists don't have the decency to segregate themselves from their own population. 😜

@19, "It’s just not a thing most people want to think about."

Yet The Stranger breathlessly reports on nearly every local homicide by cops and non-cops they come across. When it's a slow week locally, they reach across the nation to two homicides in NYC because they can't stop thinking about it the topic. The Stranger, in reporting on the Penny verdict, even commented on how wrong it was. Commenters then chime in. So everyone thinks about it a lot.

Wouldn't the civically responsible thing to do be to report on it within the context of what voters have democratically standards for rendering a judgment that are established in law? If the Penny verdict was wrong, you need to ask by what standard? A fascist standard agreed on by a few at The Stranger, that they are attempting to impose on the discussion, or a standard democratically enacted into law with broad enough societal agreement to stand for decades without amendment or repeal? If its the latter, we should have a discussion about what those laws are, should we not?

If you are someone who objects to the outcome of the Penny verdict, should you not be interested in the laws that drove that outcome, and that will drive the same outcome in future cases, so you know what part of the law should be amended? The laws that drive required, and uniform, instructions to juries on how they must evaluate the case?

That would be the civic thing to do.

All those laws were covered in my public school civics class, decades ago. Today, only 7 states require civics classes for graduation.

adorable
it Is wormmy
and his Sidekick
🛴 discussing the
Merits of nutnyahoo's
Massacre in the Middle E.
cum keep-outta-prison gambit*
vis-a-'vis' -- oh, it's Not a Genocide!

it's merely a Landgrab
manifesting Israeli's
Destiny -- 'tis but
Olde 'news' by
Gawd ~ we've
been Here
Before

see:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=indian+sunset+elton+john&atb=v314-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKjDQ1HZUlCI

*see Also:

Netanyahu Finally Takes
the Stand in His Cor-
ruption Trial

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a trial that began four years ago. He has denied the charges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-corruption-trial-testimony.html?

@29 so what specifically did Assad do that wasn't just, in your opinion, defending Syria's right to exist? If terrorists and insurgents embedded themselves amongst the citizenry wasn't he wholly justified in torturing killing or disappearing them, and it was their fault really?

@29, FTW!

@31 ~ here's one reader's
comment on the nyt's
article, above:

@Livonian
Churchill? give me a break.
You simply don't know how much he's hated here.

Refusal to pull punches against Hamas?? the man tried to appease Hamas for years by letting in cash payments from Qatar totaling hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

He spent the year before the war tearing the nation apart, instead of securing the border.

This resulted in the worst disaster in the history of the country, with hundreds of civilians murdered in their homes and 250 people taken hostage.

He then insisted on keeping the extremists in his government during the war, refusing an offer from the leader of the opposition to join instead, which caused immense damage to Israel's international standing.

He refuses to set-up an independent investigation commission, despite the fact that more than 80% of the public wants such a commission, as according to Israeli law, such commissions are powerful and independent, he cannot control their makeup, and they can investigate government lapses too (which is why he doesn't want to set it up).

He spent much of the time trying to discredit the top army brass to deflect responsibility, undermining their authority at a time of war.

It is Israel's army and security services that handled Hamas and Hezbollah, not Netanyahu personally, and any one of Israel's main opposition party leaders would have done a better job dealing with those terrorists, because they'd have put the country's interests ahead of their own legal problems.

--@Tel Aviv resident; Tel Aviv
Dec. 11

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-corruption-trial-testimony.html#commentsContainer

sure!
Israel
HAS the
Right to Defend
ITSELF! If bibi gets
a little ‘carried away’

well
whotF
Wouldn’t
in bibi’s Shoes!?

@32: Ha ha ha, I'll leave it to you to read up on the 50-year history of Syria's state sponsorship of international terrorism! 🤣

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/11/politics/fbi-director-chris-wray-steps-down/index.html

FFS! Things just went from horrible to worse.

@35 so you can't answer the question, got it. Probably best not to double down on your hypocrisy. If you get a chance feel free to read up on the Zionists' close to 100-year mistreatment of the Palestinians.

@37: It makes sense that you would be confused about why Assad's government was so objectionable. After all, in the November 18 Slog, you described Hamas's videotaped beheading of a wounded civilian as an act of Palestinian self-defense! 😂🤣😂🤣

@28: “The difference, you clown(s), is that literally anything Israel does you describe as defending its right to exist.”

So, I’ll type it again, for you to ignore (again). If the IDF intentionally targets civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or anywhere else, then that is a war crime, and every allegation of a war crime should be investigated, and if internationally-recognized evidentiary requirements are met, tried by a court of competent jurisdiction. If you have any quote from me which you believe contradicts the above, then please provide that quote and url.

As @29 noted, Hamas and Hezbollah freely embed their combatants amongst civilians. That is also a war crime (not that you care), and it’s also the primary reason Israel’s self-defense efforts have killed civilians in Gaza and Lebanon (again, not that you care).

Finally, your confusion of the treatment Syrians received from Assad’s government, with Israel’s treatment of its citizens, suggests you either have no useful knowledge of either situation, or you’re spitefully creating a false-equivalence straw man. Either way, it’s your problem, not mine.

@39 "Assad killed civilians, but Israel said all the people they targeted were terrorists and I believe them because I'm an credulous rube"

Paraphrasing a bit but I think I captured the gist

re: United Healthcare
& Luigi Mangione

Objectifying the Accused

What happens
when violent crimes are
overshadowed by appearances?

Even before a suspect had been named, much was written about the killer’s elevation to folk hero status. He was cast in the role of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm called the “social bandit” — one man seeming to take a stand against an unfair system.

Then, once Mr. Mangione had been accused of shooting and killing Mr. Thompson, what forensic psychologists call the “halo effect” came into play.

The official term for the tendency of the public to equate innocence with attractiveness, the halo effect when combined with the social bandit phenomenon creates a combustible pop-culture archetype — one beloved by mythmakers and Hollywood and rooted deep in the general psyche.

You get Robin Hood, as played by Russell Crowe. Jesse James, as played by Brad Pitt (not to mention Colin Farrell, Rob Lowe and Tyrone Power). Butch and Sundance, the Paul Newman-Robert Redford version. You get the thirsty, soft-focus take on the criminal and the bloody revolutionary.

But in all the hoo-ha over hotness — and, potentially, the way such stories often get rewritten and recreated by history — what gets lost is the violence,* as well as the victims.

--by Vanessa Friedman ~ the author has covered
image-making in court and politics
for The Times since 2014.

oodles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/style/luigi-mangione-uhc-social.html

and, sometimes,
there’s violence
on Both sides.

*see: Deny
Depose
Defend
Delay
& Die.

and
relax.
it’s just
Healthcare.

@40 pretty much. I would only change "incredulous rube" to "knowing partisan hack" because they both have been provided with plenty of material issued by reputable organizations demonstrating that Israel is committing war crimes on a daily basis, routinely violates international law, while segregating and discriminating against Palestinians. Even if they wanted to know more, they could at the very minimum suspend their unconditional support for Israel but noooooope, which says everything there is to know about their good faith and credibility.

Interestingly trumpus the liar, only last Friday, was still denying that designated terrorists were in control of Syrian insurgents while now he has consolidated his argument to "Assad was worse". It's the same old story of warmongers for the empire supporting whoever will oppose our enemies even if it comes back to bite in the ass the local populations as it has numerous times in the past: the Afghans Mujaheddin used to be our friends because they opposed the Soviets, Saddam Hussein was our friend because he opposed Iran, etc...

@42: lol, I never once denied that the Syrian insurgents numbered designated terrorists among their ranks. 😂 On the contrary, I laughed at you for erroneously thinking that "insurgent" and "terrorist" were mutually exclusive categories...a mistake it sounds like you may still be making?? lol!

Still, you are correct that "Assad was worse." I congratulate you on this first, faint sprouting of moral development on your part. 😄

@23 I have probably been living in this state too long but I have zero faith that inserting a government official into the equation will lead to better outcomes and I would also suspect any savings that can be had by removing the profit part of the equation would never come back to the actual consumers but be absorbed into the black hole of Olympia. You may be right but I'm probably jaded at this point.

@40, IDF is innocent of targeting civilians until someone proves otherwise. There aren't even ICJ or ICC cases accusing the IDF of that. Innocent until proven guilty applies in international courts, not just U.S. ones.

I, and you, don't have to take the IDF's word for anything because they aren't required to prove anything.

Even the Hamas Health Ministry doesn't report civilians being targeted. They report deaths without differentiating between Hamas fighters and non-combatant Gazans. Hamas seems not to care whether non-combatant Gazans were targeted or killed. They just throw a grizzly number out there and stand back while the international press gets their undies in a bunch over the butcher's bill.

Non-combatants have always been a casualty of war, at higher rates that combatants, even when combatants were targeted. That is the nature of war. If we don't want non-combatants targeted in war, the solution is not have them, or when they start, make sure one-side, or both, lose so fast they quit fighting.

@45: South Africa has instituted a case against Israel before the ICJ to have Israel adjudicated in breach of the convention against genocide. The South Africans very much accuse Israel of targeting civilians as part of a genocidal campaign.

The ICC has issued a secret arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Technically, Netanyahu has not yet been charged because there has not yet been an Article 61 hearing, and technically we do not know the contents of the warrant because it is secret. However, the ICC claimed, in a press release, that the warrant was issued in part because of reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu had intentionally directed attacks against civilians in Gaza.

So yeah, the accusations are out there, dude! 😃

@40: Again, I asked for quotes and urls, and you got nuthin'. (Thanks as always, for providing validation.) Let us know how your little project of equating Assad's Syria to modern Israel works out. (Why does it seem like you'll once again have nothing? Go figure.)

@42: Your citation of non-court bodies which have supposedly found war crimes would be a little more impressive if you would recognize NATO's and the Wall Street Journal's reporting, respectively, that Hamas has used human shields against the IDF in Gaza for quite a long time, and that Sinwar had recently directed Hamas to increase the number of civilian casualties in Gaza -- specifically to inflame world public opinion against Israel. (Yeah, I also don't believe you'll ever admit just how easily and obviously Sinwar manipulated you, either.)

@31: "...oh, it's Not a Genocide!"

Yes, that's what Bernie has been saying, or more accurately, not saying. How about you take your objections to him? Oh, wait -- that would require you to recognize that Bernie has not used the word, "genocide," to describe the current situation in Gaza, and that therefore, all of your complaints about my not using the word also apply to him. But you're just not going to do that, are you?

(Don't worry -- thirteen12 and averagebob will still gaze longingly upwards at your enviable display of true moral courage.)

speaking of
Blowback:

from the
shite rolls
Downhill dept:

nyt: Health Insurance Workers
Fearful* Amid Public Anger
After Slaying of C.E.O.

Employees at UnitedHealthcare
and other companies described
being anxious after an out-
pouring of online
vitriol.

The fatal shooting last week of an executive on the streets of New York City plunged his family members and colleagues into grief.

For rank-and-file employees across the health insurance industry, the killing has left them with an additional emotion: fear, with many frightened for their own safety and feeling under attack for their work.

Health insurance companies have increased security measures since the killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, and as an outpouring of online rage toward the industry has followed.

Health care [Industry] leaders have spoken with frustration about feeling vilified, and in the Minneapolis suburbs where United is headquartered, police officers stepped up protection of the company’s offices.

“Lots of us were feeling like we were horrible because we’re being accused of working for the evil empire,” the employee said.

“But we all do the best we can to do
a good job in the system we are in.”

--by Reed Abelson, Mitch Smith, Katie Benner
and Amy Julia Harris
Dec. 11, 2024

lots More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/us/health-insurance-uhc-ceo-shooting.html

“Lots of us were feeling like we were horrible because we’re being accused of working for the evil empire,” the employee said.

If the Shoe FITS
You Must
WEAR
it:

check your Soul
at The Door.

“But we all do the best we can to do
a good job in the system we are in.”

it’s a
Choice.
I’d rather be
Homeless than
Deny LIFESAVING CARE.

*much like Jews
Planet-wide’re Afraid
of repercussions from bi-
bi’s ‘little’ War on Palestine
which Bernie's (according to
our Wormtongue) apparently
Not calling a 'genocide' because

whoa.
even Bernie
may be Fallible

oh,
well.
I'll take
99 outta 100
every stinkin Time.

@47 I'm not going to go hunting through your prior comments you weird nerd. How about this: the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Were he to step foot in the US should federal agents arrest him and deliver him to The Hague to be, in your words, "tried by a court of competent jurisdiction?"

@49: “Were he to step foot in the US should federal agents arrest him and deliver him to The Hague to be, in your words, ‘tried by a court of competent jurisdiction?’”

No, because the United States is not a state party to the ICC. Seriously, read a book. 😄

@50 well I was gonna wait for tensorna to inevitably say the same thing, which was my whole plan, because that clarifies their "court of competent jurisdiction" line was disingenuous. By denying the existence of any such court anyone can avoid any accountability for war crimes! Not that this is at all a novel approach:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-warrant-against-putin-meaningless-russia-does-not-belong-icc-2023-03-17/

Much shorter than a book but still a seriously useful read 😘

The IDF is killing civilians every day and the pro ethnic cleansing team is denying or excusing it here every day. Evidence, witness reports and articles have no effect in the zionist-jihadists.

@51: Cool plan, but as long as you’re on a reading kick, you should try reading last month’s “decision on Israel’s challenge to the jurisdiction of the Court pursuant to article 19(2) of the Rome Statute.”

The jurisdictional question has already been answered. The alleged crimes took place in Palestine, which unlike the United States, is a state party to the ICC, so the court gains jurisdiction that way. Hope that clears it up for ya! 😁

https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/0902ebd180a0ebd8.pdf

@46, @49, The ICC warrants are all related to starvation and supplies.

None allege targeting of civilians by the IDF.

So the charge of unlawfully targeting civilians with munitions is not on the table.

The starvation case can be factually supported.

The targeting case is difficult to make because the only people who have evidence that the IDF knew there were no Hamas targets near where they struck, and struck anyway, would be the IDF. So even if that were true, what would the source be for such evidence be? Dead civilians is evidence of collateral damage, not evidence of targeting them absent a military target.

Unlike Hamas on 10/7, there is no film showing nothing but civilians while continuing to shoot. There is no arial or artillery film equivalent. The bomb or artillery penetrate walls and ground and destroy what they hit before it can be filmed.

@54: Supposedly the warrants are, among other things, predicated on reasonable suspicion of two instances in which civilians were intentionally targeted. So civilian targeting is supposedly on the table. But again, we haven’t actually seen the warrants or even the application for the warrants. It’s all secret at this point.

Targeting of civilians by air strike wouldn’t be as impossible to prove as you think. The easiest way would be for a cooperating witness in the IDF to come forward and say he personally saw it happen or participated in it.

You might also be able to find an incident in which only small children were targeted and there was no possibility of any adults or military supplies being present. Small children could not possibly pose a military threat, and if it was clear that no adults were present who were either fighters or could plausibly be mistaken for fighters, then that would probably get you to civilian targeting.. An example would be a group of small children playing on a beach by themselves, clearly visible as such on ISR, with no adults and no vehicles or equipment present. No way that’s plausibly a military target, so that probably gets you to civilian targeting, unless the Israelis can plausibly identify some grievous chain of errors.

You might also pick an incident in which civilians were apparently targeted and just gamble that the Israelis would be unwilling to unable to show that they had a reasonable albeit erroneous belief that a military target was present. For example, a house full of 20 dead civilians and zero dead militants after an airstrike is prima facie evidence of civilian targeting. You can just charge it and cross your fingers that the Israelis won’t be able to produce any witness who can testify that they had a selector ping inside the building or pattern of life or some other such signature to justify the airstrike. Burden-shift to make the Israelis disprove the charge and hope they can’t do it.

But if I were Netanyahu, I wouldn’t worry so much about the trial just yet. Israel still has several procedural maneuvers it can pull to get the case dismissed, notably under Article 17 of the Rome Statute. The ICC is a pretty defendant-friendly forum, in my opinion. Not hard to get a dismissal, the system is set up to encourage it.

Finally, Israel’s not a state party, so as a last resort, he could just stay on friendly turf and thumb his nose at them until he dies.

@49: So, the claim about my statements, which you made so confidently @28, has now completely collapsed at the first challenge. (We may have found the root case of your confusion about courts, evidence, etc.) Thanks as always.

@48: “Bernie's (according to
our Wormtongue) apparently
Not calling a 'genocide' because”

There’s no need to rely upon me to learn about Bernie; you can find Bernie’s own words on the topic easily enough, can’t you? You quote voluminously from him all the time here. So, go learn for yourself why Bernie doesn’t use the word “genocide” to describe the current situation in Gaza.

“…much like Jews
Planet-wide’re Afraid
of repercussions…”

Because, to the very best of your world historical knowledge, Jews have never been attacked, anywhere, anytime, for anything except the most righteous and good of reasons.

Why don’t you ask Bernie about that, too?

noncomplicit
Jews gotta live with
bibi's Genocide. how far
they've come -- and how far you
and bibi're dragging them backwards

Live with it
Wormtongue
you Own it now

@51, 52, "Killing civilians every day," is not a war crime, unless someone proves that the deaths were because the civilians were targeted, rather than collateral damage from striking a military target.

@51: The phrase, “court of competent jurisdiction,” is a standard legal phrase, with exact definitions. The Fourth Geneva Convention defines exactly which courts do, and do not have competency and jurisdiction over war crimes.

You really should educate yourself about this topic before you comment here.

@57: So, you’re asserting collective responsibility now? Jews who live halfway around the world from Israel deserve to be attacked for the behavior of the Prime Minister of a foreign state? You might want to be careful about that.

‘“What I think the essential point that Ilhan made is that we do not want to see antisemitism in this country,” Sanders said. “And I think the word genocide is something that is being determined by the International Court of Justice.”’

(https://www.salon.com/2024/04/28/bernie-sanders-blasts-netanyahu-for-ethnic-cleansing-in-gaza/)

He leaves the determination of genocide to the court, in part because using it recklessly can incite anti-Jewish behaviors. He’s telling you that YOU are contributing to the problem of attacks upon “non complicit Jews” out in the world.

He’s telling YOU that YOU own it.

See the problem with your logic now?

If not, please feel free to go ask Bernie.

@60: Yep, anti-semitism is the fault of anti-semites themselves. It is not the fault of Israel or any other group of Jews. Nothing Israel has ever done caused Kristofarian to be anti-semitic, it’s something Kristofarian managed to become all on his own, ha ha!