14 kids out of checks notes 8,000 students in the Peninsula district. Come on, Viv. I'm not saying the guy is worth anyone's vote, but to specifically note the minuscule amount of people that have spoken out against him is comical reporting.

I got an accidental needle stick in Ballard. $1k in emergency medical costs. Definite instant shift in perspective on public health.

And now....6 zones in Seattle where the open sore of public health will be pushed out. Downtown, Belltown, Pioneer Square, Cap Hill, and the U District.

So in other words....

They're all coming to Ballard?

SOAP/SODO: "overwhelmingly negative public comment"? - quite the opposite Viv from local TV news reporting!

"Hezbollah, which then exploded in grocery stores, stores, sidewalks and elsewhere."

Under the Laws of Armed Conflict, combatants being among non-combatants does not shield them from attack. The Laws of Armed Conflict do not make killing non-combatants a violation, provided combatants are targeted.

See Articles 13 - 26. See the ends of Article 18 and beginning of 19. See phrases like, "Civilian persons who take no part in hostilities perform no work of a military character." "No part," and "no work of a military character," means ZERO, none. Any single act by a civilian that benefits a combatant makes them a target.

This is why many human rights organizations correctly point out that International Law does not provide adequate protections for civilians.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-protection-civilian-persons-time-war

Sean Ditty Combs:

Federal Law presumes pre-trial release and bail. To be held without bail requires the Federal Government to prove in a contested hearing in front of a judge, where both sides can put on evidence, that:

1) Suspect is a flight risk.
2) Suspect is a risk to the public.

The former must be proved by a the low standard of preponderance of the evidence. More likely than not. 50% of the evidence + some small fraction shows flight risk.

The latter requires clear and convincing evidence, which is the highest standard of proof short of beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Feds prevailed on both.

So keeping people out of an area based on their history does not constitute future ability to deny free travel to these zones... how is this not a violation of 4th Amendment rights?

Metro has spent the past half-decade killing and altering bus routes to downtown and SLU, instead funneling almost everything into the Link line. The problem is, when that line fails, the whole system fails.

Events of the past two days reveal that redundancy is needed in our public transit system. We could use the 26, 66, 71, 72, 73, 510 and 511 on days like this, many more of which will undoubtedly come.

@7, The 4th Amendment does not address free travel. It concerns itself with search and seizure while traveling (and anywhere else in U.S. jurisdiction).

The 1st Amendment implicates freedom of travel with its mention of freedom of association. How can you associate with people if you can't travel or meet them at a public location?

That 1st Amendment right, and others, may be take away or restricted, under the terms of the 5th Amendment:

"nor be deprived of ... liberty without due process of law;"

People excluded from these areas must first be convicted of drug or sex work related crimes within these areas. That conviction would constitute "due process of law," making it Constitutional to seize the right to be within these areas. I.e. The penalty is whatever it is for the drug or sex work crime plus exclusion from the areas in question. (There is also potential for an 8th Amendment challenge that the "plus exclusion ..." is "cruel and unusual.")

I generally think the reinstatement of the laws repealed in 2020, is political performance theater and virtue signalling. They will likely do little to help the areas in question or restore the offenders to constructive life in society, but that doesn't mean they are unconstitutional.

They may be unconstitutional. But the ACLU, or someone else, has not yet proved that they are in a court of law and survived appeals to the highest State or Federal Court (depending on whether they are challenging Federal or State constitutionality.)

Nothing from The Stranger about the State Patrol making it open season to shoot someone approaching your car after a fender bender (or just not stop and exchange information)?

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/troopers-caution-i-5-drivers-after-3-carjackings-south-of-seattle/

The Stranger usually jumps all over such stories.

Gov. Beshear's executive order banning psychological youth torture (conversion therapy) may be the most courageous thing any elected official, especially any Red State elected official has done in decades.

Whatever anybody else might say about the man, that took guts.

@11, I doubt it took much courage. He probably had polls, and his own politician's intuitive read of voters he comes in contact with, that it would get people like you in his red state calling him courageous (and opening their wallets to his campaign) while endangering him little. It also plays well to a national audience of folks like you, with limited downside among voters he isn't going to win anyway, as he seeks someplace to go after he has worn out his welcome in Kentucky, or after his two consecutive terms are up.

Even the politicians we like, aren't exactly virtuous or courageous. They ask first and last, "What's in it for me? How does it advance my political power and prospects?" Not pretty.

" The Laws of Armed Conflict do not make killing non-combatants a violation, provided combatants are targeted."

It's patently false:

In international humanitarian law and international criminal law, an indiscriminate attack is a military attack that fails to distinguish between legitimate military targets and protected persons. Indiscriminate attacks strike both legitimate military and protected objects alike, thus violating the principle of distinction between combatants and protected civilians. They differ from direct (or deliberate) attacks against protected civilians and encompass cases in which the perpetrators are indifferent as to the nature of the target, cases in which the perpetrators use tactics or weapons that are inherently indiscriminate (e.g., cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines, nuclear weapons), and cases in which the attack is disproportionate, because it is likely to cause excessive protected civilian casualties and damages to protected objects.

Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited both by the Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol I (1977) and by customary international humanitarian law. They constitute a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the perpetrators can be prosecuted and held responsible in international and domestic courts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack

@1 White, straight, Christian folks rarely need to complain of bigotry. It's the kids on the edges who have the complaints. Also, Peninsula Schools have had a reputation for bigotry for decades because it's a super-majority white district. It's also an area folks on the fringes flee to bigger, more diverse cities from. If there are 11 willing to speak, there are certainly others afraid to. Especially as it would put a big target on any siblings or children still in the district.

@1, What is an acceptable number of students complaining about unchecked harassment before people are supposed to take it seriously?

@13, "an indiscriminate attack is a military attack that fails to distinguish between legitimate military targets and protected persons."

These were not indiscriminate attacks. They targeted Hezbollah. They are discriminating by setting of Hezbollah pagers, not every pager in the country, because a significant minority of pagers are worn by Hezbollah. The former is discriminate, the latter is indiscriminate.

It is no different than targeting an airbase, tank, or some other military target and civilians near the base, tank, soldier, etc. being injured. It's no different than if the missile targeting an airbase malfunctions or is hit by air-defense weapons and lands in a hospital. It's unfortunate, but not a war crime because the missile was intended for a legit military target.

You blow up a booby-trapped pager purchased by Hezbollah, distributed to their members, that's a legit target. That a civilian standing next to them, or near them, is also hit is no different than the civilian standing next to or near a soldier or group of soldiers targeted with a firearm, grenade, mortar, artillery, bomb or missile. Collateral damage is permitted by international treaty.

You will note in the citation I provided, the repeated reference to any site (like a hospital) or civilian that is used in or acts in manner that benefits the enemy, loses their protection from attack under International Law. For those sites or civilians to maintain protections of the Convention they must be 100% engaged for non-military purposes and not benefit the military effort of the adversary, with proscribed and highly limited exception (i.e. treating a soldier in a hospital is exempt from "benefiting" the enemy).

It is those "loopholes" that international human rights organizations cite when they point out the inadequacy of the treaties to protect civilians. Do they still try and use the framework that exists? You betcha, because its the only game in town and its better than nothing. They do so with almost zero success.

Also note: In any international legal system there is a presumption of innocence. Innocent until proven guilty.

That means that to date no war crimes have been committed in Ukraine by Russia, in Russian by Ukraine, and none have been committed in Gaza or Israel by Hamas or the IDF. I am not holding my breath that any will ever be proven to have been committed, or that anyone will be held accountable by an international body. These treaties have a miserable and inconsequential impact on protecting civilians.

Not having a war, or having a war that is overwhelmingly violent, but brief, has a great track record of protecting civilians outright, or minimizing numbers of casualties. The longer and lower-intensity the conflict, the more civilians seem to die and be maimed. (E.g. The first Iraq War vs. the Second, knocking off the Taliban within moths of 9/11 vs. the next 19 years of "nation building.")

We aren't ever going to get light rail to West Seattle apparently. The Stranger said nothing.

"At this point, it’s unclear where or how Sound Transit can close this funding gap, among the toughest challenges since its founding in the 1990s."

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/west-seattles-light-rail-estimate-soars-past-6-billion/

*uck ... sigh ...

@16 has the law right, and @13 has the law wrong.

Israel is not allowed to close its eyes and fire wildly into the Gaza Strip. That’s the approach Hamas takes to its rocket fires, and it’s a war crime because it is indiscriminate. Israel is allowed, however, to fire at specific Hamas targets within the Gaza Strip. If there are also civilians standing on the X, well, it was incumbent on Hamas not to position itself next to them.

I wish more people would trouble themselves to learn the law of armed conflict.

I should hasten to add…@16 is wrong that a war crime only exists following a conviction. That’s just silly. A war crime, or any other crime, exists upon commission. Don’t conflate the verdict with the facts.

Flattening a neighborhood and its occupants to kill a couple of enemies is indiscriminate and disproportionate. Exploding a pager in the middle of a supermarket or any other public space is indiscriminate.

UN rights chief demands accountability for Lebanon pager blasts
Those responsible for a deadly wave of explosions across Lebanon targeting paging devices used by members of Hezbollah “must be held to account,” the UN rights chief says.

“Simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law,” Volker Turk says in a statement.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/un-rights-chief-demands-accountability-for-lebanon-pager-blasts/

@16. Thats just spaghetti code for terrorism with extra steps.

@19,

A verdict is a determination of what the facts where and whether they are a crime. No verdict, no crine.

@20, Where is Turk's precedent, court finding, or recitation of legal text? Wait, he doesn't have that. So he has got nothing, until he has that.

He has a hypothesis. An unproven, untested, and unsupported hypothesis.

The precedent runs the other way. Prior convictions have required that the attacker knew they were not targeting a military target and attacked anyway.

Discrimination applies to who and what is attacked in the Conventions, not who actually gets struck.

Arguments about ill-defined propotionality prove that international law expressly permits killing non-combatants. Proportionality arguments can only apply if civilians get hit.

So how are all these treaties and debates working out for civilians in Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Russia, et.al. for civilians in war zones? Not well.

"A piece of paper in New York doesn't change reality on the ground."

Ambassasor ? interviewed on BBC'S PBS Broadcast.

Yup.

@20: "Flattening a neighborhood and its occupants to kill a couple of enemies is indiscriminate and disproportionate. Exploding a pager in the middle of a supermarket or any other public space is indiscriminate."

Wrong, and wrong. Your beef is not with Israel. It's with the guys who hide their military personnel in neighborhoods and bring their military communications equipment to the supermarket.

@22- a verdict represents whether the state has proven that a given person committed the crime on question, not whether the crime happened. It’s not like a murder victim is Schrodinger’s cat until the verdict comes in. They were dead all along.

@10- how did the WSP statement say anything about “open season”? They said to be careful about who’s approaching your car after a fenderbender, and suggested calling 911. Not a word about shooting anyone.

@22: No, you're wrong about the nature of crime. Since you are so big on citations, I'll cite you one of our state's definitions of crime:

"'Crime' means an act punishable as a felony, gross misdemeanor, or misdemeanor under the laws of this state or equivalent federal or local law." RCW 7.69B.010(1).

There you have it, right there in the words of the law. A crime is an act PUNISHABLE by law, not an act that DOES INDEED GET PUNISHED by law. Many crimes go unpunished, but so long as they are punishable acts, they are still crimes. Your formulation of "no verdict, no crime" is not a correct reading of the law.

"Your formulation of
'no verdict, no crime' is
not a correct reading of the law."

yeah, @27
but Forcefully
Put with Oodles
of jargon're plenty
Convincing enough
for tS's Worst Lawyer™

do You need
Representation?
Call 800-555-LOSE

please have your Credit
Card ready -- Operators're
standing back & standing by.

@20, "Flattening a neighborhood and its occupants to kill a couple of enemies is indiscriminate and disproportionate."

Where in treaty or precedent is the precise ratio of "proportionate" and "disproportionate" defined? Quote it for us from the treaty language. Quote a definition expounded on by a court. Not just a ruling where they found disproportionality, but the definition or reasoning they relied on to make that determination. That would get us a definition of sorts. Good luck, I'll wait.

BTW, flattening a neighborhood to get at a couple of soldiers, is the doctrine of every military in the world that has artillery, communications, and tactical capability to provide combined arms. They put their infantry out in the field to identify any enemy positions they aren't aware of or haven't taken out. The infantry draws fire, dives for cover, and sprays bullets back in the general direction (usually never having seen a target), and then calls mortar fire, artillery, or a bombs to flatten the structure from which the fire is coming. As a result, 75% of casualties are from artillery. Very few are bullets. It's the way wars are fought. Where are all the cases of disproportionality brought as a result since WW II? Oh wait, there aren't any challenging that doctrine and tactics practices by the 50 or so largest militaries in the world.

War is just mass slaughter until somebody quits.

How is that piece of paper working to protect Ukrainians, Russians, Sudanese, Gazans, Israelis, and Lebanese? Maybe they can catch rocket, pager, radio, or artillery shrapnel with it.

Is it 1 to 1, 5 to 1, 10 to 1, 20 to 1, or 1000 to 1 where it become disproportionate? What if the one is just an ineffectual draftee? What if its Osama Bin Laden? What if the its Vladimir Putin, and you have intelligence that says the Russian Government will quickly retreat from Ukraine if Vlad is taken out? That changes, beyond the numeric relationships, the idea of proportionality.

@28: Thanks? But I…I’m not sure what I just read?

@25, They were allegedly murdered until a court determines they were murdered. A coroner may determine the manner of death to be homicide prior to that, but is not legally entitled, and does not determine the victim was murdered.

Hell, there will be vigorous motions argued by the Prosecution and Defense about what the evidence actually is and isn't, with the Judge deciding, before argument about whether the facts he/she allows to be made the factual record constitute a crime (or a tort)

All murders are homicides, not all homicides (the vast majority actually aren't) are murders.

@27, And yet the accused is not determined to have committed a crime, until, and unless they are convicted. I thought you all were big on civil liberties here, the rights of the accused (or non-accused in this case).

@31: I am glad to see you are walking back your earlier, indefensible argument that no crime has occurred until a verdict has been rendered.

Your new argument, that “the accused is not determined to have committed a crime until they are convicted” is also wrong. It is common for defendants to be found liable for criminal acts even in the absence of a criminal conviction. OJ Simpson’s civil trial provides one famous example. Donald Trump’s sexual abuse trial provides another. In both cases, the men were determined to have committed acts punishable as crimes…yet they were never convicted. You have conflated criminal liability (a question of law) with the commission of a criminal act (a question of fact).

But in addition to misreading the law, I think you are also missing a larger, more important point. The verdict of a court is only one component of questions related to crime and justice. When a crime has been committed, that is to say, when an act punishable by law has been done, we do not need to wait for the verdict of a court to say that the act is wrong, and to demand redress, apology, and protection against future such acts. In reducing justice to the opinions of courts, you widen the field for injustice to roam. Judges are heroic figures, to be sure, but you, like everyone else, have the capacity to be a hero as well, sir. You do not need to wait for a lawyer in a robe to make things right.

Whether the state is able to prove a murder case is completely immaterial to what actually happened. They can call a fatality a murder when it wasn’t and fail to prove a murder that actually took place. Both of these things happen all the time. The verdict has no bearing on what took place, it is only an attempt at rendering justice.

Fucking galaxy brain bullshit. Lol my god.

@32, Liable and having committed a crime are two different things and you know it. There is no international court equivalent of civil liability. Either its a crime or it isn't. That is what they have the mandate to adjudicate. They have no authority under treaty or precedent to determine tort liability absent determining a crime was committed.

"We do not need to wait for the verdict of a court to say that the act is wrong." True. But wrong by what standard? A democratically determined one, or in the international context a standard ratified by some number of nations, or an extra-democratic one, or extra-treaty language one? Some might call any standard that is not democratically or treaty determined a fascist one. At the least its anarchy, not law.

Are we committed to using a common, agreed standard, or should we just go by how someone viscerally feels about it in the moment. Which someones? How many of them? How do we measure that? A poll, on a case-by-case basis?

"At least 14 people are now dead and 450 injured from Wednesday’s walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry." - CNN

How many of the 14 dead must be non-Hezbollah for the attack to be indiscriminate or disproportionate? 12, 8, 4? Even if its 4, that is statistically more than if the radios were randomly distributed in the Lebanese population. Queue the motions and counter-motions from Prosecution and Accused.

Queue the evidentiary fights at some international court.

"Your honors, The Prosecution offers the following evidence that victim #9 was nothing more than a husband, father, member of South Lebanon Rotary Club, a football coach, and member of the local mosque."

Your honors, "The Defense offers the following evidence that victim #9 regularly communicated with this know Hezbollah HQ and commander. He was clearly a member."

You get to have that argument 14 times over the dead from the radio explosions, and then over 200 times for the injured.

That is before they even argue over indiscriminate and proportionality.

Yeah, that is working so well to end the slaughter of Gazans, Israelis, Lebanese, West Bankers, in the region.

@34: You’re doing it again. You’re abdicating your own responsibility in favor the courts. But I know you can be bigger than that, so I’ll give you a chance to show off your stuff.

Somewhere upthread, you were arguing that no war crimes had taken place in Gaza or Ukraine or anywhere else because there hadn’t been a judicial verdict rendered. But I challenge you to do better than that. Rather than searching the courts’ dockets for THEIR verdict, I want you to render YOUR verdict, not in your capacity as a judge but in your capacity as a thinking man. Have the Israelis committed war crimes in Gaza or Lebanon? Support your verdict with findings of fact and conclusions of law.

@32,

Oh, and if we are just using a polling sample of visceral outrage, what day's poll results do we use as our standard for judging the accused, be it judicially, or in the court of public opinion? Do we use today's opinion, yesterday's, tomorrow's? What standard are we to use? Or should we use the standard agree upon in law when talking about war crimes?

The council is historically indifferent to public comments, especially when they drag on for hours. They are mainly concerned about staying in power, no matter the composition of the council and understand that the peple who show up to comment may not represent the views of the city at large. And while you can certainly make compelling arguments for sex workers (especially those forced into it) and the homeless, Sex workers and homeless people don't have lobbyists, and they don't contribute to the general fund.

But more to the point, while it may not be a fact that the efforts made to help the homeless and addicted have been ineffectual, that is largely the perception - and the allies of the homeless and addicted do not make compelling counter-arguments. Bumper sticker slogans like "Housing First!" do not stand up against high profile goofs like the former Renton Holiday Inn that was converted to homeless housing and almost immediately set on fire. The lesson there should have been "assessment first" to see who would be able to function in that environment, and find the ones who can't alternative arrangements.

As far as the plight of the sex workers are concerned, most people are not familiar with the issues surrounding sex work. They just think it's unseemly to see barely clad women having to hit the streets to practice their trade. That may be unenlightened of them, but that is a fact.

I know I'll get called a conservative and/or a boomer for this, and that's OK. But it sure would be nice to have a counter-argument presented for consideration.

Welp I guess we don't need to argue over indiscriminate attack or it being disproportional. Hamas, via CNN, has answered that question for us.

"Hezbollah said in 16 separate short statements that all the men had been killed “on the road to Jerusalem,” a reference to those fighting to support people in Gaza, but did not elaborate."

The announcement came after walkie-talkie explosions across Lebanon on Wednesday killed at least 20 people."

CNN.com

So 80% of those killed by Israel blowing up those radios where Hezbollah, which under the Laws of Armed Conflict, are legit targets. Only 20%, where non-combatants. That's often better than the U.S. and other modern military powers do.

So the U.N. Human Rights Envoy just got his assertions about violations of international humanitarian treaty and law yanked out from under him by Hezbollah itself.

Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia

PROSECUTOR

v.

STANISLAV GALIC

JUDGEMENT AND OPINION
[..]
the Trial Chamber agrees with previous Trial Chambers that indiscriminate attacks, that is to say, attacks which strike civilians or civilian objects and military objectives without distinction, may qualify as direct attacks against civilians.101 It notes that indiscriminate attacks are expressly prohibited by Additional Protocol I.102 This prohibition reflects a well-established rule of customary law applicable in all armed conflicts.103

One type of indiscriminate attack violates the principle of proportionality.104 The practical application of the principle of distinction requires that those who plan or launch an attack take all feasible precautions to verify that the objectives attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects, so as to spare civilians as much as possible.105 Once the military character of a target has been ascertained, commanders must consider whether striking this target is “expected to cause incidental loss of life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objectives or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”106 If such casualties are expected to result, the attack should not be pursued.107 The basic obligation to spare civilians and civilian objects as much as possible must guide the attacking party when considering the proportionality of an attack.108 In determining whether an attack was proportionate it is necessary to examine whether a reasonably well-informed person in the circumstances of the actual perpetrator,109 making reasonable use of the information available to him or her, could have expected excessive civilian casualties to result from the attack.110

To establish the mens rea of a disproportionate attack the Prosecution must prove, instead of the above-mentioned mens rea requirement, that the attack was launched wilfully and in knowledge of circumstances giving rise to the expectation of excessive civilian casualties.111

The Trial Chamber considers that certain apparently disproportionate attacks may give rise to the inference that civilians were actually the object of attack. This is to be determined on a case-by-case basis in light of the available evidence.

As suggested by the Defence, the parties to a conflict are under an obligation to remove civilians, to the maximum extent feasible from the vicinity of military objectives and to avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas.112 However, the failure of a party to abide by this obligation does not relieve the attacking side of its duty to abide by the principles of distinction and proportionality when launching an attack.

https://www.icty.org/x/cases/galic/tjug/en/

The Majority of the Trial Chamber has found that General Galic participated in a campaign of sniping and shelling and that crimes charges in the Indictment were made out. For his participation in these crimes, General Galic has been found guilty of unlawfully committing the crimes of terror upon civilians (under Article 3 of the Statute; count 1), murder (under Article 5 of the Statute; counts 2 and 5), and inhumane acts (under Article 5 of the Statute; counts 3 and 6). The commission of these crimes would have attracted the harshest of sentences in the former Yugoslavia.

@41

& yet Here
the apologia
is Deafening

@40: “The Trial Chamber considers that certain apparently disproportionate attacks may give rise to the inference that civilians were actually the object of attack. This is to be determined on a case-by-case basis in light of the available evidence.”

I think you’ve got the right rule right there. In any particular strike in Gaza, were the civilians “actually the object of the attack,” or was the true target Hamas, with the civilians just unfortunately in the way? That’s a case-by-case question, so the answer in any one strike may not apply in any other.

For this reason, it does no good to wave the total casualty figures like a bloody shirt, claiming that the numbers prove the crime. You’ve got to go strike by strike by strike, asking in each instance what the military utility of the strike was and whether the anticipated civilian casualties in that strike were worth it.

How many dead Palestinians does it take to make a war crime? Well, in the right circumstances, even one could do. In other circumstances, there could be thousands upon thousands and no crime at all.

I’ll extend the same challenge to you that I did to Myopic earlier. Have the Israelis committed a war crime in Gaza or Lebanon? Support your opinion with findings of fact and conclusions of law.

@43: and just so I avoid coming across as condescending, I’ll answer my own challenge.

I don’t think Israel has committed any war crimes in Gaza or Lebanon. In each strike, they’ve always articulated a military objective, often a named commander whom they suspect through intelligence to be at that location, or else low-level fighters whom they have directly observed at that location.

The largest strikes have produced civilian casualties in the low hundreds, but those were for very senior Hamas commanders, at the battalion and brigade commander level or above. I’m not prepared to conclude that 200 civilian KIA is too many for a Hamas brigade commander and his staff.

Some of the strikes have struck hospitals and religious buildings. As I’m sure we are all tediously aware by now, these structures lose their protected status when a combatant uses them to shelter personnel or equipment. Shooting up al-Shifa isn’t a war crime if Hamas is in there.

In other instances, the Israelis have killed people manifestly uninvolved with Hamas, in circumstances when no Hamas combatants were present. The World Central Kitchen airstrike and the shooting of the three shirtless hostages are two memorable examples. In the case of the kitchen strike, Israel accurately observed armed men on the vicinity of the vehicles and mistakenly believed that the armed men were being transported in the vehicles. The resulting strike was a tragedy, but not a crime. The Israelis had a legitimate predicate for the attack, it just turned out that predicate was a mistake. While sad, just killings do not amount to a crime.

The shooting of the shirtless, surrendering hostages is probably the closest incident I am aware of to a war crime, and may in fact have been a war crime. Unlike the kitchen strike, it’s difficult to imagine the circumstance in which three shirtless men with their hands up could have been construed as combatants. Even if they had been Hamas members, they were hors de combat. It’s possible there was reasonable mistake of fact made in the confusing, dynamic swirl of infantry combat, but if so, I haven’t heard it. It’s possible, though not certain, that this shooting was a war crime.

What I really wish is that the posters on here who are so sure, SO VERY DAMN SURE, that war crimes have been committed would, you know, show us the crime. Instead all we hear, over and over, is the latest number of dead Palestinians, which proves nothing. I’m open to the idea that there may have been war crimes, but it’s been almost a year now and no one seems to be able to plot to any. I think if the anti-Israel crowd had a real argument, we’d have heard it by now, which makes me suspect they don’t have an argument.

40, "The basic obligation to spare civilians and civilian objects as much as possible."

What is the definition of, "as much as possible?"

That's adds more murkiness than clarity. There is no discussion of the factual record in the citation to tell us what other measures they ciuld have talen to attack the enemy and further reduce civilian casualties.

Without it, the end result would be obliterating the right to self defense. Surround yourself with enough civilians and you can attack others at will and be immune from attack by your victim.

The right to self-defense is stated in the U.N. Charter and has long precedent.

@44, Exactly. We don't have enough information to know if Israel committe war crimes, and likely never will.

Unlike Yugoslavia, we won't ever have access to the evidence to show that Israel knowingly attacked civilian targets absent a military targets, knowingly attacked with means that would take out a legit target with more force than neccessary, knowing it would create more civilian categories than neccessary.

Yugoslavia shows that in cases of war, victory is a precondition to justice. That kind of justice rings hollow to those who died because we, with our NATO partners, didn't intervene with overwhelming force earlier.to give one side victory so the shooting stopped.

With regard to Hezbollah, they have admitted that 80% of the radio attack dead where thier fighters. That's not indiscriminate or disproportional. Game, set, match that the U.N. envoy had Hamas kill his own case.

whoa.

looks like
bibi sent to
tS The Big Guns.

well-Played
bibi. looks like
you'll remain outta
Prison -- perhaps even
'til eltrumpfster steals 2024.

Game, set, match
indeedy: Adios
Israel. your
Lifespan'll
likely not
exceed

our little experiment
in Democracy ~ this
(unintelligable) will
self-destruct in
Seven or so
weeks.

The independent Commission, established by the UN Human Rights Council, also concluded that, in relation to Israel’s military operations in Gaza, Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws.

The Commission further concluded that the immense numbers of civilian casualties and widespread destruction of civilian objects and vital civilian infrastructure were the “inevitable results of Israel’s chosen strategy for the use of force” during these hostilities, undertaken with intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding distinction, proportionality and adequate precautions, and thus unlawful.

“ISF’s intentional use of heavy weapons with large destructive capacity in densely populated areas constitutes an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population, particularly affecting women and children,” the Commission said, adding that this was confirmed by the substantial and increasing numbers of casualties, over weeks and months, with “no change in Israeli policies or military strategies”.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/06/1150946

The Dahiya doctrine, or Dahya doctrine,[1] is an Israeli military strategy involving the destruction of civilian infrastructure in order to pressure hostile regimes.[2] It is a type of asymmetric warfare. It endorses the employment of "disproportionate force" (compared to the amount of force used by the enemy[3][4]) to secure that end.[5] The doctrine was outlined by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of General Staff Gadi Eizenkot.
[..]

The 2009 United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict makes several references to the Dahya doctrine, calling it a concept which requires the application of "widespread destruction as a means of deterrence" and which involves "the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations."

[,,]

Richard Falk [American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University,[2] and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor's Chairman of the Board of Trustees] wrote that under the doctrine, "the civilian infrastructure of adversaries such as Hamas or Hezbollah are treated as permissible military targets, which is not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: state terrorism."[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine

The Commission refers to all of the incidents it has reviewed above (see
section “Attacks on civilians, civilian objects and objects indispensable to the
survival of the civilian population”) and finds that, in relation to attacks against
civilians, the conduct of the ISF constitutes the war crime of intentionally
directing attacks against the civilian population or against individual civilians
not taking direct part in hostilities. Where the conduct led to the death of a
civilian, it constitutes the war crime of murder or wilful killing. Additionally,
the conduct also amounts to a violation of international humanitarian law which
prohibits an attack against civilians who take no active part in the hostilities.
In relation to incidents reviewed by the Commission (see section
“Attacks on civilians, civilian objects and objects indispensable to the survival
of the civilian population”) where large scale air strikes and the demolition of
buildings by the ISF caused the destruction of civilian objects (including
residential buildings, markets, hospitals, schools and universities, aid
organisations and UN facilities, the Commission finds that such conduct
constitutes the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against civili an
objects that are not military objectives or justified by military necessity or not
imperatively demanded by the necessities of the conflict.
In most cases reviewed, the Commission did not receive any credible
evidence of the civilian object in question being a legitimate military target.
While the ISF has, in some instances, claimed that it was targeting military
objectives, the Commission finds that such claims nevertheless did not justify
the means and methods of the attacks launched against civilian objects, in
particular, the use of large explosive weapons with wide-area effect, and their
outcome – the near total destruction of civilian objects across the densely
populated Gaza Strip. Notwithstanding the presence of legitimate military
targets, the ISF is required to comply with all its obligations under international
humanitarian law. Furthermore, the ISF was obligated to take all feasible
precautions to avoid and minimize civilian harm, while continuing to adhere to
the principles of distinction and proportionality.

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf

@44: “What I really wish is that the posters on here who are so sure, SO VERY DAMN SURE, that war crimes have been committed would, you know, show us the crime. Instead all we hear, over and over, is the latest number of dead Palestinians, which proves nothing. I’m open to the idea that there may have been war crimes, but it’s been almost a year now and no one seems to be able to plot to any. I think if the anti-Israel crowd had a real argument, we’d have heard it by now, which makes me suspect they don’t have an argument.”

Thank you.

As I’ve also noted to them, if Israel was intent on committing war comes, let alone genocide, the death rate in Gaza would be much higher than Hamas’ one-day total in Israel, and the rate of civilian deaths in Gaza hasn’t even come close. On top of that, we know Hamas intentionally operates so as to increase civilian casualties— but to our friends here, that last is a doubleplus unfact, which will get you only screaming denial (or dead silence).

The Commission finds the very high number of civilian casualties and
almost complete destruction of civilian objects to be disproportionate to the
specified military advantages. The Commission notes reports that the ISF has
expanded its targeting systems to cause more widespread damage. It finds such
reports credible, taking into account ISF statements (see paras 154-156) and
considering effects of the attacks on civilians and civilian objects throughout
the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023. This, together with the Israeli authorities’
characterization of Hamas, as a whole, as a terrorist organi sation (see paras 92,
105 and 157) and some Israeli policy makers attributing the actions of Hamas
to the entire population in the Gaza Strip (see section “Incitement by Israeli
political and military leaders to violence, vengeance and collective punishment
against the Palestinian population”), leads to a finding on reasonable grounds
that the ISF has employed a military policy that unlawfully expands the scope
of targetable persons under international humanitarian law.

The Commission concludes that it was foreseeable that civilian ch ildren
and women would be present in the areas targeted by the ISF and that the ISF
intentionally directed its attacks on civilian residential areas and civilian
property with such knowledge; thus, the ISF failed to fulfil its obligations under
international humanitarian law to afford special protection to children and
women (see section “Killing and maiming of children and impact on children”).
The Commission concludes that the attack on a centre working with survivors
of gender-based violence in Gaza City was deliberate and motivated by gender
biases against Palestinian women. Evidence indicates that the attack had
gendered aspects in terms of motive, form and impact on survivors of sexual
and gender-based violence that seek support from the centre.
The Commission finds, for all incidents it investigated of attacks that
led to civilian casualties, that such attacks were in clear violation of the
principle of proportionality, even if legitimate military targets were present on
the scene and were killed in the attacks. In such circumstances, the ISF could
reasonably foresee that the choice of heavy weapons with large destructive
capacity would cause disproportionate civilian casualties, even if a military
target was killed
In relation to the attacks that occurred along evacuation routes and
within designated safe zones, the Commission finds that the attacks against
civilians, including children, women, persons with disabilities and older
persons, during their evacuation and within the designated safe zones amount
to the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian
population.
In all cases analysed by the Commission in relation to the attacks along
the evacuation routes and within designated safe areas, the Commission finds
that the ISF had clear knowledge of the presence of civilians along the
evacuation routes and within the safe areas but nevertheless it shot at at and
killed the civilians, some of whom were holding makeshift white flags. The
Commission finds this constituted the war crime of murder or wilful killing.
In summary, the Commission concludes on reasonable grounds, that the
following war crimes have been committed since 7 October 2023 in relation to
directing attacks against civilians: (i) intentionally directing attacks against the
civilian population; and (ii) where the conduct led to the death of the c ivilians,
the war crime of murder or wilful killing.
In relation to the attacks on civilian objects, the Commission concludes
on reasonable grounds that the war crime of intentionally directing attacks
against civilian objects that are not military objectives or justified by military
necessity or not imperatively demanded by the necessities of the conflict was
committed.

@52: I appreciate the effort you’ve obviously put into your posts on this subject.

But you and the Commission still have the problem of demonstrating that any specific crime has been committed. Listing various times Israel has killed people and calling each of those episodes a war crime is a conclusion, not an argument.

To argue a war crime, you’d have to show that the expected civilian harm of a particular attack was out of proportion to its expected military benefit. The Commission SAYS this has occurred many times, but it hasn’t SHOWN this has occurred. The steps the Commission (and other parties eager to demonstrate Israel’s criminality) must follow to make their argument are these: identify the expected military advantage of a strike, identify the expected civilian harm of that strike, and explain why the expected advantage doesn’t justify the expected harm.

You can’t skip any of these steps and still have a persuasive argument. You also can’t “cheat” by using the post facto casualties of a strike instead of the reasonably expected casualties…for example, if the supposed chemical weapons factory turns out to have been a harmless aspirin factory, bombing it is still not a war crime if the bomber had reason to expect chemical weapons.

To the critics of Israel, no doubt this all sounds like impossible standards and shifting goalposts and other bad-faith tactics. It’s not. If you genuinely believe that something as serious as a war crime has occurred, you should be willing and able to show your work, not just leap to favorable conclusions.

@52, @53: There's also the mitigating circumstance of Hamas' intentionally operating in a manner designed to increase civilian casualties in Gaza, with the explicitly stated intent of gaining advantage over Israel in the conflict by so doing. Neither screaming denial nor dead silence on this point can help in any actual court.

@47: "looks like
bibi sent to
tS The Big Guns."

Well, you simply can't have "Jewish," without "International," and "Conspiracy," as bookends, now can you?

We now return you to your puzzling over the Protocols, already in progress.

@53 "I appreciate the effort you’ve obviously put into your posts on this subject."

It's really nothing compared to the work you apparently put into your comments. I eyeball that you wrote around 2000 words on this page alone compared to ~30 of my own words, considering that the rest of my comments are composed of copy-paste from tribunal minutes and reports by actual experts in human rights and war crimes.

As for the rest of your comment, there is already enough evidence to bring charges against those in control. Now, let's have an international court of law decide on their responsibility.

thanks, Wormtongue.

hey @tS:

When will you
Require commentariati
to post the names of those
Entities sponsoring or co-sponsoring

pro-genocidal commentary/conduct/
pro-Zionist or AIPAC propaganda
re bibi's little War on its tightly-
held Captive Population
in Palestine?

full disclosure:
I do Not work for
nor endorse Hamas nor
ANY Terrorist Organiztions.

thanks, tS!

@55: Welp, I tried. I rescind my earlier appreciation for your comments.

@54: “Hamas intentionally operating in a manner designed to increase civilian casualties in Gaza”

Yeah, there’s a reason the critics of Israel like to focus on the “expected civilian harm” side of the equation instead of the “expected military advantage” side. When the only safe way to kill your opponent is to bomb him, but he’s squatting in an apartment building full of civilians, well…

@56: Looking forward to your same suggested policy being applied to chronic purveyors of eliminiationist rhetoric against Israel, and comments in favor of actions by groups holding violently eliminationist positions against Israel (xina and you fitting those descriptions perfectly).

Because both normalization of eliminationist rhetoric, and support of eliminationist groups, have been known to form precursors to actual genocide — and we all oppose genocide, right?

@15 Just one is a good reason to take a deeper look. When there are more than three, in a district with the reputation Peninsula has, it is a sign he is unfit to run schools statewide. We want someone who does not reflect small town bigotry.