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Just Apply The Law To The Conflict

CJ 2.0 said:
If we applied law there would be no palestinian refugees (since they are not refugees by the normal definition),
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imo

It's not a normal situation though imo

I see the return to ones home and property after conflict , if desired , to be an inalienable right. I also think whilst people on both sides can and do argue over specific words/statements and their interpretations the moral force for the aforementioned position out scores them

Plus I would much rather choose to defend, legally , a Palestinians right to return that fight a legal case for the settlers to stay

Israel would have the most valid claim to the wb and gaza of any other nation (see the mandate established by the league of nations)
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Not a more valid claim than the Palestinians have to create a state of their own on what was remaining of the land given up for the Palestinian state

and every single palestinian leader and all of its fighters and their support networks would be in jail for war crimes, crimes again humanity and genocide.
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The charge of war crimes and crimes against humanity can be made , and sustained imo , against both sides
So sure, you do that.
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No problem with it
 
CJ 2.0 said:
If we applied law there would be no palestinian refugees (since they are not refugees by the normal definition), Israel would have the most valid claim to the wb and gaza of any other nation (see the mandate established by the league of nations) and every single palestinian leader and all of its fighters and their support networks would be in jail for war crimes, crimes again humanity and genocide.

So sure, you do that.
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Lol no.

That reads like a fantasy wishlist(and given your willingness to smear innocent people as “members of Hamas” one wonders how many Palestinians would exist outside of these fantasy prison camps you’ve constructed in your mind) rather than an actual plausible outcome.
 
oneworld2 said:
I agree with the above but my wish is for a debate on what concepts make up international law and how they apply to this conflict. IE

Can people here see any merit in not allowing state leaderships the right to invade other territories in a bid to annex them ? Does this enjoy popular support ?

Should a person or persons have the right to return to their homes after conflict or even without conflict ? According to UDHR law they do. How many people here would support that notion ?

Do a people or a state have the right to defend themselves ?

etc etc

I think it would be a useful debate in the context of this conflict despite the very valid points you have raised

See the thing for me is whether or not the concepts that underpin international law are considered reasonable by the people here. Not whether or not this or that people have submitted themselves to it or whether states are bound by it
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Oneworld2:

What concepts make up international law with respect to war, conquest of territory and the protections offered to conquered peoples? That's nearly impossible to answer right now as international law is a developing body of treaties, conventions and multilateral agreements which are in flux and do not exist in a steady-state at any given time. Furthermore international law must be enforced in order to have teeth and ultimately to have legitimacy. No one is in a position to enforce international law on states which have powerful militaries, the appetite to use them, especially when those militaristic states also have nuclear weapons coupled with the means to deliver them to selected targets around the globe or within a wide-ranging region.

The old and traditional concept of the Westphalian paradigm of war (where states alone fought wars) is breaking down. More and more states are waging war on organisations, peoples and even individuals. Thus the international law regarding war and the consequences of war are being systematically undermined and dismantled by militaries and states which no longer wish to be constrained by the old rules of state-versus-state warfare. The new paradigm for war is a continuous and pervasive struggle involving all levers of state power at many targets simultaneously, from legal, diplomatic, communications, marketing, economic, covert intelligence and covert operations, extrajudicial activities such as assassination and kidnapping (which were deemed unlawful in the past but which are now rapidly gaining acceptance) and of course finally overt military action. As the practice of war is in flux, so are the laws of war and the international law and conventions governing war.

No more time to pontificate now, so you get a breather for a while!

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
 
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oneworld2 said:
I agree with the above but my wish is for a debate on what concepts make up international law and how they apply to this conflict. IE

Can people here see any merit in not allowing state leaderships the right to invade other territories in a bid to annex them ? Does this enjoy popular support ?

Should a person or persons have the right to return to their homes after conflict or even without conflict ? According to UDHR law they do. How many people here would support that notion ?

Do a people or a state have the right to defend themselves ?

etc etc

I think it would be a useful debate in the context of this conflict despite the very valid points you have raised

See the thing for me is whether or not the concepts that underpin international law are considered reasonable by the people here. Not whether or not this or that people have submitted themselves to it or whether states are bound by it
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why are we, "keeping the cold war alive", instead of building new cities?
 
oneworld2 said:
I agree with the above but my wish is for a debate on what concepts make up international law and how they apply to this conflict. IE

Can people here see any merit in not allowing state leaderships the right to invade other territories in a bid to annex them ? Does this enjoy popular support ?
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Generally yes, but not absolutely.

Should a person or persons have the right to return to their homes after conflict or even without conflict ? According to UDHR law they do. How many people here would support that notion ?
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This is nonsense because it doesn't relate to this conflict at all. The Palestinians have no more right to return than the Sudeten Germans have (i.e., none) or the hundreds of millions of other people displaced in the 1940s. Population exchanges have been a common occurrence for a very long time. Fine to say it can't happen anymore, but to pretend that it was allowed in the 1940s up to but not including the Arab war to destroy Israel is nonsensical. And applying it to fake refugees (who are fake because they only are called refugees by changing the definition of the term) is even more nonsensical.

Incidentally, I get Israel is the "apartheid state" and all, but where you have generations of people born in a state and they are denied citizenship and kept in camps unable to use the education system or get jobs, that would seem to be much clopser to the mark. And it's what the various Arab states do with their subjects that are descendants of the Arabs who left Israel (as opposed to, say, the Jews who were forced out of Arab countries who are, along with their descendants, now citizens of Israel)
Do a people or a state have the right to defend themselves ?

etc etc
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yes, but again, "defending yourself" doesn't mean sneaking past soldiers to blow up civilians and does not apply when the real goal of the continued aggression is the destruction of the entire other state you are "defending yourself" against. Which has been what the Palestinians have been doing the entire time.

I think it would be a useful debate in the context of this conflict despite the very valid points you have raised

See the thing for me is whether or not the concepts that underpin international law are considered reasonable by the people here. Not whether or not this or that people have submitted themselves to it or whether states are bound by it
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All of this is just nonsense framing - you are trying to make all of this seem reasonable and default acceptable while distorting what is actually going on here to fit your agenda.
 
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Evilroddy said:
What concepts make up international law with respect to war, conquest of territory and the protections offered to conquered peoples?.
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The concept that it is inadmissible to acquire territory through warfare as enshrined in the 4th Geneva Convention for one. Do you agree with that concept as a concept in and of itself regardless of whether it can be enforced or whether states choose to ignore it ?
 
Tigerace117 said:
Lol no.

That reads like a fantasy wishlist(and given your willingness to smear innocent people as “members of Hamas” one wonders how many Palestinians would exist outside of these fantasy prison camps you’ve constructed in your mind) rather than an actual plausible outcome.
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of course it seems like a "fantasy wishlist" because here in real life we all know that "international law" is just code in this conflict for "stick it to the jews".

Apply the real UNHCR definition of refugees to the Palestinians and what do you get? Be honest.

Under international law which sovereign state has more of a valid legal claim to territories in the WB and Gaza than Israel and why?

If the Palestinians are entitled to self determination (which IMO they are, incidentally), why does this necessarily involve sovereign control over ALL of the territory they say they want, particularly if they are not living on that territory (e.g., the Jordan valley")?

What Palestinian leader was not involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity? Terrorism targeting civilians (which is a war crime and a crime against humanity) has been regular practice among Palestinian leaders for well over 70 years now and we are "applying the law", are we not?

And as the Palestinians' real war goals are the destruction of Israel (see e.g., everything Hamas says and what Arafat had consistently said) and they engaged in violence against Israel's civilian population to carry it out, that would constitute genocide under "international law".

So sure, it seems like a "fantasy wishlist", but only because international law is such an obviously biased weapon to use against the Jews rather than something people are actually interested in applying to the conflict.
 
CJ 2.0 said:
of course it seems like a "fantasy wishlist" because here in real life we all know that "international law" is just code in this conflict for "stick it to the jews".

Apply the real UNHCR definition of refugees to the Palestinians and what do you get? Be honest.

Under international law which sovereign state has more of a valid legal claim to territories in the WB and Gaza than Israel and why?

If the Palestinians are entitled to self determination (which IMO they are, incidentally), why does this necessarily involve sovereign control over ALL of the territory they say they want, particularly if they are not living on that territory (e.g., the Jordan valley")?

What Palestinian leader was not involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity? Terrorism targeting civilians (which is a war crime and a crime against humanity) has been regular practice among Palestinian leaders for well over 70 years now and we are "applying the law", are we not?

And as the Palestinians' real war goals are the destruction of Israel (see e.g., everything Hamas says and what Arafat had consistently said) and they engaged in violence against Israel's civilian population to carry it out, that would constitute genocide under "international law".

So sure, it seems like a "fantasy wishlist", but only because international law is such an obviously biased weapon to use against the Jews rather than something people are actually interested in applying to the conflict.
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Yep, stuff like “don’t kill civilians” really sticks it to the Jews huh. Do you ever read what you say and actually think about it?

Gee, what would you call people fleeing a densely populated area where an Air Force keeps launching missiles into and taking out random bystanders as well as the occasional target?

Last I checked a claim to land based on a religious text is not a justification for land under international law.

Gee, in that case should we also put the Israeli pilots who keep creating more Hamas fighters with errant missiles on trial as well? After all, both groups are targeting civilians—- intentionally or not.

Hamas has no power to do any such thing, and using empty shrieking as a justification is a bad joke at best. Hell, Hamas isn’t “killing every Israeli” anymore than the IRA was killing every British person or Protestant Ulsterman.
 
oneworld2 said:
imo

It's not a normal situation though imo
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I thought we were "applying the law"? Is that only when we can argue that the law applies against the Israelis but not the other way around?

I see the return to ones home and property after conflict , if desired , to be an inalienable right.
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So now you make the law?

How do you feel about the ethnic cleansing of the Sudeten Germans?

Here's a harder one - what about the Jews of Baghdad? They were 40% of the population and had been around for millennia before the Arabs came along. Do descendants of those Jews all have a "right of return" and aso the right to sovereign independence given how they obviously will be persecuted?

I also think whilst people on both sides can and do argue over specific words/statements and their interpretations the moral force for the aforementioned position out scores them
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No, it doesn't. Because your "moral argument" conveniently results in the destruction of Israel and the subjugation of its Jews.

And we are done playing that game.

Incidentally, I lovw how all this moralizing consistently plays out as screwing the Jews. Even when the moralizing is BECAUSE of the previous harm done to the Jews. See, e.g., the Germans and their rank hypocrisy and anti-Israel posturing combined with the "making it right for past injustices" by adopting an extremely liberal refugee policy which ... has resulted in a massive influx of antisemitic refugees who have started targeting Jews with their middle eastern brand of Jew hatred.

So the Germans get to feel good about themselves and "make up" for what they did to the Jews by being nice to people who are sticking it to the Jews. The perfect summary of European ME policy.

Plus I would much rather choose to defend, legally , a Palestinians right to return that fight a legal case for the settlers to stay
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Of course you would. But it makes no sense. Jews were ethnically cleansed by violence from Hebron in 1929. Do they have a "right of return"?

Not a more valid claim than the Palestinians have to create a state of their own on what was remaining of the land given up for the Palestinian state
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They can make their own state on territory once they stop fighting against the Jews' sovereignty in their own country. And they will likely get most (but not all) of the territory they say is all they want to do it. But they don't get to destroy Israel as some sort of "justice seeking" side bonus to make a bunch of western moralizers feel better for themselves at the expense (yet again) of the Jews.

The charge of war crimes and crimes against humanity can be made , and sustained imo , against both sides
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super. But that doesn't seem to be the way it is presented, now does it?
 
Tigerace117 said:
Yep, stuff like “don’t kill civilians” really sticks it to the Jews huh. Do you ever read what you say and actually think about it?
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LOL. now this is funny.

So someone says talk about international law, I do and you have some non-specific issue with it being a "wish list". So I explain in small words and now you turn it into some "oh woe is me" thing?

When "don't kill civilians" is dumbed down the way you just did (because that's not the law) AND the way it is applied by people like you is ALWAYS to focus on the Jews and NEVER the fact that the entire Palestinian "liberation" movement has always embraced the purposeful murder of civilians in pursuit of an explicitly genocidal objective, you get me calling you out on it. And that of course leads to the nonsense you just posted.

Gee, what would you call people fleeing a densely populated area where an Air Force keeps launching missiles into and taking out random bystanders as well as the occasional target?
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I don't know, you tell me Mr lawyer. What is the UNHCR definition of refugee? And now explain how it applies to descendants of refugees (cause it doesn't, only the magical definition that only applies to the Palestinians does that).

Last I checked a claim to land based on a religious text is not a justification for land under international law.
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Last I checked that wasn't what I said. See Conference, San Remo. See League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Etc.

This sort of selective application of "law" is exactly why we can't have a real conversation about it.

Gee, in that case should we also put the Israeli pilots who keep creating more Hamas fighters with errant missiles on trial as well? After all, both groups are targeting civilians—- intentionally or not.
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lol. Of course that's not the test, once again. But nice try, I guess.

Hamas has no power to do any such thing, and using empty shrieking as a justification is a bad joke at best. Hell, Hamas isn’t “killing every Israeli” anymore than the IRA was killing every British person or Protestant Ulsterman.
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Do they need the power to be guilty under the "international law"? And if they tried to kill everyone but only managed to blow up a family dinner here and there, that's ok?

Again, if we are going to play the international law game, fine. But if you are going to play, you could at least try.

I asked a well-defined, discrete set of questions in my original post. Answer them.
 
CJ 2.0 said:
Generally yes, but not absolutely.
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Does that read , yes when people I like do it to people I don't like ? If not care to elaborate ?


This is nonsense because it doesn't relate to this conflict at all. The Palestinians have no more right to return than the Sudeten Germans have (i.e., none) or the hundreds of millions of other people displaced in the 1940s.
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It's a nonsense to equate Sudeten Germans to Palestinians imo they have completely different situations

The clue is in the name ....... Sudeten Germans these were ethnic Germans living in a different state

Most of the Sudeten Germans , IIRC , went to what became East Germany and thus returned to and retained their ancestral roots in their motherland. The Palestinians were thrown out of their homeland by recent immigrants and became stateless. How's that the same thing ?

Same with Indians and Pakistanis , they both ended up with their own state. None of those sent either way , wrong as it was imo , ended up stateless refugees and non citizens of any state. How's that the same ?

Population exchanges have been a common occurrence for a very long time. Fine to say it can't happen anymore, but to pretend that it was allowed in the 1940s up to but not including the Arab war to destroy Israel is nonsensical. And applying it to fake refugees (who are fake because they only are called refugees by changing the definition of the term) is even more nonsensical.
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I'm sure you support the right of return for Jewish people to Israel and see nothing inconsistent with your views about who shouldn't have the right to return to the former Palestine
Incidentally, I get Israel is the "apartheid state" and all, but where you have generations of people born in a state and they are denied citizenship and kept in camps unable to use the education system or get jobs, that would seem to be much clopser to the mark. And it's what the various Arab states do with their subjects that are descendants of the Arabs who left Israel (as opposed to, say, the Jews who were forced out of Arab countries who are, along with their descendants, now citizens of Israel)
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I never mentioned apartheid , it's an introduction of your own doing, probably only for it's incendiary value

I don't agree with the Arab expulsions of Jewish people either FWIW.

That many Arabs states have treated the Palestinian situation with varying degrees of concern and contempt as and when the winds changed isn't in dispute


yes, but again, "defending yourself" doesn't mean sneaking past soldiers to blow up civilians and does not apply when the real goal of the continued aggression is the destruction of the entire other state you are "defending yourself" against. Which has been what the Palestinians have been doing the entire time.
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What you describe is terrorism and not self defence. I thought that much would be obvious to anyone . But I believe that a people have a right to self determination and to free themselves from foreign occupation up to and including armed struggle. There's a difference


All of this is just nonsense framing - you are trying to make all of this seem reasonable and default acceptable while distorting what is actually going on here to fit your agenda.
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Just asking questions and seeing what people think of the concepts that underpin international law. No harm done imo
 
oneworld2 said:
Does that read , yes when people I like do it to people I don't like ? If not care to elaborate ?
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No, it means that the way you formulated it I don't fully agree with.

You said "Can people here see any merit in not allowing state leaderships the right to invade other territories in a bid to annex them? "

Which incidentally is what the Arabs did with Israel in 1948 and isn't at all disputable.

I see merit in that position generally, but if the territories are continually used to attack you and the entire objective of the enemy is to destroy you, taking and holding that territory to provide tactical and strategic depth may be completely necessary and justified. See, e.g., the Golan.

It's a nonsense to equate Sudeten Germans to Palestinians imo they have completely different situations
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of course they do. The former were just regular civilians used by the Nazis to justify an invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia and post war, left to their own devices, were not any sort of threat. The Palestinians engaged in a war of aggression against Israel in a war to "finish what hitler started" and have been kept as indoctrinated, marginalized tools to be used to continue the war to destroy Israel, demographically or otherwise.

There is far less justification in the case of the former (both originally and not letting them "return" to their propery today than th

The clue is in the name ....... Sudeten Germans these were ethnic Germans living in a different state
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lol. Really made me chuckle on this one. Palestinian Arabs these were ethnic Arabs living in a different state. These Arabs typically have surnames relating to where they came from originally, like Egypt and Syria and Saudi Arabia. At the time they lived within a territory refered to as Palestine, just like the Sudeten Germans lived in ... the Sudetenland.

oops.

Most of the Sudeten Germans , IIRC , went to what became East Germany and thus returned to and retained their ancestral roots in their motherland. The Palestinians were thrown out of their homeland by recent immigrants and became stateless. How's that the same thing ?
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Cause these folks lived there for a long time, they were purposely and systematically thrown out AFTER THE WAR when they posed absolutely no threat. And there were, what, 14 million of them?

700k Arabs fled Israel and 700k Jews fled the Arab world.

Don't really see why this is even a conversation, other than the fact that one of the parties are Jews. Doesn't seem to factor in much when discussing India/Pakistan, for example, even though that was WAAAAY before Israel (i.e., 1 whole year).

Same with Indians and Pakistanis , they both ended up with their own state. None of those sent either way , wrong as it was imo , ended up stateless refugees and non citizens of any state. How's that the same ?
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So did the Palestinians. It is called Jordan and is controlled by the Hashemites even though it is majority Palestinian Arab. They could also have another one in the WB and Gaza if they actually gave up their aim of destroying Israel.

I'm sure you support the right of return for Jewish people to Israel and see nothing inconsistent with your views about who shouldn't have the right to return to the former Palestine
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Depends. You are messing with language again. Israel as a state can establish the country as a refuge for Jews, which has been shown to be necessary time and time again.

I never mentioned apartheid , it's an introduction of your own doing, probably only for it's incendiary value
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No, because all this is related. All of it is propaganda to be used against the Jews, when if you would think about it and apply some consistency that, like all this other stuff, is selectively and uniquely applied to the Jews.

Most don't even notice it, but it would do a world of good if they did and thought about why that is.

I don't agree with the Arab expulsions of Jewish people either FWIW.
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It isn't worth much. Appreciate the sentiment and all, but we are kind of done relying on good sentiment of others for our protection. Typically doesn't work out very well...

That many Arabs states have treated the Palestinian situation with varying degrees of concern and contempt as and when the winds changed isn't in dispute
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Nope. But the focus is always on Israel, isn't it. Look at Gaza and Egypt as one example.
 
What you describe is terrorism and not self defence. I thought that much would be obvious to anyone . But I believe that a people have a right to self determination and to free themselves from foreign occupation up to and including armed struggle. There's a difference
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It is obvious. Except it isn't. Because some of us have been paying attention for decades and know that "self-defence" for the Palestinians always involves trying to murder civilians. We also know that the entire Palestinian national purpose and its objectives all revolve around destroying Israel, not gaining independence on sufficient land to pursue a Palestinian national project. Again, honesty is important here.

Just asking questions and seeing what people think of the concepts that underpin international law. No harm done imo
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of course. And hopefully folks will see how all this works a bit better. International law is only the Palestinians' friend if we maintain ignorance of the law and only apply it to the Jews.
 
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