Israel targeted Gaza children resulting in genocide, UN inquiry says

We kinda went through this with South Africa.

The only thing saving Israel is the US protection and the nukes. US protection can change. Nukes are harder.

South Africa successfully utilized "strategic ambiguity". They never explicitly acknowledged they had the weapons, while making sure world leaders knew they were a credible threat.

during South Africa's border wars (specifically against the Cubans in Angola), there were internal discussions about deploying tactical nuclear weapons. Because world leaders viewed that threat as entirely credible, it gave South Africa massive leverage.

Feels like world leaders view modern Israeli threats through the exact same lens and i'd agree given recent covert operations like the beeper bombings hence this UN posture.

Could we replicate the SA situation? probably not but maybe partially?

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, South Africa’s strategic leverage evaporated overnight. The US and UK no longer had a reason to shield them from crippling global economic sanctions.

Feels like we are watching this in real time with Israel post Iran war. If the US entirely removed its diplomatic shield and allowed full global economic isolation to set in, the economic cost of maintaining a pariah state might eventually outweigh the perceived security benefit of the weapons. ('might' doing a lot of heavy lifting there)

Also SA was also motivated by fear of the nukes getting in the hands of the incoming leftist government, Israel does not have that fear.

I think this is a good argument why a singular world power is actually a bad thing - because no matter how much it will promote itself as the "good guys" (and of course it will), at the end of the day, it will push through its own interests by that dominance - whereas if power is more evenly distributed, countries might be more willing to agree to common, formalized rules and a "neutral" body to evaluate them.

I think the emergence of nation states with democratic institutions and a strong system of law is actually a hopeful precedent here. Somehow we got from a world of fiefdoms and lords that literally stood above the law to states with checks and balances. (Yes, we're sliding back towards the "fiefdoms" situation right now, but we're still far better than things used to be)

So I'm gonna be a starry-eyed idealist and keep the hope up that we might archive the same on a global level at some point.

> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these?

Apply the Apartheid South Africa treatament. Gather the larger number possible of complying members, and apply a coordinated boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to put pressure in the party engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing or other abhorrent actions.

If the latest Gaza war taught us anything, is that UN is powerless. And, unfortunately, it is the highest entity that could apply leverage here, so... Not much we can do. In the long term I hope other nations realize they are very vulnerable and begin to invest more in defense, but that escalation can have other downsides.

The UN is really just meant to prevent World War 3 and nuclear war. It has succeeded in this for the last 70 years. The structure of the UN is basically unanimous consensus between the major world powers with each power getting a veto.

There is no unanimous consensus on this issue at all.

> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these

If recent history is any indicator, UN isn't that structure; probably EU / G7 / BRICS & other such blocs are:

  ... we construct a new dataset covering all 43 very large mass atrocities perpetrated by governments or non-state actors since 1945 with at least 50,000 civilian fatalities.

  This article introduces and summarizes these data, including an inductively generated typology of three major ending types: those in which (i) violence is carried out to its intended conclusion (37%); (ii) the perpetrator is driven out of power militarily (26%); or (iii) the perpetrator shifts to a different strategy no longer involving mass atrocities against civilians (37%).

  We find that international actors play a range of important roles in endings, often involving encouragement and support for policy changes that reduce mass killings. Endings could be attributed principally to armed foreign interventions in only four cases, three of which involved regime change. Within the cases we study, no ending was attributable to a neutral peacekeeping mission.

How very massive atrocities end: A dataset and typology (2020), https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319900912

What kind of answer are you expecting? The only “structure” that matters is power, and the only power that matters is the power to force and destroy. Everything else is derived from that, not the other way round.

The UN is stuck in 1945. The UNSC needs to throw out the UK, France, and bring in Brazil, India, South Africa and Germany.

And this veto nonsense needs to go away.

Many countries have strict laws how to deal with genocide, genocide support, and genocide deniers! So just enforce local laws, report supporters of genocide to police.

Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.

First thing coming into mind is the number of companies and individuals blocking Russians in the beginning of the war before any sanctions out of virtue signalling.

Hopefully Israel will have lost American support in a generation or so, who cares what happens to them after that.

Israel has had a hand up each US politician’s ass since the 1980s. Israel owns all of them.

Many many countries got sanctioned into oblivion or color-revolutionized into US-loyalty for far far less (often just for not being aligned with the US).

It is even more sickening and outrageous if you view it through that lens.

At this point, leaders should create a new security council excluding the permanent SC members, set rules around voting on issues where every country has an equal voice, create enforcement frameworks and then invite the SC members with equal footing.

The proposed reforms led by the likes of Brazil, Germany and India are not getting a lot of traction. Maybe if they included everyone else they'd have a better chance.

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mods are still sleeping

> Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine.

Not sure it's the same thing. Russians want political and territorial control in Ukraine, not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians". Israel wants to conquer the whole of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem) to replace the native population with its own. There is no possible equal integration of Palestinians or their descendants into a Jewish state, not in a thousand years, and by design.

I think powerless is entirely the wrong word as they are actively supplying the arms to do it

The USA won't do anything about it because the USA is also guilty of heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights at scale - in fact, it is the worst criminal on the world stage when it comes to un-prosecuted war crimes... so Israel facing justice will only mean that the USA will face the same justice, and we all know that there is nothing more heinous in all the world to an American than to be embarrassed by their state facing justice at the hands of any other international entity.

But the terrible tragedy is that this situation is not going to resolve until these countries actually prosecute their war criminals, who have been getting away with it in the current context for 20+ years. Which means the only ones with any power to do anything about the USA/Israels' war criminals, are the citizens of those countries themselves - which is why the situation is just so dire.

Until there is a real appetite for prosecuting ones own war criminals instead of bleating like sheep for the blood of perceived enemies of other states, there will not be the moral stance/altitude required for Americans to do anything effective about the war crimes of any other nation.

Until Americans prosecute their own war criminals they can do nothing effective about Israels', Russias', Ukraines' war criminals, either ...