June 21, 2024 • 41 mins
Robert and James discuss war crimes that have happened in their proximity, but which they (and this is important for legal reasons) did not partake in.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
What's warring my crimes? This is it could happen here
a podcast about things falling apart? And you know what
all the kids these days you're talking about is war crimes.
That was me being kind of blithe, but they actually are,
because you know what's continuing to happen to Gaza. More
(00:26):
people than probably that I can recall in recent memory
are talking about like war crimes, what it means to
commit war crimes violations of international law, which is good
because that's an important thing to be talking about. The
downside of it is, as is often the case when
people talk about things on the Internet, a lot of
people are talking about war crimes and don't actually know
(00:47):
what that means. So I figured, let's talk about like
what war crimes is be do. And I'm going to
bring on James Stout, fellow war crimes watcher, to talk
with me about what war crimes be James, what's your
favorite war crime?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
My favorite? That's a difficult one, isn't it? Because I'm yeah,
because I.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Asked in the best season a doctor who you know
it is?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah. What I like to do with reference to war
crimes is I wake up right and I sort of
you know, you're just waking up, you get your phone
off the charge, you there, and then you look and
there's a message on telegram. But that's how that's how
I consume war crimes, just a random.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
If it's on telegram, there's a forty percent chance it's
a violation of the eighteen sixty four Geneva Convention or
the subsequent Geneva Conventions. Yes, so I wanted to do
this because I do think that one of the things
that is unfortunate kind of about the colloquial way in which,
like the positive side of the way social media has
impacted the coverage of conflicts is that we are now
(01:47):
seeing like, for the first time, this is not the
first time Israel has killed a shitload of Palestinians. This
is the first time that like a really substantial majority
of the American populace has been like and that's bad, yea.
And that owes a lot to the way in which
information is bread on social media. One of the downsides
of that is because this is happening in kind of
(02:08):
a colloquial diction, people are not always super accurate, and
a term like war crimes in particular often gets used
to mean like anything I don't like that happens in
a war, And there are a lot of things that
happen like war is bad, and everything that happens in
war nearly everything is really bad. But most of the
(02:29):
things that happen in war are not war crimes. And
I believe me, I'm not setting us up to say that,
like Israel is not committing war crimes in Gaza. They are.
I actually have a lot of issues with other kinds
of conflicts and things that happen in conflicts that get
discussed as if they were war crimes that I think
Muddy's the issue. We're going to be talking trying to
make it clear like what international law actually covers and
(02:51):
what kind of that coverage means and all that stuff,
so that hopefully, you know, people can have a little
bit more information going forward when they try to about
like is this something that's just bad that happens in
war versus is this a war crime, because that actually
matters when it comes to, you know, the theoretical idea
of a rules based international order in prosecuting this stuff.
(03:12):
So the first thing we have to get into is
the idea that like war crimes are a pretty recent conception.
The idea that like there would be a thing that
you could do as a country that the international community
would come in and have beef with does not go
back very far. Right, Yeah, we are talking the eighteenth century,
(03:33):
so really the last two hundred years has been when
this really all started to get codified. We start with
the Geneva Convention in eighteen sixty four. There are several
Geneva conventions in nineteen forty nine, and there's I think
two more in nineteen seventy seven. You also have the
Hague Conventions in eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh seven,
and these are all so part of what that should
(03:54):
suggest is that like, even within the kind of the
realm of codified war crimes law, it's kind of been
a slap dash, catches catch can a fair right. Like
people have come together and made rules that were largely
based on the shit that either had just happened or
that they thought was about to happen. And one of
the consequences of this is that the actual legislation about
(04:18):
like what is and isn't illegal to do in war
is really uneven. A great example of this would be
the idea of dumb, dumb bullets. Right. This is a
thing that you get kind of around the turn of
the century, which is so bullets, most bullets that are
used in war are what are called full metal jacket, right,
And that just means that there's a copper generally jacket
(04:39):
around the lead bullet and there's not like a hole
in the middle or whatever like a modern Like if
you go up to a police officer and take his gun,
which is very easy and safe to do legally, that
was a joke, you will notice that all of the
bullets in that gun have like a little divot in
the middle of them, right. And the purpose of divot
(05:00):
is so that when the bullet hits a person, it
transfers more of its force into the meat of that
person's body. This is the same with any bullet that
like someone carries for self defense generally, and this is
actually a safety device in a way, because bullets like
this do not penetrate as much, and you don't want
bullets that you're using in like an urban area for
self defense to penetrate as much because that increases the
(05:21):
risk that if you miss or if you hit that person,
that it goes through them and hits something else, right,
But there was an understanding around the turn of the
century that these bullets, which initially were not manufactured. Soldiers
would literally like cut like crosses in the tops of
their bullets.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
I used to do this when I was a child.
I would spend a lot of time shooting rabbits. It
was kind of my thing that I did when I
was a kid, and we used to dumb dumb that
rifle pede.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, And there's this there was this understanding that developed
that this should be illegal because it causes additional harm. Now,
the specific I think this is like like line twenty
or something from the Geneva Convention. But it's employing weapons,
projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of
a nature to cause superfluous injury or a necessary suffering,
(06:10):
or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the International
Law of Armed Conflict. Provided such weapons, projectiles and material
and the methods of warfare are the subject of a
comprehensive prohibition and are included in an annex to this
Statute by an amendment in accordance with the relevant anyway,
so you're not supposed to employing employ bullets which quote
flatten or expand easily in the human body, such as
(06:32):
bullets with the hard envelope which does not entirely cover
its core or is pierced with incisions. You're not supposed
to employ asphyxiating, poisonous or their gases and all analogous liquids, materials,
or devices that one obviously came about as a result
of the horror in World War One, right, people start
using a lot of these poisoned gas weapons, and it's
decided by the international community that that absolutely should not
(06:53):
be allowed to be done. You're not allowed to employ
poison or poisoned weapons. Now most people can see look
at at and be like, well, yeah, I mean, hollow
points sound extra meine. Poison sounds extramine. Gas sounds extra meine.
You shouldn't be able to use those extra mean weapons
in war. But and I don't have a problem with
trying to limit horrifying weapons. But we still allow, for example,
(07:15):
artillery shells that are meant to create huge amounts of
shrapnel that are their whole purpose is to cause grievous
wounds to a large number of people in a large area.
And from where I'm standing I don't think that like
that's less horrible than a hollow point. I actually think
that's probably a lot worse than a hollow point. Yes, yeah,
(07:35):
So one of the first things that you get when
you look at what our war crimes is they're not
actually all like things that you morally should have an
issue with. Like, really, if you are looking at all
of the weapons employed in war today, there's no reason
a hollow point should frighten you, Right, there's so many
worse weapons right now. On the other hand of that,
poison gas is much worse than the vast majority of
(07:56):
weapons that are used in war today, and I think
it's good that that's a crime.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, doesn't stop people using it, It.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Doesn't stop like Bashar al Asade, right.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Friend of the show. I was just thinking about barrel bombs.
I didn't know if barrel bombs are specifically prohibited, and don't
think they are not. There would be a way to
do that, really, that just a barrel stuff with explosion.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Well, because I mean they were invented by Israel. Actually,
I think forty seven is the first use. It might
have been like fifty, yeah, but I believe it was
forty seven was the first recorded use of Because if
you have planes and you have reliable access to planes,
but you know, can't reliably manufacture advanced like rockets and
shit to shoot from them, a barrel bomb's very easy
to make. You're basically just taking a fifty gallon drum
(08:37):
and filling it with gunpowder and shrapnel, right, Like, I mean,
it's a little more complicated than that, but yea.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, the Huntern Memba have started using them as sair
access to Russia munitions drives up.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, and there's you know, again that's one of those
things where it's like that's not technically a war crime
other than that if you it can be if you're
like using it indiscriminately in a civilian like against civilians.
But like also they basically no one ever gets prosecuted
for doing that, so.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, right, this is the case with many of
these things.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And again, like barrel bombs can be legal, holow points can't.
That doesn't really make sense. It's also like I will say,
I've witnessed at least one war crime in person that
I really didn't feel like was a war crime, which
when I was embedded with the Iraqi Army, they tear
gassed an ISIS sniper to get him out of his
position so they could kill him, and that's definitely illegal.
(09:26):
And also of all of the things I saw done
in that war, like the fact that somebody threw a
tear gas grenade did not upset me over much, right,
Like the fact that I was watching apartment buildings get
blown up by Apache helicopters really upset me a lot
more than a little bit of tear gas.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, it's one of these like very sort of like, yeah,
if you want to take the strict legalistic definition, yeah,
that was a war crime. Yeah, a crime that was
committed that day maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. So anyway, I want to get into some of
this in a little bit more of an organized fashion,
But first let's let's have a little bit of an
ad break. Ah. So we're back and we're talking about
(10:15):
war crimes. So I want to just kind of go
through and with some commentary. Straight up, Lee read a
large chunk of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,
Article eight, which largely defines war crimes as that term
has a meaning in a legal sense, and it defines
war crimes as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of
twelfth August nineteen forty nine, namely any of the following
(10:37):
acts against persons or property committed against the provisions of
the relevant Geneva Convention. These include wilful killing, torture or
inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering, serious
injury to body or health, extensive destruction and appropriation of
property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully
and wantonly, compelling a prisoner of war or other protected
(11:01):
person to serve in the forces of a hostile power,
Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or their protected person
of the rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation
or transfer, or unlawful confinement and taking of hostages.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And you'll notice, among other things, a lot of that
is stuff that you can find Israeli soldiers doing at TikTok, right.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Yeah, yeah, streaming themselves doing.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah. I mean particularly the clear not maybe not the clearest,
but one that comes up to me just because of
some stuff I've seen of like soldiers posing with like
stolen canes from gosms who presumably were disabled and no
longer have their canes for whatever. Terrible reason like these
kind of like joking photos. That's a destruction and appropriation
of property. Right, You have a lot of videos of
(11:44):
soldiers like going through people's property, taking stuff, destroying stuff
like those are war crimes you are not as a soldier. Obviously,
property will get destroyed in gunfights. It can get to like,
so there's part of why it's kind of hard to
this stuff is not prosecuted as much as it ought
to be. But you are not supposed to just fuck
with people shit as a soldier. That is legal, you know.
(12:05):
Is it one of the war crimes that is probably
least prosecuted and most common. Absolutely, I think that that
is very fair to say.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, look, Boris Johnson stoles stuff from Saddam U Sin's
palace in right, you know, like he's yet to be
called today, and that.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Would be one of those Like I don't know, I
don't like Boris Johnson, but also I don't have a
problem with anyone stealing from Saddam Husse exactly specifically.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, of all the bullshit he's done, but.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
This is I mean, that's one of those. Because I
would say a lot of soldiers I know who have
been and maybe didn't even realize themselves that what they
were doing was committing a war crime. But just like
you're in somebody's house, they are gone, they ran, and
like you wind up fucking with shit like it happens.
I think what we're seeing, I think willfully is kind
of an important term here, right, And I think that's
(12:51):
really what we've seen very clearly in a lot of
these IDF tiktoks, right, is people taking glee in the
destruction of property. And I think that's very easy to
prove as a war crime.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I think anyone can make a moral distinction right between
Like I was recently in Rajava and I was talking
to some friends and they were talking about how they
a lot of people died in ied blasts because they
were going into buildings to try and get food or tea, right, sugar, Yeah,
there's a distinction between going into the kitchen of abandoned
building and taking some sugar or whatever rice.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Then yeah, these guys going through women's underwear drawers taking
pictures with their underwear.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, yeah, I know some some US Marines who like
happened upon a cigarette factory during the invasion. I had,
like the uncut cigarettes that are like five feet long
and they just started like smoking up on them. I
guess that's destruction of property. Probably not going to be
my priority as the ic Z, but it also doesn't
seem like the clearer stuff is their priority. So I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Free my man with the five foot cigarette he did?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, yeah. So other war crimes include intentionally directing attacks
against the civilian population as such, or against individual civilians
not taking part in hostilities. There's a video going around
right now, man in his fifties in Gaza who was
working a market stall and was shot by an Israeli drone,
(14:14):
just executed. There's no way to describe that other than
intentionally directing an attack against a civilian not taking direct
part in hostilities. That is a war crime. That's one
example of I mean, that's just the clearest video that
I saw recently, right.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, I heard from people who listen. I think I
think this was in the episode, but when we talk
to our friends at PK Guy that they were talking
about one of the members of their group was recovering
bodies from a bombed building and was shot by a
quad coptail, not like a drone, like ten thousand feet
in the air dropping a missile like a drone. Yeah,
like in the air firing.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
A drone like you can buy at a fucking best
Buy that's been modified.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, that shoots like it shoots a rifle, like just
like a soldiers shooting rifle, where the operator is looking
and seeing that and pressing a button to fire bullet.
It's not collateral damage. It's deliberate civilians.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely continue from that list of war crimes
intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which
are not military objectives. A great example of this that's
been happening in Gaza in particular is destruction of mosques, right,
very clear, civilian objects. Now there are exceptions. For example,
one thing that does sometimes happen. I don't think it happened.
(15:29):
It certainly have not seen evidence of it happening often
in most of the places where there are attacks on mosques,
but like periodically, like if somebody, if if a fighter
or a military unit sets up inside a mosque or right,
or a church or whatever, which happened in World War
two a lot, Right, you would have like churches used
as strong points because they're well made buildings. You can
(15:49):
attack that, right, like the It's not like magical, right,
Like you can't suddenly not attack soldiers who are shooting
at you from a church, but you are not supposed
to intentionally direct attacks against civilian objects that are not
military objectives. Intentionally directing attacks against personnel installations, materiel units,
or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission
(16:10):
in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as
long as they are entitled to the protection given to
civilians or civilian objects under international law of armed conflict.
Best example of this from Gaza recently would be those
World Kitchen employees and their bodyguards who were essentially murdered
by the Israelis. Right, very clear internationally recognized humanitarian assistance,
(16:30):
very clear war crime if you can prove it was intentional.
I'm sure there's you know, that's a court case, right,
but I think pretty clear. And then there is intentionally
launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will
cause instident a loss of life or injury to civilians,
or damage to civilian objects, or widespread, long term and
(16:50):
severe damage to the natural environment, which would be clearly
excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military
advantage and dissipated. This is one of the top things
that is a war crime never gets punished because it
is so hard, because that it seemed like most I
would say, most of what I have seen planes do
in war seems like it falls under this where it's like, wow,
that's a lot of environmental damage, a lot of incidental
(17:13):
loss of life and injury, But is it excessive in
relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage. Well,
the people ordering those air strikes would say no, right,
and like right, yeah, And that is one of those
things where it's like, well, I know what looks like
crime to me. Yeah, But could I win an ICC
case about that? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I want to actually move over to talk about Ukraine
here because I think that that number one doesn't happen
enough on the left, and I think there's really good,
clear examples of Russian war crimes here, because one thing
that you're not allowed to do is quote, attacking or
bombarding by whatever means towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which
are undefended and which are not military objectives. And both
(17:53):
of those last two points make it very clear that
the Russian military committed war crimes against Ukraine from March
fourth to March thirty five, twenty twenty two, when they
occupied the town of Buka, which was about it is
about thirty kilometers north of Kiv. This is one of
the best, probably the best documented Russian war crime in
Ukraine at the moment. And I'm not saying that this
is only it's not nearly the only. It's just like
(18:15):
a particularly well documented example. As of this point, you know,
we're almost two years past when Buka got liberated. The
bodies of more than a thousand civilians have been discovered
in the Buka region. At least about six hundred and
fifty people are known to have been executed by the
Russian army, and these are pretty hideous mass executions. A
(18:39):
lot of people were held for a week or two
prior to being executed. There's significant evidence of torture of
beatings of civilians before their summary execution. And yeah, it's
like it's a very clear example of a war crime.
Like I don't know how else to say it. I
will read a quote from this Human Rights Watch article
(18:59):
that interviewed some funeral home workers in Bukka. Another funeral
homeworker Sergei Makyuk, who helped collect bodies, said that he
personally collected about two hundred bodies from the streets since
the Russian invasion began on February twenty fourth. Most of
the victims were men, he said, but some were women
and children. Almost all of them had bullet wounds, he said,
including around fifty whose hands were tied and whose bodies
had signs of torture. Bodies with hands tied strongly suggest
(19:22):
that the victims had been detained and summarily executed. And
that's a I mean a thousand pitce a hideous war crime,
right Like, that's a mass killing of civilians in a
crucially there's no argument and one way in which civilians
always die are killed in war, and it's not usually
a war crime because it generally happens while there's gun
(19:42):
fights going on, while you're carrying and you can claim like, well, look,
you know, you can't stop bullets from going through buildings,
you can't stop people from getting hit by a shrapnel.
You're fighting in a city, Civilians are going to die.
This is a very clear case of this town was occupied,
there was not resistance ongoing in it, and they were
mass executing civilians. That's illegal. You're not allowed to do
(20:03):
that theoretically, if international law means anything. Now, I do
want to get to another case of a war crime,
that or a thing that people call a war crime
that isn't a war crime. And this we're actually going
to go back to the Iraq the first Iraq war,
desert Storm. Before we go to desert Storm, let's go
to these ads. All right, we're back, James. What do
(20:37):
you know about the Highway of Death?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:39):
And a little bit about the Highway of Death. Yeah,
let's a throwback, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
It's a throwback. I hear it described by particularly leftists
on the internet a lot as a US war crime. Yeah,
and as a spoiler, it's not. It's ugly, it's really hideous.
It's like a horrifying thing. But it's just war, right,
And it was come back to fighting combat Yeah, it
was combatants killing retreating combatants, which people think sometimes shouldn't
(21:05):
be allowed. But it doesn't really make sense for that
to not be allowed if you just like know what
war is. And I'm going to talk about why here,
and like I'm not trying to justify this, because nothing
in war make it does like you don't justify it,
just is a thing that happens, right, Like it's all
hideous if you've been through it, you see in humanity
every second. But one of the things that you learn
(21:28):
if you study war on an academic level is that
a massive part of it is retreating. Like all the time,
all throughout history, armies retreat, regroup, and then carry out
additional offensives. Right. That is war in a nutshell, Right,
And so when armies are retreating, you're allowed to keep
(21:48):
killing them. And in fact, that's the norm, and most soldiers,
up until the modern era, the vast majority of combat
deaths we're during retreats.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
This is the primary way in which soldiers are killed.
This is when they're retreating.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And so what actually happened is in August. So obviously
August of nineteen ninety, the US leads a coalition against
the Iraqi army who have invaded and occupied Kuwait illegally.
You know, one of my stances on this is that
Iraq very clearly violated international law and they shouldn't have
been allowed to occupy Kawait. Now there's a lot of
(22:24):
things about like US involvement in Iraq prior to this,
that are you could say extenuating, including the fact that
like we had kind of pushed them to invade Iran
and then played both sides of that conflict, and that
was part of what Saddam was pissed about. But that
doesn't justify in Kuwait being occupied.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Right. You can't just get mad and invade somewhere unless
you're America.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Unless you're America, which we're going to do to Iraq
not much longer after this, but in this case, you know,
we're more or less on the on the on the
better side of things, right, and we basically immediately throw
the Iraqi army into a full fledged retreat. This culminates
in late February nineteen ninety one with a huge number
of Iraqi soldiers and military vehicles jammed up on a
(23:06):
convoy on Highway eighty, which is the highway that connects
Iraq to Kuwait. And what we do is we use
our planes to blow up vehicles on both ends of
this convoy of like three thousand vehicles, which then traps
thousands and thousands of soldiers inside these walls of fire.
So we can spend ten hours bombing them and this
is fucking hideous. The event is memorialized, and this is
(23:29):
part of why people think of it as a war crime.
In a picture by a photojournalist of the corpse of
an Iraqi soldier hideously burned, frozen in time as he
tried to flee his flaming tank, and that picture you
can find it. It's I mean, it's horrible. It's a
great example of why war is bad and we should
do less of it. And it is, you know, it's
one of those things. A lot of US soldiers who
(23:51):
participate in this feel uncomfortable with it, feel like they
are unnecessarily killing a large number of people. And you
can make that case. You can make a case and
I'll listen to it that this was hideously evil, but
it's not a war crime. Right now, Sodam's going to
make that claim, arguing that his soldiers are trying to
peacefully withdraw. But there's like a definition of that, and
(24:14):
what the Iraqis were doing didn't meet it. What actually
happened is that the Iraqi army made contact with the
US army and then they went into a retreat. They
were attempting to leave the area after losing a fight
and they had not formally surrendered, And there's nothing an
international law that makes it illegal to kill soldiers who
(24:34):
happened to be withdrawing.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
A great example of this would be nineteen forty four
during the Battle of Normandy. There are reports of retreating
German soldiers shot by US soldiers and there was debate
at the time as like, well, is this a violation
of the Geneva Conventions, right, And the conclusion that was
generally reached in is that you shouldn't kill an enemy
who is number one not in combat and number two surrendering,
and there is kind of a blurry line between that
(24:58):
and retreat. But again, the vast majority of soldiers killed
in war are killed running away, right, Like that's just
kind of how I mean, that's changed a bit in
the modern era, But like, this is I think more
falls under one of those things where everyone sees this
as a nightmare, because it is a nightmare. Those random
Iraqi conscripts did not deserve to burn to death in
(25:20):
this Charnel house we created on the Highway eighty. And
also like, well that's just what war is, man. You
think we didn't do that to the Nazis? You think
the Nazis didn't do that to the fucking Russians. You think,
like you think that hasn't happened to every war, Like,
that's just what war is, man, That's why we shouldn't
do it. It's really bad.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, it's fucked. The things are allowed to do a
fuck so you think you're allowed to do Yeah, we
did do some things in the specifically in that incident,
which are now I don't think the war crimes, but
like they used cluster bombs on the highway of Taks. Yes,
it's a separate agreement. It's not part of THEMA Convention, right.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a separate agreement. And like
obviously things have, like at our doctrine and kind of
internet like has changed as a result of that, in
part because like a lot of American soldiers were like,
I really didn't feel good about this. My kid, doesn't
seem like this was necessary at all. Yeah, And I
don't think it was necessary, right, Like, I don't think
it was needed to do this to beat I think
(26:15):
the Iraqi army was already beaten. But the question isn't
wasn't necessary? The question is was this not something that
is generally acceptable in war, and it is because war
like again, blowing, like making exploding pieces like giant boxes
filled with shards of metal in order to wound hundreds
(26:37):
of people at a time, it's acceptable in war, right,
Like it's bad.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah, bad things happening. Well, we should have wit if
we can.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, So let's continue our list of things that be
war crimes. One of them is making improper use of
a flag of truce. So you're not allowed to like
pretend to surrender or pretend to try to negotiate and
then start shooting. That's a war crime. Actually, you're not
allowed to transfer parts of the population of like the
civilian population of a territory you occupy, to other parts
(27:05):
of your territory, which the Russians have done in Ukraine.
They have been taking particularly Ukrainian children and moving them
to elsewhere in Russia, adopting them out to the families.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
That is a war crime. Turkey's done it in Aphrem.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Turkey does a hell of a lot of this, right,
They've done a lot of that in Afrin, yes, as
you said, and obviously the Israelian well, I mean these
really military we're actually gonna talk about their abduction and
imprisonment of Palestinians, because that also violates that arguably violates this,
but there's a separate segment of the Roman statues that violates.
(27:37):
And then intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science,
or charitable purposes. I'm thinking about historical monuments. Hospitals very
easy to find examples of that in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Again, the little bit of wiggle room here is like
if they're being occupied as like an enemy HQ, which
is basically what everyone claims when they bomb hospitals. Right.
The US has done this a lot too, like we have,
especially in Afghanistan. We had a number of hospitals and
it was always like, well, we thought there were some
guys there we were trying to right, and Russia and
Israel both have extensive histories doing this. During the Syrian
(28:12):
Civil War, Russian planes backing the ASAD regime regularly targeted
medical facilities in Aleppo at least twenty seven times from
fall of twenty fifteen to the winter of twenty sixteen.
More recently, Russia has targeted hospitals in Kherson, per this
Guardian article quote. Since December twenty two, the Russian army
has been bombarding Karson from dug in positions on the
nearby left eastern flank of the Nipro River. It has
(28:34):
attacked civilian infrastructure including schools, private residential houses, hospitals and
the railway station. And yeah, it's pretty hideous like these
are systematic attacks. The Cinema for in Information Resilience has
documented fourteen separate attacks over six months between December of
twenty twenty two and May of twenty twenty three, striking
hospital facilities several times with the apparent purpose of degrading
(28:55):
their capacity to continue to serve the civilian population. The
targeting of hospit has also been utterly endemic to Israeli
activities in Gaza. In November of twenty thirteen, they killed
at least twelve people in attacks on the Indonesian hospital
in bait Lahia, Gaza, and basically every medical facility in
Gaza has been targeted, and more than twenty of the
thirty five hospitals in Gaza Gaza have at this point
(29:16):
been taken out of service due to damage. The most
famous of these was the Al Shifa Hospital, which held
dozens of premature babies, thirty one of whom had to
be evacuated after weeks of losing power to their incubators
and being fed a formula mixed with poisoned water. Eight
infants died at least I'm sure that number is higher
before evacuation. This is obvious war crime, right.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, A friend, Tara Klubani, who I've interviewed for the
show before, was in the was working with the premature
babies at that time. Yeah, you can find excuse with him.
It's just it's like, I would not recommend reading it
evenless you want to traumatize yourself. It's honestly one of
the most horrible things I've ever had to try about.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, it's nightmarish stuff. And I mean a lot of
these are right. The Rome Statues continues with committing outrages
upon personal dignity and particular humiliating the degrading treatment. And
my god, there's a lot of examples of that from Gaza.
Committing rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution, forced pregnancy as
to find an Article seven paragraph too, and forced sterilization
(30:17):
or any other form of sexual violence also constitutes a
grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. Utilizing the presence of
a civilian or other protected person to render certain points,
areas or military forces immune from military operations, So using
civilians as shields. Right, If you're hiding military forces among
a civilian populace, you know that is also a war crime.
Intentionally Directing attacks against buildings, material medical units, you know,
(30:40):
that's supposed to be illegal. Starvation force starvation of civilians
is supposed to be illegal. And conscripting or enlisting children
under the age of fifteen years old into the national forces,
which I've noticed, you know when I would report on
the YPG, some of the people that I reported on
that were like seventeen and people like using child soldiers.
You can enlist in the British Army at six team.
That's not legal. Yeah, you seventeen year olds have always
(31:04):
been allowed to do war. Yeah, I think they don't
deploy them, right, certainly not sixteen year olds, right, Yeah,
but then the the yeah, and it's I've often women
at She's from the YPKA, right, because they've come from
abusive homes, and they also make an FM not to
deploy it.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
And I understand, yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
But you are theoretically you're allowed to deploy sixteen year olds, right, Yeah,
so at least as regards international law. So and then
of course we get to kind of some of the
some of our our final war crimes, which you know,
I haven't gone over a comprehensive list, but this gives
you a good list of the things covered, you know,
between the various different statutes and international agreements. Violation to
(31:46):
life in person in particular, murder of all kinds, mutilation,
cruel treatment and torture, committing outrageous upon personal dignity, in
particular humiliating or degrading treatment, which is maybe the most
common by numbers thing that I see happening at Gotza, right, certainly,
not like as it does, you know, the killing is
much more offensive, but like there's so many examples of
(32:08):
like outrages upon personal dignity, you know, the taking of hostages,
the passing of sentences, and the carrying out of executions
without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court. And
then you get to paragraph two, there's a note like
after this all of this stuff that like you're not
supposed to do violence to life in person, committing outrages
upon personal dignity, taking hostages, doing summary executions, and then
(32:32):
there's a note that like, this does not apply. This
applies only to armed conflicts and not situations of internal
disturbances and tensions such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts
of violence or other acts of a similar nature, which
is fun to me because it's like the international agreements like, well,
I mean, countries can do this to their own people
if they want, right, Like, that's not a problem, you know, go,
which I guess is probably we're in a gray area
(32:53):
with some of what Israel does to Palestinians here because
like one of the things that has been happening for
a long time is continue to happen, as there are
presently ninety five hundred at least Palestinians from the occupied
West Bank in captivity. Prior to October seventh, that was
just fifty two hundred people, so this escalated significantly after that.
Most of these were people who had been arrested before
for stuff literally like waving a flag or like posting
(33:15):
on social media in sympathy with Gaza. Fifteen of these
people have died since October seventh. A number of them
have been tortured and beaten. This is the kind of
thing that could be a warcrime, except for again you
have that little note that like this doesn't apply to
internal disturbances in the West Bank, you can say that
that's an internal disturbance, right, which is you know, shit, yeah, yeah,
(33:37):
I don't love that. That's the way that that works.
And yeah, it's one of those things. And another thing,
you know, to be fair here, one thing I should note,
because we're about to talk about the actual ICC investigation
that's going on, the taking of hostages is a war crime.
So it's there's been a lot of talk about because
there's been disinformation about how many civilians did Hamas kill, right,
(33:58):
like how many we had that bleak period if we
were arguing looking at dead babies and arguing where those
babies beheaded or their heads just come off because they burned?
To like, Hamas definitely committed war crimes, and we know
that because they admitted to them, because they the Hamas
does not deny that they took hostages. That's a war crime. Right. Again,
should you be as offended by the taking of hostages
(34:20):
as the killing of thirty five thousand people from the sky?
Well no, But I would also say that the taking
of hostages is not like tear gassing a sniper. I
think that that's bad. You shouldn't take civilian hostages. Yeah,
that makes sense as a war crime to me. Now
this kind of leads us to the crux of our discussion,
which is like, should you actually care about what a
war crime is and isn't right? And I'm gonna argue yes,
(34:44):
even though, as we've made the case here, it's not
a perfect thing. This is not a perfect Whether or
not something is a war crime does not make it
a perfect measure of morality. I don't think a soldier
tossing a tear gas grenade and a sniper because they
don't want to get shot by a sniper is like
a thing that is horrifying to me. And I do
(35:04):
think that, for example, the use of shrapnel shells is
horrifying to me, having seen what happens to people when
they get gutted by shrapnel. I don't think those are good,
and I know what I think is a worse thing
to do. But even with that taken into account, I
think that a lot of this does matter, and that
it is good that the ICC has recently announced a
(35:25):
set of warrants both against Benjamin Netanyahu and against three
Hamas leaders, right. And I saw some people saying when
this got announced that there were like these warrants against
these Hamas leaders alongside net Yahou and his defense minister.
You'll have gallant that like, oh, they're both sides in it. No,
Hamas took hostages. If the ICC is going after Israel
(35:45):
for its clear and obvious war crimes, we know that
Hamas took hostages. It's not wrong that the ICC would
issue a warrant there. That's their job, right, And I
think that that actually it's kind of important to do
that because if you don't, the Israelis are going to
be like, well, they took hostages, that's definitely a war crime.
The ICC is invalid because they're not prosecuting this now.
The reality is that not only has Israel is now
(36:09):
Israel kind of gearing up to go to war with
the International Criminal Court, that they have been doing that
for years prior to October seventh, right, and in fact,
a couple of years ago, I think in twenty twenty one,
the ICC launched an investigation into Israeli actions in Gaza.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
This started when the former prosecutor of the ICC, Fatub
Bensuda made the call to like yes, start a formal investigation,
and that culminated a couple of weeks ago in the
ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Nan Yahoo. And
when that process started, there is evidence that the former
head of the Massad, the guy who's running the massade
(36:49):
at the time, Yo C. Cohen, made contact with an
ICC prosecutor and basically threatened him. And I'm actually I'm
going to read a quote from a already an article here.
Cohen's personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took
place when he was the director of the Massad. His
activities were authorized at a high level and justified on
the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against
(37:11):
military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli
source briefed on the operation against Bensuda said that the
Masad's objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her
as someone who could cooperate with Israel's demands. A third
source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as
Netanya Who's unofficial messenger. Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu's
closest allies, at the time and is emerging as a
(37:31):
political force in his own right, and Israel personally led
the massault Asad's involvement in an almost decade long campaign
by the country to undermine the court. According to account
shared with ICC officials, he's alleged to have told her,
you should help us and let us take care of you.
You don't want to be getting into things that could
compromise your security or that of your family, which is
very much mob shit, right like, it couldn't be more
(37:53):
mob shit. And it's like, I don't actually think that
is a war crime. I don't even know, because I
guess they didn't even think anyone would do that, right
like that, you would just like, hey, you know, we
could break your fucking legs, you know, misprosecutor lady, like
we the Masad. I don't even know that that because
at least from my reading over of the Rome statutes,
(38:15):
that's not listed. Maybe they should add that one in there.
But yeah, this has been a brief overview of what
be a war crime. I hope you find this helpful
in your discussions of what be a war crime. But
I do kind of want to end on the note again,
does any of this matter. What's going to Well, no,
do I think that, like Benjamin that and Yahoo's going
to actually be taken to den Haag and fucking chains.
(38:36):
I mean maybe someday. Actually, I don't think that that's impossible.
I don't think we should give up hope for that,
and this is a necessary precursor to that. And I
think it's good. I think the evidence that this is valuable.
If you actually, if you want my best case for
why this matters, Israel spent ten years previous to the
announcement of this warrant running devoting MASAD resources to an
(38:58):
undergrand campaign to aboutage and threaten the ICC. That means
they see this as a threat. They consider prosecutions like
this to be dangerous to them, and that means you
should at least passively support what the ICC is doing here,
right Netan, Yahoo's regime considers this a threat to their operations,
(39:21):
to what they're doing in Gaza, and I think that's
enough of a reason to think that it's good.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah. Yeah, they think it's going to stop them murdering civilians,
then yeah, it's good that we don't need to be
around the bush too much like anyway, Yeah, it would
be nice to see someone who wasn't from Africa prosecuted
at the Hague.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That would be hey, yeah, they got those Serbians, right,
they did get they got a couple of Yeah, yeah,
it's true. Uh yeah, yeah, let's throw an Israeli or too,
and they're and yeah, some of those some oscarys. I'm like,
look something, let's try to do something.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Yeah, maybe maybe let's let's make a statement that it's
bad to murder and kidnapped civilians.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
It's bad to Yeah, I don't know. We're very critical
of the idea that there ever was a rules based
international order, but I think we should try that sometime.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's pretty nice to have some rules.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah. Anyway, James, anything else to add before we cut
out here.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Don't engage in warar crimes.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Don't commit a war crime. Yeah, don't commit a war crime.
Avoid that if you can.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Don't engage in war if you don't have to, really.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Try to avoid war. Because one of the things reading
through this just I think about all the things I've
seen that I'm like, well, I could argue that that
was a war crime. You know, they happen a lot,
it turns out, or at least edge cases are most
of the things you see in war. Yes, anyway, We're done.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
It could Happen here as a production of pool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
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Thanks for listening.
Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
What's warring my crimes? This is it could happen here
a podcast about things falling apart? And you know what
all the kids these days you're talking about is war crimes.
That was me being kind of blithe, but they actually are,
because you know what's continuing to happen to Gaza. More
(00:26):
people than probably that I can recall in recent memory
are talking about like war crimes, what it means to
commit war crimes violations of international law, which is good
because that's an important thing to be talking about. The
downside of it is, as is often the case when
people talk about things on the Internet, a lot of
people are talking about war crimes and don't actually know
(00:47):
what that means. So I figured, let's talk about like
what war crimes is be do. And I'm going to
bring on James Stout, fellow war crimes watcher, to talk
with me about what war crimes be James, what's your
favorite war crime?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
My favorite? That's a difficult one, isn't it? Because I'm yeah,
because I.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Asked in the best season a doctor who you know
it is?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah. What I like to do with reference to war
crimes is I wake up right and I sort of
you know, you're just waking up, you get your phone
off the charge, you there, and then you look and
there's a message on telegram. But that's how that's how
I consume war crimes, just a random.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
If it's on telegram, there's a forty percent chance it's
a violation of the eighteen sixty four Geneva Convention or
the subsequent Geneva Conventions. Yes, so I wanted to do
this because I do think that one of the things
that is unfortunate kind of about the colloquial way in which,
like the positive side of the way social media has
impacted the coverage of conflicts is that we are now
(01:47):
seeing like, for the first time, this is not the
first time Israel has killed a shitload of Palestinians. This
is the first time that like a really substantial majority
of the American populace has been like and that's bad, yea.
And that owes a lot to the way in which
information is bread on social media. One of the downsides
of that is because this is happening in kind of
(02:08):
a colloquial diction, people are not always super accurate, and
a term like war crimes in particular often gets used
to mean like anything I don't like that happens in
a war, And there are a lot of things that
happen like war is bad, and everything that happens in
war nearly everything is really bad. But most of the
(02:29):
things that happen in war are not war crimes. And
I believe me, I'm not setting us up to say that,
like Israel is not committing war crimes in Gaza. They are.
I actually have a lot of issues with other kinds
of conflicts and things that happen in conflicts that get
discussed as if they were war crimes that I think
Muddy's the issue. We're going to be talking trying to
make it clear like what international law actually covers and
(02:51):
what kind of that coverage means and all that stuff,
so that hopefully, you know, people can have a little
bit more information going forward when they try to about
like is this something that's just bad that happens in
war versus is this a war crime, because that actually
matters when it comes to, you know, the theoretical idea
of a rules based international order in prosecuting this stuff.
(03:12):
So the first thing we have to get into is
the idea that like war crimes are a pretty recent conception.
The idea that like there would be a thing that
you could do as a country that the international community
would come in and have beef with does not go
back very far. Right, Yeah, we are talking the eighteenth century,
(03:33):
so really the last two hundred years has been when
this really all started to get codified. We start with
the Geneva Convention in eighteen sixty four. There are several
Geneva conventions in nineteen forty nine, and there's I think
two more in nineteen seventy seven. You also have the
Hague Conventions in eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh seven,
and these are all so part of what that should
(03:54):
suggest is that like, even within the kind of the
realm of codified war crimes law, it's kind of been
a slap dash, catches catch can a fair right. Like
people have come together and made rules that were largely
based on the shit that either had just happened or
that they thought was about to happen. And one of
the consequences of this is that the actual legislation about
(04:18):
like what is and isn't illegal to do in war
is really uneven. A great example of this would be
the idea of dumb, dumb bullets. Right. This is a
thing that you get kind of around the turn of
the century, which is so bullets, most bullets that are
used in war are what are called full metal jacket, right,
And that just means that there's a copper generally jacket
(04:39):
around the lead bullet and there's not like a hole
in the middle or whatever like a modern Like if
you go up to a police officer and take his gun,
which is very easy and safe to do legally, that
was a joke, you will notice that all of the
bullets in that gun have like a little divot in
the middle of them, right. And the purpose of divot
(05:00):
is so that when the bullet hits a person, it
transfers more of its force into the meat of that
person's body. This is the same with any bullet that
like someone carries for self defense generally, and this is
actually a safety device in a way, because bullets like
this do not penetrate as much, and you don't want
bullets that you're using in like an urban area for
self defense to penetrate as much because that increases the
(05:21):
risk that if you miss or if you hit that person,
that it goes through them and hits something else, right,
But there was an understanding around the turn of the
century that these bullets, which initially were not manufactured. Soldiers
would literally like cut like crosses in the tops of
their bullets.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
I used to do this when I was a child.
I would spend a lot of time shooting rabbits. It
was kind of my thing that I did when I
was a kid, and we used to dumb dumb that
rifle pede.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, And there's this there was this understanding that developed
that this should be illegal because it causes additional harm. Now,
the specific I think this is like like line twenty
or something from the Geneva Convention. But it's employing weapons,
projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of
a nature to cause superfluous injury or a necessary suffering,
(06:10):
or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the International
Law of Armed Conflict. Provided such weapons, projectiles and material
and the methods of warfare are the subject of a
comprehensive prohibition and are included in an annex to this
Statute by an amendment in accordance with the relevant anyway,
so you're not supposed to employing employ bullets which quote
flatten or expand easily in the human body, such as
(06:32):
bullets with the hard envelope which does not entirely cover
its core or is pierced with incisions. You're not supposed
to employ asphyxiating, poisonous or their gases and all analogous liquids, materials,
or devices that one obviously came about as a result
of the horror in World War One, right, people start
using a lot of these poisoned gas weapons, and it's
decided by the international community that that absolutely should not
(06:53):
be allowed to be done. You're not allowed to employ
poison or poisoned weapons. Now most people can see look
at at and be like, well, yeah, I mean, hollow
points sound extra meine. Poison sounds extramine. Gas sounds extra meine.
You shouldn't be able to use those extra mean weapons
in war. But and I don't have a problem with
trying to limit horrifying weapons. But we still allow, for example,
(07:15):
artillery shells that are meant to create huge amounts of
shrapnel that are their whole purpose is to cause grievous
wounds to a large number of people in a large area.
And from where I'm standing I don't think that like
that's less horrible than a hollow point. I actually think
that's probably a lot worse than a hollow point. Yes, yeah,
(07:35):
So one of the first things that you get when
you look at what our war crimes is they're not
actually all like things that you morally should have an
issue with. Like, really, if you are looking at all
of the weapons employed in war today, there's no reason
a hollow point should frighten you, Right, there's so many
worse weapons right now. On the other hand of that,
poison gas is much worse than the vast majority of
(07:56):
weapons that are used in war today, and I think
it's good that that's a crime.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, doesn't stop people using it, It.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Doesn't stop like Bashar al Asade, right.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Friend of the show. I was just thinking about barrel bombs.
I didn't know if barrel bombs are specifically prohibited, and don't
think they are not. There would be a way to
do that, really, that just a barrel stuff with explosion.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Well, because I mean they were invented by Israel. Actually,
I think forty seven is the first use. It might
have been like fifty, yeah, but I believe it was
forty seven was the first recorded use of Because if
you have planes and you have reliable access to planes,
but you know, can't reliably manufacture advanced like rockets and
shit to shoot from them, a barrel bomb's very easy
to make. You're basically just taking a fifty gallon drum
(08:37):
and filling it with gunpowder and shrapnel, right, Like, I mean,
it's a little more complicated than that, but yea.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, the Huntern Memba have started using them as sair
access to Russia munitions drives up.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, and there's you know, again that's one of those
things where it's like that's not technically a war crime
other than that if you it can be if you're
like using it indiscriminately in a civilian like against civilians.
But like also they basically no one ever gets prosecuted
for doing that, so.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, right, this is the case with many of
these things.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And again, like barrel bombs can be legal, holow points can't.
That doesn't really make sense. It's also like I will say,
I've witnessed at least one war crime in person that
I really didn't feel like was a war crime, which
when I was embedded with the Iraqi Army, they tear
gassed an ISIS sniper to get him out of his
position so they could kill him, and that's definitely illegal.
(09:26):
And also of all of the things I saw done
in that war, like the fact that somebody threw a
tear gas grenade did not upset me over much, right,
Like the fact that I was watching apartment buildings get
blown up by Apache helicopters really upset me a lot
more than a little bit of tear gas.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, it's one of these like very sort of like, yeah,
if you want to take the strict legalistic definition, yeah,
that was a war crime. Yeah, a crime that was
committed that day maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. So anyway, I want to get into some of
this in a little bit more of an organized fashion,
But first let's let's have a little bit of an
ad break. Ah. So we're back and we're talking about
(10:15):
war crimes. So I want to just kind of go
through and with some commentary. Straight up, Lee read a
large chunk of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,
Article eight, which largely defines war crimes as that term
has a meaning in a legal sense, and it defines
war crimes as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of
twelfth August nineteen forty nine, namely any of the following
(10:37):
acts against persons or property committed against the provisions of
the relevant Geneva Convention. These include wilful killing, torture or
inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering, serious
injury to body or health, extensive destruction and appropriation of
property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully
and wantonly, compelling a prisoner of war or other protected
(11:01):
person to serve in the forces of a hostile power,
Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or their protected person
of the rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation
or transfer, or unlawful confinement and taking of hostages.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And you'll notice, among other things, a lot of that
is stuff that you can find Israeli soldiers doing at TikTok, right.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Yeah, yeah, streaming themselves doing.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah. I mean particularly the clear not maybe not the clearest,
but one that comes up to me just because of
some stuff I've seen of like soldiers posing with like
stolen canes from gosms who presumably were disabled and no
longer have their canes for whatever. Terrible reason like these
kind of like joking photos. That's a destruction and appropriation
of property. Right, You have a lot of videos of
(11:44):
soldiers like going through people's property, taking stuff, destroying stuff
like those are war crimes you are not as a soldier. Obviously,
property will get destroyed in gunfights. It can get to like,
so there's part of why it's kind of hard to
this stuff is not prosecuted as much as it ought
to be. But you are not supposed to just fuck
with people shit as a soldier. That is legal, you know.
(12:05):
Is it one of the war crimes that is probably
least prosecuted and most common. Absolutely, I think that that
is very fair to say.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, look, Boris Johnson stoles stuff from Saddam U Sin's
palace in right, you know, like he's yet to be
called today, and that.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Would be one of those Like I don't know, I
don't like Boris Johnson, but also I don't have a
problem with anyone stealing from Saddam Husse exactly specifically.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, of all the bullshit he's done, but.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
This is I mean, that's one of those. Because I
would say a lot of soldiers I know who have
been and maybe didn't even realize themselves that what they
were doing was committing a war crime. But just like
you're in somebody's house, they are gone, they ran, and
like you wind up fucking with shit like it happens.
I think what we're seeing, I think willfully is kind
of an important term here, right, And I think that's
(12:51):
really what we've seen very clearly in a lot of
these IDF tiktoks, right, is people taking glee in the
destruction of property. And I think that's very easy to
prove as a war crime.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I think anyone can make a moral distinction right between
Like I was recently in Rajava and I was talking
to some friends and they were talking about how they
a lot of people died in ied blasts because they
were going into buildings to try and get food or tea, right, sugar, Yeah,
there's a distinction between going into the kitchen of abandoned
building and taking some sugar or whatever rice.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Then yeah, these guys going through women's underwear drawers taking
pictures with their underwear.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, yeah, I know some some US Marines who like
happened upon a cigarette factory during the invasion. I had,
like the uncut cigarettes that are like five feet long
and they just started like smoking up on them. I
guess that's destruction of property. Probably not going to be
my priority as the ic Z, but it also doesn't
seem like the clearer stuff is their priority. So I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Free my man with the five foot cigarette he did?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, yeah. So other war crimes include intentionally directing attacks
against the civilian population as such, or against individual civilians
not taking part in hostilities. There's a video going around
right now, man in his fifties in Gaza who was
working a market stall and was shot by an Israeli drone,
(14:14):
just executed. There's no way to describe that other than
intentionally directing an attack against a civilian not taking direct
part in hostilities. That is a war crime. That's one
example of I mean, that's just the clearest video that
I saw recently, right.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, I heard from people who listen. I think I
think this was in the episode, but when we talk
to our friends at PK Guy that they were talking
about one of the members of their group was recovering
bodies from a bombed building and was shot by a
quad coptail, not like a drone, like ten thousand feet
in the air dropping a missile like a drone. Yeah,
like in the air firing.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
A drone like you can buy at a fucking best
Buy that's been modified.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, that shoots like it shoots a rifle, like just
like a soldiers shooting rifle, where the operator is looking
and seeing that and pressing a button to fire bullet.
It's not collateral damage. It's deliberate civilians.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely continue from that list of war crimes
intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which
are not military objectives. A great example of this that's
been happening in Gaza in particular is destruction of mosques, right,
very clear, civilian objects. Now there are exceptions. For example,
one thing that does sometimes happen. I don't think it happened.
(15:29):
It certainly have not seen evidence of it happening often
in most of the places where there are attacks on mosques,
but like periodically, like if somebody, if if a fighter
or a military unit sets up inside a mosque or right,
or a church or whatever, which happened in World War
two a lot, Right, you would have like churches used
as strong points because they're well made buildings. You can
(15:49):
attack that, right, like the It's not like magical, right,
Like you can't suddenly not attack soldiers who are shooting
at you from a church, but you are not supposed
to intentionally direct attacks against civilian objects that are not
military objectives. Intentionally directing attacks against personnel installations, materiel units,
or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission
(16:10):
in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as
long as they are entitled to the protection given to
civilians or civilian objects under international law of armed conflict.
Best example of this from Gaza recently would be those
World Kitchen employees and their bodyguards who were essentially murdered
by the Israelis. Right, very clear internationally recognized humanitarian assistance,
(16:30):
very clear war crime if you can prove it was intentional.
I'm sure there's you know, that's a court case, right,
but I think pretty clear. And then there is intentionally
launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will
cause instident a loss of life or injury to civilians,
or damage to civilian objects, or widespread, long term and
(16:50):
severe damage to the natural environment, which would be clearly
excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military
advantage and dissipated. This is one of the top things
that is a war crime never gets punished because it
is so hard, because that it seemed like most I
would say, most of what I have seen planes do
in war seems like it falls under this where it's like, wow,
that's a lot of environmental damage, a lot of incidental
(17:13):
loss of life and injury, But is it excessive in
relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage. Well,
the people ordering those air strikes would say no, right,
and like right, yeah, And that is one of those
things where it's like, well, I know what looks like
crime to me. Yeah, But could I win an ICC
case about that? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I want to actually move over to talk about Ukraine
here because I think that that number one doesn't happen
enough on the left, and I think there's really good,
clear examples of Russian war crimes here, because one thing
that you're not allowed to do is quote, attacking or
bombarding by whatever means towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which
are undefended and which are not military objectives. And both
(17:53):
of those last two points make it very clear that
the Russian military committed war crimes against Ukraine from March
fourth to March thirty five, twenty twenty two, when they
occupied the town of Buka, which was about it is
about thirty kilometers north of Kiv. This is one of
the best, probably the best documented Russian war crime in
Ukraine at the moment. And I'm not saying that this
is only it's not nearly the only. It's just like
(18:15):
a particularly well documented example. As of this point, you know,
we're almost two years past when Buka got liberated. The
bodies of more than a thousand civilians have been discovered
in the Buka region. At least about six hundred and
fifty people are known to have been executed by the
Russian army, and these are pretty hideous mass executions. A
(18:39):
lot of people were held for a week or two
prior to being executed. There's significant evidence of torture of
beatings of civilians before their summary execution. And yeah, it's
like it's a very clear example of a war crime.
Like I don't know how else to say it. I
will read a quote from this Human Rights Watch article
(18:59):
that interviewed some funeral home workers in Bukka. Another funeral
homeworker Sergei Makyuk, who helped collect bodies, said that he
personally collected about two hundred bodies from the streets since
the Russian invasion began on February twenty fourth. Most of
the victims were men, he said, but some were women
and children. Almost all of them had bullet wounds, he said,
including around fifty whose hands were tied and whose bodies
had signs of torture. Bodies with hands tied strongly suggest
(19:22):
that the victims had been detained and summarily executed. And
that's a I mean a thousand pitce a hideous war crime,
right Like, that's a mass killing of civilians in a
crucially there's no argument and one way in which civilians
always die are killed in war, and it's not usually
a war crime because it generally happens while there's gun
(19:42):
fights going on, while you're carrying and you can claim like, well, look,
you know, you can't stop bullets from going through buildings,
you can't stop people from getting hit by a shrapnel.
You're fighting in a city, Civilians are going to die.
This is a very clear case of this town was occupied,
there was not resistance ongoing in it, and they were
mass executing civilians. That's illegal. You're not allowed to do
(20:03):
that theoretically, if international law means anything. Now, I do
want to get to another case of a war crime,
that or a thing that people call a war crime
that isn't a war crime. And this we're actually going
to go back to the Iraq the first Iraq war,
desert Storm. Before we go to desert Storm, let's go
to these ads. All right, we're back, James. What do
(20:37):
you know about the Highway of Death?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:39):
And a little bit about the Highway of Death. Yeah,
let's a throwback, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
It's a throwback. I hear it described by particularly leftists
on the internet a lot as a US war crime. Yeah,
and as a spoiler, it's not. It's ugly, it's really hideous.
It's like a horrifying thing. But it's just war, right,
And it was come back to fighting combat Yeah, it
was combatants killing retreating combatants, which people think sometimes shouldn't
(21:05):
be allowed. But it doesn't really make sense for that
to not be allowed if you just like know what
war is. And I'm going to talk about why here,
and like I'm not trying to justify this, because nothing
in war make it does like you don't justify it,
just is a thing that happens, right, Like it's all
hideous if you've been through it, you see in humanity
every second. But one of the things that you learn
(21:28):
if you study war on an academic level is that
a massive part of it is retreating. Like all the time,
all throughout history, armies retreat, regroup, and then carry out
additional offensives. Right. That is war in a nutshell, Right,
And so when armies are retreating, you're allowed to keep
(21:48):
killing them. And in fact, that's the norm, and most soldiers,
up until the modern era, the vast majority of combat
deaths we're during retreats.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
This is the primary way in which soldiers are killed.
This is when they're retreating.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And so what actually happened is in August. So obviously
August of nineteen ninety, the US leads a coalition against
the Iraqi army who have invaded and occupied Kuwait illegally.
You know, one of my stances on this is that
Iraq very clearly violated international law and they shouldn't have
been allowed to occupy Kawait. Now there's a lot of
(22:24):
things about like US involvement in Iraq prior to this,
that are you could say extenuating, including the fact that
like we had kind of pushed them to invade Iran
and then played both sides of that conflict, and that
was part of what Saddam was pissed about. But that
doesn't justify in Kuwait being occupied.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Right. You can't just get mad and invade somewhere unless
you're America.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Unless you're America, which we're going to do to Iraq
not much longer after this, but in this case, you know,
we're more or less on the on the on the
better side of things, right, and we basically immediately throw
the Iraqi army into a full fledged retreat. This culminates
in late February nineteen ninety one with a huge number
of Iraqi soldiers and military vehicles jammed up on a
(23:06):
convoy on Highway eighty, which is the highway that connects
Iraq to Kuwait. And what we do is we use
our planes to blow up vehicles on both ends of
this convoy of like three thousand vehicles, which then traps
thousands and thousands of soldiers inside these walls of fire.
So we can spend ten hours bombing them and this
is fucking hideous. The event is memorialized, and this is
(23:29):
part of why people think of it as a war crime.
In a picture by a photojournalist of the corpse of
an Iraqi soldier hideously burned, frozen in time as he
tried to flee his flaming tank, and that picture you
can find it. It's I mean, it's horrible. It's a
great example of why war is bad and we should
do less of it. And it is, you know, it's
one of those things. A lot of US soldiers who
(23:51):
participate in this feel uncomfortable with it, feel like they
are unnecessarily killing a large number of people. And you
can make that case. You can make a case and
I'll listen to it that this was hideously evil, but
it's not a war crime. Right now, Sodam's going to
make that claim, arguing that his soldiers are trying to
peacefully withdraw. But there's like a definition of that, and
(24:14):
what the Iraqis were doing didn't meet it. What actually
happened is that the Iraqi army made contact with the
US army and then they went into a retreat. They
were attempting to leave the area after losing a fight
and they had not formally surrendered, And there's nothing an
international law that makes it illegal to kill soldiers who
(24:34):
happened to be withdrawing.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
A great example of this would be nineteen forty four
during the Battle of Normandy. There are reports of retreating
German soldiers shot by US soldiers and there was debate
at the time as like, well, is this a violation
of the Geneva Conventions, right, And the conclusion that was
generally reached in is that you shouldn't kill an enemy
who is number one not in combat and number two surrendering,
and there is kind of a blurry line between that
(24:58):
and retreat. But again, the vast majority of soldiers killed
in war are killed running away, right, Like that's just
kind of how I mean, that's changed a bit in
the modern era, But like, this is I think more
falls under one of those things where everyone sees this
as a nightmare, because it is a nightmare. Those random
Iraqi conscripts did not deserve to burn to death in
(25:20):
this Charnel house we created on the Highway eighty. And
also like, well that's just what war is, man. You
think we didn't do that to the Nazis? You think
the Nazis didn't do that to the fucking Russians. You think,
like you think that hasn't happened to every war, Like,
that's just what war is, man, That's why we shouldn't
do it. It's really bad.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, it's fucked. The things are allowed to do a
fuck so you think you're allowed to do Yeah, we
did do some things in the specifically in that incident,
which are now I don't think the war crimes, but
like they used cluster bombs on the highway of Taks. Yes,
it's a separate agreement. It's not part of THEMA Convention, right.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a separate agreement. And like
obviously things have, like at our doctrine and kind of
internet like has changed as a result of that, in
part because like a lot of American soldiers were like,
I really didn't feel good about this. My kid, doesn't
seem like this was necessary at all. Yeah, And I
don't think it was necessary, right, Like, I don't think
it was needed to do this to beat I think
(26:15):
the Iraqi army was already beaten. But the question isn't
wasn't necessary? The question is was this not something that
is generally acceptable in war, and it is because war
like again, blowing, like making exploding pieces like giant boxes
filled with shards of metal in order to wound hundreds
(26:37):
of people at a time, it's acceptable in war, right,
Like it's bad.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah, bad things happening. Well, we should have wit if
we can.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, So let's continue our list of things that be
war crimes. One of them is making improper use of
a flag of truce. So you're not allowed to like
pretend to surrender or pretend to try to negotiate and
then start shooting. That's a war crime. Actually, you're not
allowed to transfer parts of the population of like the
civilian population of a territory you occupy, to other parts
(27:05):
of your territory, which the Russians have done in Ukraine.
They have been taking particularly Ukrainian children and moving them
to elsewhere in Russia, adopting them out to the families.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
That is a war crime. Turkey's done it in Aphrem.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Turkey does a hell of a lot of this, right,
They've done a lot of that in Afrin, yes, as
you said, and obviously the Israelian well, I mean these
really military we're actually gonna talk about their abduction and
imprisonment of Palestinians, because that also violates that arguably violates this,
but there's a separate segment of the Roman statues that violates.
(27:37):
And then intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science,
or charitable purposes. I'm thinking about historical monuments. Hospitals very
easy to find examples of that in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Again, the little bit of wiggle room here is like
if they're being occupied as like an enemy HQ, which
is basically what everyone claims when they bomb hospitals. Right.
The US has done this a lot too, like we have,
especially in Afghanistan. We had a number of hospitals and
it was always like, well, we thought there were some
guys there we were trying to right, and Russia and
Israel both have extensive histories doing this. During the Syrian
(28:12):
Civil War, Russian planes backing the ASAD regime regularly targeted
medical facilities in Aleppo at least twenty seven times from
fall of twenty fifteen to the winter of twenty sixteen.
More recently, Russia has targeted hospitals in Kherson, per this
Guardian article quote. Since December twenty two, the Russian army
has been bombarding Karson from dug in positions on the
nearby left eastern flank of the Nipro River. It has
(28:34):
attacked civilian infrastructure including schools, private residential houses, hospitals and
the railway station. And yeah, it's pretty hideous like these
are systematic attacks. The Cinema for in Information Resilience has
documented fourteen separate attacks over six months between December of
twenty twenty two and May of twenty twenty three, striking
hospital facilities several times with the apparent purpose of degrading
(28:55):
their capacity to continue to serve the civilian population. The
targeting of hospit has also been utterly endemic to Israeli
activities in Gaza. In November of twenty thirteen, they killed
at least twelve people in attacks on the Indonesian hospital
in bait Lahia, Gaza, and basically every medical facility in
Gaza has been targeted, and more than twenty of the
thirty five hospitals in Gaza Gaza have at this point
(29:16):
been taken out of service due to damage. The most
famous of these was the Al Shifa Hospital, which held
dozens of premature babies, thirty one of whom had to
be evacuated after weeks of losing power to their incubators
and being fed a formula mixed with poisoned water. Eight
infants died at least I'm sure that number is higher
before evacuation. This is obvious war crime, right.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, A friend, Tara Klubani, who I've interviewed for the
show before, was in the was working with the premature
babies at that time. Yeah, you can find excuse with him.
It's just it's like, I would not recommend reading it
evenless you want to traumatize yourself. It's honestly one of
the most horrible things I've ever had to try about.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, it's nightmarish stuff. And I mean a lot of
these are right. The Rome Statues continues with committing outrages
upon personal dignity and particular humiliating the degrading treatment. And
my god, there's a lot of examples of that from Gaza.
Committing rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution, forced pregnancy as
to find an Article seven paragraph too, and forced sterilization
(30:17):
or any other form of sexual violence also constitutes a
grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. Utilizing the presence of
a civilian or other protected person to render certain points,
areas or military forces immune from military operations, So using
civilians as shields. Right, If you're hiding military forces among
a civilian populace, you know that is also a war crime.
Intentionally Directing attacks against buildings, material medical units, you know,
(30:40):
that's supposed to be illegal. Starvation force starvation of civilians
is supposed to be illegal. And conscripting or enlisting children
under the age of fifteen years old into the national forces,
which I've noticed, you know when I would report on
the YPG, some of the people that I reported on
that were like seventeen and people like using child soldiers.
You can enlist in the British Army at six team.
That's not legal. Yeah, you seventeen year olds have always
(31:04):
been allowed to do war. Yeah, I think they don't
deploy them, right, certainly not sixteen year olds, right, Yeah,
but then the the yeah, and it's I've often women
at She's from the YPKA, right, because they've come from
abusive homes, and they also make an FM not to
deploy it.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
And I understand, yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
But you are theoretically you're allowed to deploy sixteen year olds, right, Yeah,
so at least as regards international law. So and then
of course we get to kind of some of the
some of our our final war crimes, which you know,
I haven't gone over a comprehensive list, but this gives
you a good list of the things covered, you know,
between the various different statutes and international agreements. Violation to
(31:46):
life in person in particular, murder of all kinds, mutilation,
cruel treatment and torture, committing outrageous upon personal dignity, in
particular humiliating or degrading treatment, which is maybe the most
common by numbers thing that I see happening at Gotza, right, certainly,
not like as it does, you know, the killing is
much more offensive, but like there's so many examples of
(32:08):
like outrages upon personal dignity, you know, the taking of hostages,
the passing of sentences, and the carrying out of executions
without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court. And
then you get to paragraph two, there's a note like
after this all of this stuff that like you're not
supposed to do violence to life in person, committing outrages
upon personal dignity, taking hostages, doing summary executions, and then
(32:32):
there's a note that like, this does not apply. This
applies only to armed conflicts and not situations of internal
disturbances and tensions such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts
of violence or other acts of a similar nature, which
is fun to me because it's like the international agreements like, well,
I mean, countries can do this to their own people
if they want, right, Like, that's not a problem, you know, go,
which I guess is probably we're in a gray area
(32:53):
with some of what Israel does to Palestinians here because
like one of the things that has been happening for
a long time is continue to happen, as there are
presently ninety five hundred at least Palestinians from the occupied
West Bank in captivity. Prior to October seventh, that was
just fifty two hundred people, so this escalated significantly after that.
Most of these were people who had been arrested before
for stuff literally like waving a flag or like posting
(33:15):
on social media in sympathy with Gaza. Fifteen of these
people have died since October seventh. A number of them
have been tortured and beaten. This is the kind of
thing that could be a warcrime, except for again you
have that little note that like this doesn't apply to
internal disturbances in the West Bank, you can say that
that's an internal disturbance, right, which is you know, shit, yeah, yeah,
(33:37):
I don't love that. That's the way that that works.
And yeah, it's one of those things. And another thing,
you know, to be fair here, one thing I should note,
because we're about to talk about the actual ICC investigation
that's going on, the taking of hostages is a war crime.
So it's there's been a lot of talk about because
there's been disinformation about how many civilians did Hamas kill, right,
(33:58):
like how many we had that bleak period if we
were arguing looking at dead babies and arguing where those
babies beheaded or their heads just come off because they burned?
To like, Hamas definitely committed war crimes, and we know
that because they admitted to them, because they the Hamas
does not deny that they took hostages. That's a war crime. Right. Again,
should you be as offended by the taking of hostages
(34:20):
as the killing of thirty five thousand people from the sky?
Well no, But I would also say that the taking
of hostages is not like tear gassing a sniper. I
think that that's bad. You shouldn't take civilian hostages. Yeah,
that makes sense as a war crime to me. Now
this kind of leads us to the crux of our discussion,
which is like, should you actually care about what a
war crime is and isn't right? And I'm gonna argue yes,
(34:44):
even though, as we've made the case here, it's not
a perfect thing. This is not a perfect Whether or
not something is a war crime does not make it
a perfect measure of morality. I don't think a soldier
tossing a tear gas grenade and a sniper because they
don't want to get shot by a sniper is like
a thing that is horrifying to me. And I do
(35:04):
think that, for example, the use of shrapnel shells is
horrifying to me, having seen what happens to people when
they get gutted by shrapnel. I don't think those are good,
and I know what I think is a worse thing
to do. But even with that taken into account, I
think that a lot of this does matter, and that
it is good that the ICC has recently announced a
(35:25):
set of warrants both against Benjamin Netanyahu and against three
Hamas leaders, right. And I saw some people saying when
this got announced that there were like these warrants against
these Hamas leaders alongside net Yahou and his defense minister.
You'll have gallant that like, oh, they're both sides in it. No,
Hamas took hostages. If the ICC is going after Israel
(35:45):
for its clear and obvious war crimes, we know that
Hamas took hostages. It's not wrong that the ICC would
issue a warrant there. That's their job, right, And I
think that that actually it's kind of important to do
that because if you don't, the Israelis are going to
be like, well, they took hostages, that's definitely a war crime.
The ICC is invalid because they're not prosecuting this now.
The reality is that not only has Israel is now
(36:09):
Israel kind of gearing up to go to war with
the International Criminal Court, that they have been doing that
for years prior to October seventh, right, and in fact,
a couple of years ago, I think in twenty twenty one,
the ICC launched an investigation into Israeli actions in Gaza.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
This started when the former prosecutor of the ICC, Fatub
Bensuda made the call to like yes, start a formal investigation,
and that culminated a couple of weeks ago in the
ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Nan Yahoo. And
when that process started, there is evidence that the former
head of the Massad, the guy who's running the massade
(36:49):
at the time, Yo C. Cohen, made contact with an
ICC prosecutor and basically threatened him. And I'm actually I'm
going to read a quote from a already an article here.
Cohen's personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took
place when he was the director of the Massad. His
activities were authorized at a high level and justified on
the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against
(37:11):
military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli
source briefed on the operation against Bensuda said that the
Masad's objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her
as someone who could cooperate with Israel's demands. A third
source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as
Netanya Who's unofficial messenger. Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu's
closest allies, at the time and is emerging as a
(37:31):
political force in his own right, and Israel personally led
the massault Asad's involvement in an almost decade long campaign
by the country to undermine the court. According to account
shared with ICC officials, he's alleged to have told her,
you should help us and let us take care of you.
You don't want to be getting into things that could
compromise your security or that of your family, which is
very much mob shit, right like, it couldn't be more
(37:53):
mob shit. And it's like, I don't actually think that
is a war crime. I don't even know, because I
guess they didn't even think anyone would do that, right
like that, you would just like, hey, you know, we
could break your fucking legs, you know, misprosecutor lady, like
we the Masad. I don't even know that that because
at least from my reading over of the Rome statutes,
(38:15):
that's not listed. Maybe they should add that one in there.
But yeah, this has been a brief overview of what
be a war crime. I hope you find this helpful
in your discussions of what be a war crime. But
I do kind of want to end on the note again,
does any of this matter. What's going to Well, no,
do I think that, like Benjamin that and Yahoo's going
to actually be taken to den Haag and fucking chains.
(38:36):
I mean maybe someday. Actually, I don't think that that's impossible.
I don't think we should give up hope for that,
and this is a necessary precursor to that. And I
think it's good. I think the evidence that this is valuable.
If you actually, if you want my best case for
why this matters, Israel spent ten years previous to the
announcement of this warrant running devoting MASAD resources to an
(38:58):
undergrand campaign to aboutage and threaten the ICC. That means
they see this as a threat. They consider prosecutions like
this to be dangerous to them, and that means you
should at least passively support what the ICC is doing here,
right Netan, Yahoo's regime considers this a threat to their operations,
(39:21):
to what they're doing in Gaza, and I think that's
enough of a reason to think that it's good.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah. Yeah, they think it's going to stop them murdering civilians,
then yeah, it's good that we don't need to be
around the bush too much like anyway, Yeah, it would
be nice to see someone who wasn't from Africa prosecuted
at the Hague.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That would be hey, yeah, they got those Serbians, right,
they did get they got a couple of Yeah, yeah,
it's true. Uh yeah, yeah, let's throw an Israeli or too,
and they're and yeah, some of those some oscarys. I'm like,
look something, let's try to do something.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Yeah, maybe maybe let's let's make a statement that it's
bad to murder and kidnapped civilians.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
It's bad to Yeah, I don't know. We're very critical
of the idea that there ever was a rules based
international order, but I think we should try that sometime.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's pretty nice to have some rules.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah. Anyway, James, anything else to add before we cut
out here.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Don't engage in warar crimes.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Don't commit a war crime. Yeah, don't commit a war crime.
Avoid that if you can.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Don't engage in war if you don't have to, really.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Try to avoid war. Because one of the things reading
through this just I think about all the things I've
seen that I'm like, well, I could argue that that
was a war crime. You know, they happen a lot,
it turns out, or at least edge cases are most
of the things you see in war. Yes, anyway, We're done.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
It could Happen here as a production of pool Zone Media.
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Thanks for listening.
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