Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Granting immunity to Netanyahu and co.

“ By broadening who and what constitutes a military target, mass killings take place under the guise of legal and strategic necessity. Arguably, the fastest way to turn civilians into combatants and civilian infrastructure, such as bakeries, into military bases on a massive scale is through the use of AI.” “[F]or the first time, the army's AI systems are allowing it to generate new targets faster than it can strike them. He noted that in the 2014 and 2021 wars, the IDF had exhausted its list of targets. Previously, finding and justifying new targets seemed to be a bottleneck in Israeli military operations.” Like competition in the ‘free market’, a capitalist has to tap well for a new niche even when the market is ‘saturated’. “The question is not whether AI is good or bad for war, or whether it could be refined to be fairer. The bias in the ‘target factory’ is a political one, pre-existing the elaboration of its data models: that international law integrates an economy of violence ...

“[T]he US, Israel and other imperial European countries understand well that the resistance of Palestinians, Algerians, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Somalis and other peoples around the world to colonial and imperial invasions and bombings is a legitimate and moral self-defence against imperial and colonial terror, which is why they have to launch political propaganda campaigns and fabrications, and deploy the term “terrorism” to depict such resistance as always immoral and illegitimate.” —Joseph Massad, Middle East Eye, 17 September 2021 ‘We are back’ to the same arguments about ‘terrorism’ and ‘international law’ .  – It is a question of power and revenge. Israel’s massive state violence stems from the ability of the state to carry out such acts. – Israel’s massive acts of violence is supported by the major power with whom it has broken the ‘international law’ over decades. – Israel can do it, like the US did it in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries because it ca...

Still from The Battle of Algiers - British Film Institute “Everything that is happening now in Israel-Palestine is taking place within the context of colonisation, occupation and apartheid, which according to international law, are illegal. Israel is a colonising power and the Palestinians are the colonised indigenous population. Any reference to international law that does not recall these circumstances is a distortion of the story. The context of colonisation and occupation was brushed to the side with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, which was presented to the international agreement as a ‘peace agreement’ that put an end to the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’. It, of course, did no such thing. The focus on the humanitarian element perpetuates aid dependency and sidelines demands for accountability and reparations. The laws of war were put together during colonial times to regulate the use of force between sovereign states. The colonies were obviously not considered sovereign...

A must-read analysis

This an adapted rewriting of Heinrich von Treischke’s statement. “International law becomes meaningless when any attempt is made to apply its principles equally to barbarian nations. The only way to punish the Palestinians  is to make them pay tens of times for what they did; it is the only sort of example they understand. For the Israeli state and its backers to apply international law in cases like this would not be either humanity or justice; it would be shameful weakness.” The original quote: In 1898, the German political scientist Heinrich von Treischke stated what many of his contemporaries would have regarded as the obvious: “International law becomes meaningless when any attempt is made to apply its principles equally to barbarian nations. The only way to punish a black tribe is to burn their villages; it is the only sort of example they understand. For the German empire to apply international law in cases like this would not be either humanity or justice; it would be shame...

“Years of impunity for Israeli crimes against civilians have bred a culture of disregard for international law.” Alice Speri on The Intercept follows the mainstream – delusional belief and misleading – concept of ‘international law’. As a counter-argument I have chosen a selection from Between Equal Rights “The debate between jurists is not whether this or that action is a reprisal and therefore illegal, but whether reprisals as a category are illegal. Here, the importance of ‘authoritative’ decision is key. After all, the majority of writers agree that reprisals are illegal. However, as long as Israel, for example, is able to interpret reprisals as legal, openly to claim its activities as reprisals, and to be a strong enough power (with the US’s support) to defeat or silence any dissenters, then it is nonsensical to claim that reprisals are functionally illegal. The same unresolvably structured arguments – again with the weight of opinion against the US – have been batted back and for...

Exposing the Hypocrisy of the West Related

Canada’s military exports to Saudi Arabia increased in 2021

Democracy The idea according to which life in a democracy is fundamentally peaceful, policed, and violence-free (including in the form of war and devastation) does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.  From their origins, modern democracies have always evinced their tolerance for a certain political violence, including illegal forms of it. They have integrated forms of brutality into their culture, forms borne by a range of private institutions acting on top of the state, whether irregular forces, militias, or other paramilitary or corporatist formations. In eighteenth-century England, plantation owners in the West Indies amassed the money to enable the financing of a nascent culture of taste, art galleries, and cafés—places par excellence of learning civility.  The “civilization of mores” was also made possible thanks to the new forms of wealth accumulation and consumption inaugurated by the colonial adventure... the capacity to create unequal exchange relations became a d...