Maybe to spark curious conversation, when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these? It does seem like UN is unable to really make a dent here.
The only thing saving Israel is the US protection and the nukes. US protection can change. Nukes are harder.
South Africa successfully utilized "strategic ambiguity". They never explicitly acknowledged they had the weapons, while making sure world leaders knew they were a credible threat.
during South Africa's border wars (specifically against the Cubans in Angola), there were internal discussions about deploying tactical nuclear weapons. Because world leaders viewed that threat as entirely credible, it gave South Africa massive leverage.
Feels like world leaders view modern Israeli threats through the exact same lens and i'd agree given recent covert operations like the beeper bombings hence this UN posture.
Could we replicate the SA situation? probably not but maybe partially?
When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, South Africa’s strategic leverage evaporated overnight. The US and UK no longer had a reason to shield them from crippling global economic sanctions.
Feels like we are watching this in real time with Israel post Iran war. If the US entirely removed its diplomatic shield and allowed full global economic isolation to set in, the economic cost of maintaining a pariah state might eventually outweigh the perceived security benefit of the weapons. ('might' doing a lot of heavy lifting there)
Also SA was also motivated by fear of the nukes getting in the hands of the incoming leftist government, Israel does not have that fear.
Not sure if it used to be the case with South Africa too, but I'm baffled how much ideological support Israel still has, in various population groups. There are at least two religious groups who seem to view it as integral part of a divine plan that trumps all other considerations. ("mainstream" Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians)
Then there various secular narratives around the Jewish homeland, the rebirth (and Germany's redemption) after the Holocaust etc.
For western politicians, it seems far easier to chime in to the dehumanization of Palestinians and either paint the daily suffering there as "tragic but necessary", make fun of it or dismiss it completely - than to object to those stories.
This seems to work on a different layer than geopolitics, so I have doubts that a shift in geopolitics alone would change this. (I may be wrong)
Though maybe the changed perception of Israel after the Gaza war might change it.
Before 1939 there were large Jewish communities across Europe and the Middle East. There were many schools for rabbis and philosophy. But Antisemitism and the Holocaust destroyed the European communities and antizionism forced the Jews from Arab countries to Israel in the 1950s. These communities have never been rebuilt. The hate was real, powerful and successful. Most of what was left of the Jews went to Israel.
Israel is now the centre of Jewish life and religious life. It is also where Jews are most protected. For example, most rabbis are trained in Israel and many Jews have moved there. So many modern Jews have a spiritual, historical and familial connection to Israel.
Jews see a different side of the conflict. Most want peace but believe their Arab enemies do not.
Yes, and that seems to be the rationale of western politicians as well, essentially, "we have to protect Israel to protect the Jewish people, without it, the Holocaust would risk repeating"
That makes sense as a "subjective experience" (if there is something like the subjective experience of a people), but it fails the reality check for me.
Yes, Israel is the center of Jewish life today (New York coming next apparently), but I can't really believe that it genuinely is the safest place for Jews in the world today - not after the last years. Jews in the US or Europe were not at risk of being murdered by Hamas, hit by a missile from Iran or get conscripted in a war. Jews in Israel were.
> Most want peace but believe their Arab enemies do not.
Well, everyone wants peace in the "I won" sense. I don't see that most Israeli Jews want peace in the sense of living together peacefully with their neighbors.
(Neither do their neighbors, true - which is why I fault Israelis less here than the western allies who should apply force to both sides to deescalate and reconcile if they really wanted to end the conflict, but who instead only apply pressure to one side and unquestionably support the other side)
Their neighbours don't really have an option though. Stopping all resistance will not stop the settlers from harassing and chasing away the natives, and it will not force Israel to respect any border (which they took care of not even declaring). If anything, Palestinian resistance is functional to the progress of the occupation, so, if things get too quiet, a couple of killings or demolished homes keep the situation dynamic enough.
Unless you're counting on the moral authority of the Western nations that stayed silent or even financed and armed Israel while it was starving a population under blockade and bombings, murdering tens of thousands of civilians, killing hundreds of journalists, bombing hospitals and universities. Maybe they would say something if Israel killed and conquered a population that absolutely refuses to react. What do you think?
You are missing the very massive religious and ideological groups who are on the other side and see in the destruction of Israel a divine plan or a fulfilment of some secular ideal.
This blinkered view will reasonably leave you baffled and with a distorted world model, and a perception that people are stupid when they are actually seeing the bigger picture.
No question those exist, but this ignores basic human psychology: If my whole family was wiped out in an airstrike, and then I have a whole population saying "yup, that's exactly how things should be!", of course I would start to hate them.
It is funny how much hand wringing is done with nuclear weapons. like they are this big line in the sand when really the same result happens with or without them. Gaza looks as wrecked as Hiroshima or Dresden. Doesn't matter it seems in terms of the function. I guess the bigger risk is really the implication vs the action. It is like Kayfabe for the political class.
Might really is doing some heavy lifting here. If the UN turns on Israel and they become sanctioned by the west the most likely outcome is that Israel turns to China. China needs stabilizing forces in the Middle East because of their lack of domestic fossil fuels. They also see similarities between the Gaza situation and Taiwan. The Israelis are fiercely aggressive on security issues. They will not give up on that because of sanctions I think. What US backing is really doing is mostly just making it cheaper for Israel to defend itself so that the Israelis feel less pressure to be aggressive with making buffer zones. Without the US funding the iron dome we would see a real genocide in Gaza.
If the latest Gaza war taught us anything, is that UN is powerless. And, unfortunately, it is the highest entity that could apply leverage here, so... Not much we can do. In the long term I hope other nations realize they are very vulnerable and begin to invest more in defense, but that escalation can have other downsides.
Yes, the UN was directly responsible to stop the threat of Hezbollah attacking Israel. They got billions in funds, soldiers, and a quite literal license to kill to prevent it.
When Hamas started the Gaza war, the IDF barely defended against Hamas. They feared they were about to face land incursions straight through UN lines from Lebanon. That, despite the direct UN mission to use weapons to prevent it from just about everyone, the UNSC, the UNGA, UN resolutions, Lebanon's government, Hezbollah built up an army right under the noses of these soldiers.
The IDF was 100% correct in their assessment.
So now what do we do? Nobody sane will pretend that hamas or hezbollah's stated reasons for fighting against Israel are even remotely true. And Iran? Iran still quite literally screams on state television they will massacre Israel and then the US (they have "hardliners" making speeches, which are really more like screaming)
So another attack will come again, that's for sure. How do we prevent the same outcome we had now? Nobody, not even Iran, wants this (although for Iran I'd bet the Palestinian casualties aren't anywhere near high enough). But they won't change. So ...
> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these?
Apply the Apartheid South Africa treatament. Gather the larger number possible of complying members, and apply a coordinated boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to put pressure in the party engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing or other abhorrent actions.
I think this is a good argument why a singular world power is actually a bad thing - because no matter how much it will promote itself as the "good guys" (and of course it will), at the end of the day, it will push through its own interests by that dominance - whereas if power is more evenly distributed, countries might be more willing to agree to common, formalized rules and a "neutral" body to evaluate them.
I think the emergence of nation states with democratic institutions and a strong system of law is actually a hopeful precedent here. Somehow we got from a world of fiefdoms and lords that literally stood above the law to states with checks and balances. (Yes, we're sliding back towards the "fiefdoms" situation right now, but we're still far better than things used to be)
So I'm gonna be a starry-eyed idealist and keep the hope up that we might archive the same on a global level at some point.
History has shown that having a multitude of roughly-equal competing powers results in more per-capita death from war than when there is 1 or two dominant nations. The 1800's and early 1900's were bloody. Post WWII has had less death from war.
True, though post-WWII was not a single power either until the 90s. We've had several decades of Cold War in which there were at least two great powers.
The UN is really just meant to prevent World War 3 and nuclear war. It has succeeded in this for the last 70 years. The structure of the UN is basically unanimous consensus between the major world powers with each power getting a veto.
There is no unanimous consensus on this issue at all.
Did it? Because this was also always the argument for the "League of Nations" that came before it. If you read 1930s newspapers that's what they give as a reason for the organization's existence ...
Now after WW2, consensus is that the League of Nations may have outright caused WW2, and certainly contributed more than any other individual factor. The League of Nations was the embodiment of the treaty of Versailles. As if that wasn't bad enough, the League of Nations was also the league of nations that stopped most reactions against Hitler immediately before the war.
I'm not even going to bother drawing the obvious parallel with how the UN is treating nuclear powers, and people defending themselves against attacks by a nuclear (or trying-to-be-nuclear) power.
> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these
If recent history is any indicator, UN isn't that structure; probably EU / G7 / BRICS & other such blocs are:
... we construct a new dataset covering all 43 very large mass atrocities perpetrated by governments or non-state actors since 1945 with at least 50,000 civilian fatalities.
This article introduces and summarizes these data, including an inductively generated typology of three major ending types: those in which (i) violence is carried out to its intended conclusion (37%); (ii) the perpetrator is driven out of power militarily (26%); or (iii) the perpetrator shifts to a different strategy no longer involving mass atrocities against civilians (37%).
We find that international actors play a range of important roles in endings, often involving encouragement and support for policy changes that reduce mass killings. Endings could be attributed principally to armed foreign interventions in only four cases, three of which involved regime change. Within the cases we study, no ending was attributable to a neutral peacekeeping mission.
What kind of answer are you expecting? The only “structure” that matters is power, and the only power that matters is the power to force and destroy. Everything else is derived from that, not the other way round.
The security council was built around the nuclear powers at the time. I guess there are two ways to look at it:
1: The new nuclear powers should be included, I guess including N Korea, India, and Pakistan. And possibly Israel, if they admit to having them.
2: Rethink the whole thing. Are nukes really as important as everybody thought they were after WWII? If not, what should we look at to decide who to include?
> The security council was built around the nuclear powers at the time.
That's not actually true, the 5 permanent seats on the UNSC were granted in 1945, well before any country aside from the US managed to develop nuclear weapons.
Those 5 countries did all eventually develop nuclear weapons and became nuclear weapon states under the NPT but that happened quite a bit later.
the vetoes are pretty much the sole differentiator between the UN and the league of nations, which failed.
in theory its better if you don't give veto power to great powers because they'll abuse it. in practice it's what keeps the fragile system that prevents WW3 from total collapse, as happened with the league of nations.
Many countries have strict laws how to deal with genocide, genocide support, and genocide deniers! So just enforce local laws, report supporters of genocide to police.
This doesn't seem to even relate to the question. How am I suppose to out the Israeli government to my local police? Or the miriad entities that support it?
Indeed. It has to be a particular kind of recognized genocide, and then people just don't agree on what is and isn't a genocide. Turkey is the worst offender there, but it's quite a widespread problem.
And, of course, the problem is people don't agree. Turkey refuses to accept many of it's actions as genocidal (because that's how Turkey was created: when the last islamic state ("the Ottoman empire") got destroyed by Turks (who at that point were the ottoman army), they massacred a LOT of population groups, famously the Armenians but academics name more than a dozen separate genocides: Greeks, Kurds, Azeri, Jews, ...)
Oh and of course they kept doing it. Technically what Turkey did in Cyprus is also a genocide, and they have an active policy of replacing Kurd population groups but that's, if that's even possible, an even worse sore point.
The sad fact is that these genocides happened to gain territory. And, most of that territory, go look at Google Maps. This was mostly deep inland Turkey. And ... Turks obviously don't want it. There's no big cities there, and the more east you go, the less little towns, the less people, the less everything (except on the border). After the genocides what was a European landscape, a village every 5km or so is now empty. Hundreds of kilometers of nothing. Names on a map , with nothing or ruins below them. You don't really need a line to find the Armenian or Georgian border: where the farms begin, the rectangular fields, the villages, you've crossed the Turkish border. In other words: what repopulation the Turks did ... is a failure. And what little remains, mostly near the black sea, is losing young people at an astonishing rate. This is huge empty space, mostly ecologically destroyed land, not productive farmland. Not nature preserves. Nothing.
Also the reverse also doesn't apply. The UN may have trouble with Israeli actions, but where the UN took control to resolve the situation, where the UN took action, most famously southern Lebanon, it has not just failed but it systematically kept getting worse for 50+ years now. Whereas at least for Israel you can say: look at Tel Aviv. Look at Jerusalem. Look at Haifa. They really built something. Where the UN "helped" ... there's nothing.
> It does seem like UN is unable to really make a dent here.
Maybe the UN should try to avoid releasing obviously biased reports.[0]
Keep in mind the UN has already effectively thrown away all credibility when it comes to anything related to Israel already due to well documented extreme anti-Israel bias.[1]
Anybody surprised at this point? In any case, this is the same UN that has accepted israel, and israel lobbied US vetoes to Palestine entry into the UN again and again, even then a broad majority of the world have voted in favor of granting membership, does any of what they do or pretend to represent matters anymore?
At this point, leaders should create a new security council excluding the permanent SC members, set rules around voting on issues where every country has an equal voice, create enforcement frameworks and then invite the SC members with equal footing.
The proposed reforms led by the likes of Brazil, Germany and India are not getting a lot of traction. Maybe if they included everyone else they'd have a better chance.
See also this This American Life episode, where doctors visiting Gaza saw a disturbing number of children with direct gunshot wounds to the head and chest: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/859/transcript
Had seen a testimony of an European doctor coming from Gaza saying that each week or month the hospitals where flooded with young males coming from the humanitarian food queues with a different gunshoot type. There was the month of the knees, the month of head gunshoots, and the month of the young men flooding the hospitals with their testicles blown off, all because they wanted to pick some food for their families.
Were are the UN sanctions on Israel? Still none? UN can go f*k themselves then.
Needing so many years to get the courage to say the world genocide, where everybody had seen for years Israel turning little children into little flesh chunks, slowly unfurl in horrid technicolor in world TV, is just another part of the problem. UN is useless.
This is really sickening - if North Korea or any other less connected country did this, you would quickly see their national (tech) companies being sanctioned by the west. I never understood how a country like Israel, given the history of its own tribe, can themselves become so gruesome and have a hugely state-supported private spy-tech sector that supports the worst autocrates in the world as long as the money flows to them.
First thing coming into mind is the number of companies and individuals blocking Russians in the beginning of the war before any sanctions out of virtue signalling.
I felt that quite badly at the start of that war, multiple accounts closed, including my brokerage account, bank account rejected, and a flood of emails asking me to divulge loads of documentation to get them to consider giving them back to me!
I don't actually live in Russia, if I did, it would be even worse.
I suspect that without American support, they would have to do quite a bit to change their behavior. They probably can't afford the current level of conflict on their own. It would force them to negotiate with their neighbors.
Many many countries got sanctioned into oblivion or color-revolutionized into US-loyalty for far far less (often just for not being aligned with the US).
It is even more sickening and outrageous if you view it through that lens.
The excuse will be that these are just casualties of war and we'll shrug it off and move on, whereas the imaginary beheaded babies from October 7 are unforgivable and excuse any action on Israel's behalf.
Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions. Use any legal means to stop funding this genocide and make Israel's leadership accountable. We all love our comfy white collar jobs and would rather not rock the boat, but not doing the little we can do (e.g. stop using Israeli suppliers and services) makes us supporters.
If you try very hard, you can understand the reason for bombardment, at least from the BEGINNING. Surely, not the reason for killing these poor children.
But I never came to better conclusion about West Bank annexation that that it is pure imperialism. Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine. I'm still not quite sure what is the purpose, there is really not enough land or it's all just bs?
Not sure it's the same thing. Russians want political and territorial control in Ukraine, not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians". Israel wants to conquer the whole of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem) to replace the native population with its own. There is no possible equal integration of Palestinians or their descendants into a Jewish state, not in a thousand years, and by design.
Well russians over the history resettled the native population numerous times, even resettle russians there.
But the truth is they mostly want control for whatever reason they made up. Part of their propaganda is thet Ukrainians are basically confused russians so you got the point here.
But I wouldn't be sure about your claim regarding Israel. Even now there are millions of Palestinians with Israel citizenship. I understand the deeply rooted animosity with hamas but I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank. I suppose it have something to do with their extreme religious part of goverment?
You've had a point. Maybe it's more like Native Americans and colonizer type of situation.
> I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank
Besides the obvious religious/ ideological motivation, there's also a simple matter of territory: Israel is a small country and the West Bank and Gaza have a lot of value, both for the country as a whole (more space for more people, more natural resources, nobody to share with) as well as commercial value- think developments, real estate, industrial and agricultural areas, seafront properties, etc. Very hard to keep your hands off this bounty, for decades, when the rest of the world basically allows you everything.
> not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians"
The similarity might be stronger than you suspect. Russia abducts and transports Ukrainian children to controlled territories [0], and actively encourages its own citizens to relocate to captured Ukrainian areas through economic incentives, subsidized housing, and aggressive long-term repopulation strategies.
The USA won't do anything about it because the USA is also guilty of heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights at scale - in fact, it is the worst criminal on the world stage when it comes to un-prosecuted war crimes... so Israel facing justice will only mean that the USA will face the same justice, and we all know that there is nothing more heinous in all the world to an American than to be embarrassed by their state facing justice at the hands of any other international entity.
But the terrible tragedy is that this situation is not going to resolve until these countries actually prosecute their war criminals, who have been getting away with it in the current context for 20+ years. Which means the only ones with any power to do anything about the USA/Israels' war criminals, are the citizens of those countries themselves - which is why the situation is just so dire.
Until there is a real appetite for prosecuting ones own war criminals instead of bleating like sheep for the blood of perceived enemies of other states, there will not be the moral stance/altitude required for Americans to do anything effective about the war crimes of any other nation.
Until Americans prosecute their own war criminals they can do nothing effective about Israels', Russias', Ukraines' war criminals, either ...
Maybe to spark curious conversation, when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these? It does seem like UN is unable to really make a dent here.
We kinda went through this with South Africa.
The only thing saving Israel is the US protection and the nukes. US protection can change. Nukes are harder.
South Africa successfully utilized "strategic ambiguity". They never explicitly acknowledged they had the weapons, while making sure world leaders knew they were a credible threat.
during South Africa's border wars (specifically against the Cubans in Angola), there were internal discussions about deploying tactical nuclear weapons. Because world leaders viewed that threat as entirely credible, it gave South Africa massive leverage.
Feels like world leaders view modern Israeli threats through the exact same lens and i'd agree given recent covert operations like the beeper bombings hence this UN posture.
Could we replicate the SA situation? probably not but maybe partially?
When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, South Africa’s strategic leverage evaporated overnight. The US and UK no longer had a reason to shield them from crippling global economic sanctions.
Feels like we are watching this in real time with Israel post Iran war. If the US entirely removed its diplomatic shield and allowed full global economic isolation to set in, the economic cost of maintaining a pariah state might eventually outweigh the perceived security benefit of the weapons. ('might' doing a lot of heavy lifting there)
Also SA was also motivated by fear of the nukes getting in the hands of the incoming leftist government, Israel does not have that fear.
Not sure if it used to be the case with South Africa too, but I'm baffled how much ideological support Israel still has, in various population groups. There are at least two religious groups who seem to view it as integral part of a divine plan that trumps all other considerations. ("mainstream" Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians)
Then there various secular narratives around the Jewish homeland, the rebirth (and Germany's redemption) after the Holocaust etc.
For western politicians, it seems far easier to chime in to the dehumanization of Palestinians and either paint the daily suffering there as "tragic but necessary", make fun of it or dismiss it completely - than to object to those stories.
This seems to work on a different layer than geopolitics, so I have doubts that a shift in geopolitics alone would change this. (I may be wrong)
Though maybe the changed perception of Israel after the Gaza war might change it.
I can try explain the Orthodox Jewish one.
Before 1939 there were large Jewish communities across Europe and the Middle East. There were many schools for rabbis and philosophy. But Antisemitism and the Holocaust destroyed the European communities and antizionism forced the Jews from Arab countries to Israel in the 1950s. These communities have never been rebuilt. The hate was real, powerful and successful. Most of what was left of the Jews went to Israel.
Israel is now the centre of Jewish life and religious life. It is also where Jews are most protected. For example, most rabbis are trained in Israel and many Jews have moved there. So many modern Jews have a spiritual, historical and familial connection to Israel.
Jews see a different side of the conflict. Most want peace but believe their Arab enemies do not.
Yes, and that seems to be the rationale of western politicians as well, essentially, "we have to protect Israel to protect the Jewish people, without it, the Holocaust would risk repeating"
That makes sense as a "subjective experience" (if there is something like the subjective experience of a people), but it fails the reality check for me.
Yes, Israel is the center of Jewish life today (New York coming next apparently), but I can't really believe that it genuinely is the safest place for Jews in the world today - not after the last years. Jews in the US or Europe were not at risk of being murdered by Hamas, hit by a missile from Iran or get conscripted in a war. Jews in Israel were.
> Most want peace but believe their Arab enemies do not.
Well, everyone wants peace in the "I won" sense. I don't see that most Israeli Jews want peace in the sense of living together peacefully with their neighbors.
(Neither do their neighbors, true - which is why I fault Israelis less here than the western allies who should apply force to both sides to deescalate and reconcile if they really wanted to end the conflict, but who instead only apply pressure to one side and unquestionably support the other side)
> Neither do their neighbors, true
Their neighbours don't really have an option though. Stopping all resistance will not stop the settlers from harassing and chasing away the natives, and it will not force Israel to respect any border (which they took care of not even declaring). If anything, Palestinian resistance is functional to the progress of the occupation, so, if things get too quiet, a couple of killings or demolished homes keep the situation dynamic enough.
Unless you're counting on the moral authority of the Western nations that stayed silent or even financed and armed Israel while it was starving a population under blockade and bombings, murdering tens of thousands of civilians, killing hundreds of journalists, bombing hospitals and universities. Maybe they would say something if Israel killed and conquered a population that absolutely refuses to react. What do you think?
You are missing the very massive religious and ideological groups who are on the other side and see in the destruction of Israel a divine plan or a fulfilment of some secular ideal.
This blinkered view will reasonably leave you baffled and with a distorted world model, and a perception that people are stupid when they are actually seeing the bigger picture.
No question those exist, but this ignores basic human psychology: If my whole family was wiped out in an airstrike, and then I have a whole population saying "yup, that's exactly how things should be!", of course I would start to hate them.
It is funny how much hand wringing is done with nuclear weapons. like they are this big line in the sand when really the same result happens with or without them. Gaza looks as wrecked as Hiroshima or Dresden. Doesn't matter it seems in terms of the function. I guess the bigger risk is really the implication vs the action. It is like Kayfabe for the political class.
I know traditional munitions aren’t exactly “clean” but isn’t nuclear fallout still a unique concern?
No one in power meaningfully cares about environmental destruction.
Might really is doing some heavy lifting here. If the UN turns on Israel and they become sanctioned by the west the most likely outcome is that Israel turns to China. China needs stabilizing forces in the Middle East because of their lack of domestic fossil fuels. They also see similarities between the Gaza situation and Taiwan. The Israelis are fiercely aggressive on security issues. They will not give up on that because of sanctions I think. What US backing is really doing is mostly just making it cheaper for Israel to defend itself so that the Israelis feel less pressure to be aggressive with making buffer zones. Without the US funding the iron dome we would see a real genocide in Gaza.
If the latest Gaza war taught us anything, is that UN is powerless. And, unfortunately, it is the highest entity that could apply leverage here, so... Not much we can do. In the long term I hope other nations realize they are very vulnerable and begin to invest more in defense, but that escalation can have other downsides.
> highest entity that could apply leverage
What is the lowest entity that can apply leverage? Regardless of what US or UN does or doesn't, you can start boycotting today.
Not completely true, if you're in the US there are laws to punish boycott of Israel.
Yes, the UN was directly responsible to stop the threat of Hezbollah attacking Israel. They got billions in funds, soldiers, and a quite literal license to kill to prevent it.
When Hamas started the Gaza war, the IDF barely defended against Hamas. They feared they were about to face land incursions straight through UN lines from Lebanon. That, despite the direct UN mission to use weapons to prevent it from just about everyone, the UNSC, the UNGA, UN resolutions, Lebanon's government, Hezbollah built up an army right under the noses of these soldiers.
The IDF was 100% correct in their assessment.
So now what do we do? Nobody sane will pretend that hamas or hezbollah's stated reasons for fighting against Israel are even remotely true. And Iran? Iran still quite literally screams on state television they will massacre Israel and then the US (they have "hardliners" making speeches, which are really more like screaming)
So another attack will come again, that's for sure. How do we prevent the same outcome we had now? Nobody, not even Iran, wants this (although for Iran I'd bet the Palestinian casualties aren't anywhere near high enough). But they won't change. So ...
What now?
> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these?
Apply the Apartheid South Africa treatament. Gather the larger number possible of complying members, and apply a coordinated boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to put pressure in the party engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing or other abhorrent actions.
I think this is a good argument why a singular world power is actually a bad thing - because no matter how much it will promote itself as the "good guys" (and of course it will), at the end of the day, it will push through its own interests by that dominance - whereas if power is more evenly distributed, countries might be more willing to agree to common, formalized rules and a "neutral" body to evaluate them.
I think the emergence of nation states with democratic institutions and a strong system of law is actually a hopeful precedent here. Somehow we got from a world of fiefdoms and lords that literally stood above the law to states with checks and balances. (Yes, we're sliding back towards the "fiefdoms" situation right now, but we're still far better than things used to be)
So I'm gonna be a starry-eyed idealist and keep the hope up that we might archive the same on a global level at some point.
History has shown that having a multitude of roughly-equal competing powers results in more per-capita death from war than when there is 1 or two dominant nations. The 1800's and early 1900's were bloody. Post WWII has had less death from war.
True, though post-WWII was not a single power either until the 90s. We've had several decades of Cold War in which there were at least two great powers.
The UN is really just meant to prevent World War 3 and nuclear war. It has succeeded in this for the last 70 years. The structure of the UN is basically unanimous consensus between the major world powers with each power getting a veto.
There is no unanimous consensus on this issue at all.
Did it? Because this was also always the argument for the "League of Nations" that came before it. If you read 1930s newspapers that's what they give as a reason for the organization's existence ...
Now after WW2, consensus is that the League of Nations may have outright caused WW2, and certainly contributed more than any other individual factor. The League of Nations was the embodiment of the treaty of Versailles. As if that wasn't bad enough, the League of Nations was also the league of nations that stopped most reactions against Hitler immediately before the war.
I'm not even going to bother drawing the obvious parallel with how the UN is treating nuclear powers, and people defending themselves against attacks by a nuclear (or trying-to-be-nuclear) power.
It did because world war 3 hasn’t happened and it’s been about 80 years vs the short time between world war 2 and world war 1.
> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these
If recent history is any indicator, UN isn't that structure; probably EU / G7 / BRICS & other such blocs are:
How very massive atrocities end: A dataset and typology (2020), https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319900912What kind of answer are you expecting? The only “structure” that matters is power, and the only power that matters is the power to force and destroy. Everything else is derived from that, not the other way round.
Perhaps it was a rhetorical question.
The UN is stuck in 1945. The UNSC needs to throw out the UK, France, and bring in Brazil, India, South Africa and Germany.
And this veto nonsense needs to go away.
The security council was built around the nuclear powers at the time. I guess there are two ways to look at it:
1: The new nuclear powers should be included, I guess including N Korea, India, and Pakistan. And possibly Israel, if they admit to having them.
2: Rethink the whole thing. Are nukes really as important as everybody thought they were after WWII? If not, what should we look at to decide who to include?
> The security council was built around the nuclear powers at the time.
That's not actually true, the 5 permanent seats on the UNSC were granted in 1945, well before any country aside from the US managed to develop nuclear weapons.
Those 5 countries did all eventually develop nuclear weapons and became nuclear weapon states under the NPT but that happened quite a bit later.
the vetoes are pretty much the sole differentiator between the UN and the league of nations, which failed.
in theory its better if you don't give veto power to great powers because they'll abuse it. in practice it's what keeps the fragile system that prevents WW3 from total collapse, as happened with the league of nations.
And how do you suggest they do that?
Many countries have strict laws how to deal with genocide, genocide support, and genocide deniers! So just enforce local laws, report supporters of genocide to police.
This doesn't seem to even relate to the question. How am I suppose to out the Israeli government to my local police? Or the miriad entities that support it?
Pro-tip (observe what the UK does closely): Don't call it a genocide and then you don't need to do anything about it.
Indeed. It has to be a particular kind of recognized genocide, and then people just don't agree on what is and isn't a genocide. Turkey is the worst offender there, but it's quite a widespread problem.
And, of course, the problem is people don't agree. Turkey refuses to accept many of it's actions as genocidal (because that's how Turkey was created: when the last islamic state ("the Ottoman empire") got destroyed by Turks (who at that point were the ottoman army), they massacred a LOT of population groups, famously the Armenians but academics name more than a dozen separate genocides: Greeks, Kurds, Azeri, Jews, ...)
Oh and of course they kept doing it. Technically what Turkey did in Cyprus is also a genocide, and they have an active policy of replacing Kurd population groups but that's, if that's even possible, an even worse sore point.
The sad fact is that these genocides happened to gain territory. And, most of that territory, go look at Google Maps. This was mostly deep inland Turkey. And ... Turks obviously don't want it. There's no big cities there, and the more east you go, the less little towns, the less people, the less everything (except on the border). After the genocides what was a European landscape, a village every 5km or so is now empty. Hundreds of kilometers of nothing. Names on a map , with nothing or ruins below them. You don't really need a line to find the Armenian or Georgian border: where the farms begin, the rectangular fields, the villages, you've crossed the Turkish border. In other words: what repopulation the Turks did ... is a failure. And what little remains, mostly near the black sea, is losing young people at an astonishing rate. This is huge empty space, mostly ecologically destroyed land, not productive farmland. Not nature preserves. Nothing.
Also the reverse also doesn't apply. The UN may have trouble with Israeli actions, but where the UN took control to resolve the situation, where the UN took action, most famously southern Lebanon, it has not just failed but it systematically kept getting worse for 50+ years now. Whereas at least for Israel you can say: look at Tel Aviv. Look at Jerusalem. Look at Haifa. They really built something. Where the UN "helped" ... there's nothing.
Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.
> It does seem like UN is unable to really make a dent here.
Maybe the UN should try to avoid releasing obviously biased reports.[0]
Keep in mind the UN has already effectively thrown away all credibility when it comes to anything related to Israel already due to well documented extreme anti-Israel bias.[1]
[0] https://unwatch.org/un-watch-legal-rebuttal-disproving-the-p...
[1] https://unwatch.org/2025-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-...
I wonder how many inquiries UN did on October 7 and if they publicly sanctioned hamas at least once.
UN is a useless clown show for a long time now.
Please don't engage in whataboutism on HN.
Anybody surprised at this point? In any case, this is the same UN that has accepted israel, and israel lobbied US vetoes to Palestine entry into the UN again and again, even then a broad majority of the world have voted in favor of granting membership, does any of what they do or pretend to represent matters anymore?
At this point, leaders should create a new security council excluding the permanent SC members, set rules around voting on issues where every country has an equal voice, create enforcement frameworks and then invite the SC members with equal footing.
The proposed reforms led by the likes of Brazil, Germany and India are not getting a lot of traction. Maybe if they included everyone else they'd have a better chance.
See also this This American Life episode, where doctors visiting Gaza saw a disturbing number of children with direct gunshot wounds to the head and chest: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/859/transcript
Had seen a testimony of an European doctor coming from Gaza saying that each week or month the hospitals where flooded with young males coming from the humanitarian food queues with a different gunshoot type. There was the month of the knees, the month of head gunshoots, and the month of the young men flooding the hospitals with their testicles blown off, all because they wanted to pick some food for their families.
Were are the UN sanctions on Israel? Still none? UN can go f*k themselves then.
Needing so many years to get the courage to say the world genocide, where everybody had seen for years Israel turning little children into little flesh chunks, slowly unfurl in horrid technicolor in world TV, is just another part of the problem. UN is useless.
This is really sickening - if North Korea or any other less connected country did this, you would quickly see their national (tech) companies being sanctioned by the west. I never understood how a country like Israel, given the history of its own tribe, can themselves become so gruesome and have a hugely state-supported private spy-tech sector that supports the worst autocrates in the world as long as the money flows to them.
First thing coming into mind is the number of companies and individuals blocking Russians in the beginning of the war before any sanctions out of virtue signalling.
I felt that quite badly at the start of that war, multiple accounts closed, including my brokerage account, bank account rejected, and a flood of emails asking me to divulge loads of documentation to get them to consider giving them back to me!
I don't actually live in Russia, if I did, it would be even worse.
Hopefully Israel will have lost American support in a generation or so, who cares what happens to them after that.
Well, you should still care. They have nukes and have promised to use them were Tel Aviv to fall.
I suspect that without American support, they would have to do quite a bit to change their behavior. They probably can't afford the current level of conflict on their own. It would force them to negotiate with their neighbors.
Israel has had a hand up each US politician’s ass since the 1980s. Israel owns all of them.
Many many countries got sanctioned into oblivion or color-revolutionized into US-loyalty for far far less (often just for not being aligned with the US).
It is even more sickening and outrageous if you view it through that lens.
If your state finds that it needs to murder children in its defense then it is a failed state and should be refactored by its citizenry, immediately.
Because that which war criminals bring to their victims, they will also - ALWAYS - bring back to their own state.
Prosecute your war criminals. Now!
Perfect speech, I wish hamas and their 70% supporters in gaza could really hear it
The excuse will be that these are just casualties of war and we'll shrug it off and move on, whereas the imaginary beheaded babies from October 7 are unforgivable and excuse any action on Israel's behalf.
Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions. Use any legal means to stop funding this genocide and make Israel's leadership accountable. We all love our comfy white collar jobs and would rather not rock the boat, but not doing the little we can do (e.g. stop using Israeli suppliers and services) makes us supporters.
We need to build beach resorts, with casinos and golden statues!
Flagging a serious topic like this indicates motive in a way that's unbecoming.
This is rising fast. 61 points at this moment.
Doubled to 103 points in 6 minutes
And flagged 36 minutes after submission right around 104
Flagged and off the home page. Now at 106 points.
After another half hour it is at 134 points despite being flagged.
It's taken another 5 hours to reach 201 points, despite being flagged and removed from the home page at around 100 points.
It is no longer flagged.
[retracted]
mods are still sleeping
If you try very hard, you can understand the reason for bombardment, at least from the BEGINNING. Surely, not the reason for killing these poor children.
But I never came to better conclusion about West Bank annexation that that it is pure imperialism. Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine. I'm still not quite sure what is the purpose, there is really not enough land or it's all just bs?
I wonder if this ends up Flagged.
> Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine.
Not sure it's the same thing. Russians want political and territorial control in Ukraine, not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians". Israel wants to conquer the whole of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem) to replace the native population with its own. There is no possible equal integration of Palestinians or their descendants into a Jewish state, not in a thousand years, and by design.
Well russians over the history resettled the native population numerous times, even resettle russians there. But the truth is they mostly want control for whatever reason they made up. Part of their propaganda is thet Ukrainians are basically confused russians so you got the point here.
But I wouldn't be sure about your claim regarding Israel. Even now there are millions of Palestinians with Israel citizenship. I understand the deeply rooted animosity with hamas but I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank. I suppose it have something to do with their extreme religious part of goverment?
You've had a point. Maybe it's more like Native Americans and colonizer type of situation.
Those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are no longer allowed into Israel. That's my understanding after watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrmE-WiC4eA
You’ve either misunderstood or the youtuber is lying to you.
Third option: it's true.
> I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank
Besides the obvious religious/ ideological motivation, there's also a simple matter of territory: Israel is a small country and the West Bank and Gaza have a lot of value, both for the country as a whole (more space for more people, more natural resources, nobody to share with) as well as commercial value- think developments, real estate, industrial and agricultural areas, seafront properties, etc. Very hard to keep your hands off this bounty, for decades, when the rest of the world basically allows you everything.
> not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians"
The similarity might be stronger than you suspect. Russia abducts and transports Ukrainian children to controlled territories [0], and actively encourages its own citizens to relocate to captured Ukrainian areas through economic incentives, subsidized housing, and aggressive long-term repopulation strategies.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7g5xnvl2eo
[1] https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russias...
[[ Edit - added references in response to flagging ]]
Kidnapping and moving children to new parents also counts as genocide under the convention on genocide.
The USA, the most powerful nation the world has ever see, is powerless to do anything about it.
If the US can't do anything about it, what hope is there for the underfunded UN?
I think powerless is entirely the wrong word as they are actively supplying the arms to do it
The USA won't do anything about it because the USA is also guilty of heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights at scale - in fact, it is the worst criminal on the world stage when it comes to un-prosecuted war crimes... so Israel facing justice will only mean that the USA will face the same justice, and we all know that there is nothing more heinous in all the world to an American than to be embarrassed by their state facing justice at the hands of any other international entity.
But the terrible tragedy is that this situation is not going to resolve until these countries actually prosecute their war criminals, who have been getting away with it in the current context for 20+ years. Which means the only ones with any power to do anything about the USA/Israels' war criminals, are the citizens of those countries themselves - which is why the situation is just so dire.
Until there is a real appetite for prosecuting ones own war criminals instead of bleating like sheep for the blood of perceived enemies of other states, there will not be the moral stance/altitude required for Americans to do anything effective about the war crimes of any other nation.
Until Americans prosecute their own war criminals they can do nothing effective about Israels', Russias', Ukraines' war criminals, either ...