1/12/24 Israel Special: US Attacks Yemen Houthis, Israel's Presents ICJ Genocide Defense, Norm Finkelstein On ICJ Hearings, And US Directly Aids Israel Strikes In Gaza

Let's put this up there on the screen. US and British military have officially launched massive retaliatory strikes against the Iranian backed who Thi's in Yemen, striking approximately a dozen sites all across the country of Yemen on the Iranian back to militia, which has launched several missiles and attacks on ships in the Red Sea. So this is obviously a breaking news situation, so we don't have a full amount of the details. What we do know are that

the militaries and the governments that were involved. While it was just the United States and the UK, it was quote with support from Australia, the Netherlands, Bahrain, Canada. All these joint air strikes. These strikes involved US aircraft, US ships and submarines as well as whatever the Brits were able to bring to the table. We have a little bit of the video. I want this to just play while I'm talking a little bit about this. We can put that up there right now. Yemeny sources have confirmed

that the strikes actually occurred. All of this within the last thirty or forty minutes or so, series of ballistic missiles apparently launched from Yemen towards targets in the Red Sea, possibly in retaliation. Now we have a very short reaction from the Houthy Group, a statement that they put out on telegram. They say, quote, we are with Palestine, we will not back down from our position, and we will respond to any aggression against us. To reiterate here, the

HOO these the Iranian back group. This has been the twenty seven now attacks that they have mounted since November nineteenth, where they decided to begin attacking both ships moving through the Red Sea that were going towards Israel, and it later began basically a full scale operation that has mounted now major response from the United States, from the UK

and a so called coalition which eventually fell apart. Of course, the reason why the Red Sea is so important is that it is one of the major thoroughfares of traffic for global shipping. It has caused hundreds of billions of dollars already to be lost because many ships have had to divert their traffic around the Horn of Africa, particularly hurting European markets Israeli's ports as well. Specifically, they are ships which had been targeted by who, the suicide drones

and others. This has frankly just been a long time coming. Now the United States hasn't been engaged not only with anti ballistic anti ship missiles that they've had to shoot down from the US guided missile destroyers, We've also had multiple other instances. The latest last one it appears to be the quote unquote straw that books the Camel's back just yesterday two am Yemen time with an anti ship

ballistic missile. But there previously had been instances where you had boats that were literally shot from US military helicopters. Now all of this obviously has happened after the war in Gaza the Israeli bombing specifically now the Hoho Thies Iranian back group, say that they are doing this in response to Israeli military action. They claim that they will stop their strikes if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, and there was diminished activity whenever a ceasefire had previously occurred.

Now this is clearly the United States decided that's not something they're going to push for, and the Israeli certainly aren't as well. So now the US the UK are the ones who are militarily involved. This is especially significant. This is the first United States military strike on the territory of Yemen since twenty and sixteen, so it's been quite a long time. And just to take people a little bit back for the context, the Hohothis have been involved in a brutal civil war inside of Yemen now

for years. They were actually the target of a nine year bombing campaign from the Saudi Arabia and the Amarants the UAE, largely because they are Iranian backed, and these are regional rivalries between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the ua for control of Yemen, which has been very strategic position

as we can all see as for Wry this happened. Now, the problem in the question mark here is going to be if this US response, which the United States and initial statement said was quote unquote proportional, whether this will deter action. Now, previously we had a statement from the WHO thies that said that if there was any action against them, quote, any American aggression will never remain without

a response. That response will not be at the level of the operation that was recently carried out in targeting the American at sea with more than twenty four aircraft and a number of missiles. The response is greater than that. Again, that's according to the WHO these This attack seems to have been coordinated with some of the other powers in

the region. President CSI of Egypt apparently received a call earlier today from the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, who telegraphed quite a bit you know, given there, and they had a full meeting of their cabinet and others who were notified, and there was quite a bit of advanced knowledge that the strike was going to occur. Nonetheless, I mean the strike is still significant just for the main reason that this is the first expansion and direct intervention.

Now you know, at the behest of the United States, the UK, two NATO allies into this situation and to this war. It really does, you know, raise a lot of questions about where this goes. The Huthis have they are not Hamas, They are much more on par with Hesbaala. Their military capability is pretty big. I mean, they've got ballistic missiles, They've had the capacity now to shutdown shipping

in the Red Sea. They've got a decent amount of military capability that they've been supplied from Iran for almost a decade now. Who knows how many strongholds that they have. As I said, you know previously on our show, the main concern about knocking out quote unquote who the infrastructure and all of that is that they're very well equipped to sustain bombing as they showed us and the situation with Saudi Arabia and with the UAE and their bombing campaign.

There's also currently an international peace negotiation that was previously going on inside of Yemen, and this could turn this even to more of a catastrophe. Don't forget before the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Yemen was one of the worst humanitarian situations in the world and there was even bipartisan outrage here in the United States about the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, So we can't forget that this is a volatile situation. It very much could lead to an

expanded American presence inside of the war end. It's one of those where you know, this leads to all kinds of possible scenarios. The Houthi's very unlikely to just simply stop as a result of this. Who knows if the United States did you know, really carry out the strikes on significant military targets. We know what they say we'll see right now.

there's self functional after the site. But when we wake up in the morning, we certainly could see continued retaliatory strikes as the hoo. Theies have mounted daytime and nighttime attacks now in the past, but overall that's what we know so far from the US the UK. This has been confirmed from the Pentagon. President Biden originally was supposed to make a statement, according to the UK media, but

he did not do so. Like I said, recording here now seven thirty approximately Eastern time, just checking to make sure that we haven't seen anything. Oh actually, here we go. Literally just came flashed across the wire. Statement from President Biden quote, these strikes are in direct response to an unprecedented hoothy attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea, including the use of anti ship ballistack missiles for the

first time in history. These attacks have endangered US personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardizing trade, and threatened freedom of navigation. More than fifty nations have now been affected in twenty seven attacks on international commercial shipping. Crews from more than twenty countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy. And so in that basically in that statement giving a lengthy, pretty long justification for the

reason that the strikes did occur. So that's the initial response confirmation there from the White House. We will see whether we're going to get any more detail and color. We will bring all of you the news of that in the morning, but just wanted to give you a little bit of a little bit just of an initial

reaction the breaking news that situation. Here. I have the full now White House statement that I'm looking here, and it just says the ending says today's defensive action follows this extensive diplomatic campaign and HOOTI rebels escalating attacks against

our commercial vessels. These targeted strikes are a clear message the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to impareil freedom of navigation in one of the world's most commercial shipping routes. I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary. So there you go. That's everything that we've got right

now so far. As we said, probably going to see initial and more battle damage assessment and all that whenever we wake up in the morning. Wishing you all good night, and I hope you can sleep. Unfortunately, though it does appear that you know the prospect of regional war, probably probably higher than it's been in a long time, and a fearful moment now almost one hundred days into the war in Gaza. So there we go, and like I said, we will have more information for all of you tomorrow.

Shout out to our premium members who make all of these possible. Our crew all been stand by all day and they helped me put together this video, the elements and all of that. So if you can help us out at Breakingpoints dot Com and I will see you all later.

of Palestinian civilians. So yesterday on the show, we broke down for you some of what South Africa had to say in their statements in presenting their case, and this morning I took a listen to what the Israeli defense was, so I wanted to spend some time breaking that down for you before I jump into the arguments that they

are making. Of course, they are necessarily responding to the allegations that South Africa laid out, and so I wanted to start by putting some of the context of kind of the high level view of the core of South Africa's arguments on the merits. And I'll talk a little bit later about some of the legal technical issues that are also in dispute, and we can discuss those and what the South Africans are saying and what the Israelis

are saying as well. But this is the overall context that Israel has to respond to and that they attempted to respond to in their response in front of the International Court of Justice today. So South Africa spent a lot of time, understandably, since they're alleging genocide on the mass death that Israel has caused in the Gaza Strip and the large vast amount of destruction of civilian infrastructure. EUROMED Monitor has been tracking this.

infrastructure is destroyed. They go on to reiterate these numbers and they also talk about the number of injured gosins with long term disabilities. The rights group said, noting that the genocide, and this is their assessment that it is

a genocide, is a mass disabling event. They highlightighted Israel's continuous AirLand, and sea attacks that have destroyed about seventy percent of the Gaza Strip civilian facilities in infrastructure since October seventh, citing the clear Israeli aim of implementing collective punishment against the entire population and making the strip, which has been under siege for over seventeen years, uninhabitable. Israel is pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians towards mass forced displacement.

According to their estimates, thirty thousand, six hundred and seventy six Palestinines have been killed. That includes those who have been declared killed and also those who have are buried under the rubble and presumed dead. Their assessment is that that includes twenty thousand, two hundred and one civilians, so overwhelming number of civilians, and includes twelve thousand and forty children, six one hundred three women, two hundred and forty one

health workers, and one hundred and five journalists. An additional fifty eight thousand, nine hundred and sixty individuals have been injured, hundreds of whom are currently in serious condition. So that is the context of the mass death in the US, extent of the destruction that has been inflicted both on the you know, civilian population, also on all the civilian infrastructure, on aid workers, hospital workers, women, children. That was a

major focus of South Africa's case presented yesterday. The other piece that we've talked a lot about and that they spent a good bit of time on yesterday was establishing what they claimed to be genocidal intent. And this is not an easy task. Normally, you don't have political officials and military officials walking around saying, hey, guys, we're doing

a genocide. And so they had a list and also some video evidence of officials up to and including BB NETANYAHUO who were talking about, you know, the destruction of the Palestinian people, the destruction of Gaza, et cetera. And so just as a reminder of some of what they really focused on, because I think they anticipated that Israel would say, oh, well, a lot of these people, you know, the Minister of Antiquities or whatever, they don't really have

any governing authority. They're not the ones in charge. So what matters is the people at the top and the

policy that they're setting. So in light of anticipating that argument from the Israelis, which they did make a version of today, they spent some time on comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Nenyaho, who no one could argue doesn't have some influence here and isn't in control of what's going on, and then connected those to comments that were being made by rank and file soldiers on the ground who clearly took those comments seriously and were then implementing them in

the way that they were going about, you know, their assault on Gaza there on the ground. So just as a reminder of that. Let me go ahead and play those comments from NETANYAHUO talking about Amelek, the historic biblical foe of the Jewish people, which you know the Bible tells them to destroy the seat of Amelek, the camel, the sheep, the suckling, the oxen, everything. Here is what he had to say very early on in the war about their aims. Take a listen.

this was part of their attempt to establish intent. Of course, as we've covered extensively on breaking points, and I did as well in my original video breaking down the South African filing to the ICJ, that was a preview to

the arguments that they laid out yesterday. They had numerous pages of Israeli top Israeli officials, of top military officials, people who are in a position to influence government policy, you know, per their filing, and the comments that they made, things like you know, we want knock, but twenty twenty three were fighting human animals, they should be treated as such. Were instituting a complete siege that was you have Glant, the Defense minister. So those were the two sort of

primary components on the merits. Like I said, there were some other legal technical issues, but those were the major claims that Israel was then tasked with responding with today. So let me go ahead and play for you a little bit of how they approached that. Those of you who have been listening to Israeli rhetoric even just you know, since October seventh, a lot of these arguments won't be

surprising to you. The first thing that they did was to try to establish that the context that South Africa put before the court that that was not the right way to think about this conflict that you know. They first started by saying, listen, we understand better than anyone with this side convention is about because of the horrors of the Holocaust. They went on to say that effectively, this is was presented by South Africa as this one sided assault. In reality, this is a war between two actors.

You know, I would say left out of the Israeli analysis is the fact that one of these actors is a state power, funded and equipped with the by the world's superpower, and with incredible offensive capabilities, and the other is a non state actor with very limited capabilities, very limited ability to inflict damage on the Israeli people in

October seventh. They also talked, obviously, aside from October seventh, where they were able to inflict absolute horrors on many Israeli people, they also talked a lot about October seventh, and that that context was missing from the South African complaint. I don't think that's particularly fair because the atrocities that were committed on October seventh, South Africa doesn't dispute that

their argument is simply which is true. According to international law that even if you were subject to atrocities, it does not then justify you turning around and also committing atrocities, and it certainly doesn't justify genocide. So they also abhor the violence and attacks on civilians that were committed on October seventh. But their argument is, you know, this is essentially irrelevant given the acts that Israeli's have committed, the idf at the Beha of top Israeli officials that are

being committed on the ground against Gazans. So in addition, and this is the part that I'll go ahead and play for you so you can get a sense of some of these arguments, they basically argue that listen, if anyone is committing genocide here, it is hummas. So let's take a listen to that argument.

This chapter is repeated regularly by its leaders, with the goal, in the words of one member of Hamas's political bureau, of the cleansing of Palestine of the filth of the Jews. It is expressed no less chilling in the words of senior member Razi Khamad te Lebanese television on October twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, who refers to the October seventh attexts what Hamas calls the alaka fla.

do is justified end quote. Given that on October seventh, before any military response by Israel, South Africa issued an official statement blaming is quote the recent conflagration essentially blaming Israel for the murder of its own citizens. One wonders whether the applicant agrees.

This is a portion of their defense that they previewed going into today's hearing in stronger and less diplomatic words that were said for consumption for the public. They said something like, you know, they're in league with Hamas's rape regime or something of that nature, so effectively trying to cast dis versions on the character of the South African leadership and effectively say, you know what, they're basically Hamas

as well. In addition, they spend some time casting some doubt on the overall numbers of deaths, saying, you know, these are numbers that come from Hamas themselves, So how can you trust them? And this is something that you know they've said repeatedly from the beginning. Now, one way you could alleviate that concern over the veracity of the numbers is if you allowed in international observers who could independently assess what the actual death toll is. That has

not been allowed. We can also say that in previous conflicts, after when international observers were able to check out what the held Maas led health ministry was producing in the way of death toll, that it ended up being quite accurate. In addition, they also called into question how many civilians were actually being killed, So there was an effort to say, okay, these numbers, Yeah, it sounds bad, but it's not really

clear that these are even accurate numbers. And then you will also be unsurprised to learn if you've been listening to Israelis during this conflict and previously, they also spent a lot of time saying, well, listen, of course we abhor any violence against civilians, but the real reason that this is occurring is because of Hamas using them as human shields, being under their hospitals, being under their schools, there were pictures showed, I believe, of like a child's bedroom,

of Hamas using a residential house. And so they say, yes, there is a lot of destruction, you know, in the Gaza Strip, but this is because Hamas is using the civilian infrastructure for military purposes. And so even though we really regret it, we have to go in and destroy this because and it's because of Hamas that we have to do this now, you know, you might say on the other side, I might say, on the other side, Israel has used an amount of firepower and created a

level of destruction. And this is something South Africa pointed to yesterday that is nearly unprecedented. I mean, this has been a short period of time already surpassed years of Allied bombing of dressed In for example. The entirety of the Gaza Strip is effectively already rendered uninhabitable. Hospitals have been you know, hospitals have been attacked and rendered unusable. This is another thing that South Africa talked about yesterday.

And so Israel's response to that is basically to say, yes, maybe there's a lot of civilian infrastructure that has been destroyed, but it is really because of Hamas. They are the ones to blame for this. There was also a discussion about whether Israel does in fact have a right to defend themselves. One of the arguments made by South Africa yesterday, which is backed up by some scholars, is that since they are an occupying force, they don't actually have the

right to defend themselves. So they spend some time on that as well. In addition, they to try to explain the very high civilian death toll and to try to show that the reason there are so many civilians who have been killed in their bombardment is not because of their actions, but in spite of their actions to try to you know, Russian aid and to take these extraordinary

measures to protect civilians. So they spend a lot of time making the case that they are in fact going to extraordinary lengths to try to protect the civilian population in the Gaza strip. Let me play for you a bit of that argument and the.

in doing so, sacrificing operational advantage. Would it invest massive resources to provide civilians details about where to go, when to go, how to go to leave areas of fighting. Would it maintain a detical units staffed with experts whose sole role is to facilitate aid and who continue to

do so despite having their staff killed and kidnapped. When a population is ruled by a terrorist organization that cares more about wiping out its neighbor than about protecting its own civilians, there are acute challenges in protecting the civilian population. Those challenges are exacerbated by the dynamic and evolving nature of intense hostilities in an urban area where the enemy

exploits hospitals, shelters, and critical infrastructure. Would Israel work continuously with international organizations and states, even reaching out to them on its own initiative, to find solutions to these challenges if it were seeking to destroy the population. Israel's efforts to mitigate the ravages of this war on civilians are

the very opposite of intent to destroy them. Under these circumstances, Far from being the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from Israel's pattern of conduct, intent to commit genocide is not even a plausible inference.

them time to leave the northern Gaza Strip. This is over a million people who were displaced from the northern part of the Gaza Strip. We gave them time to leave, We protected their safe corridors. This flies in the face

of the testimony from South Africa. Yes, and what we've seen reported out during this war that even the places that they told people to flee to were not safe came under heavy bombardment, that there was massive civilian death in those places that had been declared quote unquote safe. You'll recall people, you know, we're told to flee to the south. They fled to Communist conunis, came under massive bombardment, they fled to Rafa, Rapha is now being is now

the center of hostilities. And even the little area that they told people to flee to, claiming that there were provisions aid provisions there that didn't even exist. It's just basically a desert wastelane. Even that area wasn't safe. South Africa also talked about that people came under fire and under bombardment even as they were fleeing along these so called safe corridors. On the aid provision piece, she argues that listen, we're working with humanitarian organizations. We've increased the

amount of aid that is going into the strip. This is counter to the original, you know, in the original comments in the war that they were implementing a complete siege, no medicine, no food, no fuel, no water, et cetera. And inconveniently for her argument, I'll mention two things. First of all, we just had actually two democratic US Senators

Christmin Holland keep forgetting who the other one is. I'm just like standard issue Democratic senator who are just in the region saying that Israel has created a process that is impossible, that is blocking the provisioning of aid and severely limiting what is able to come into the strip. And you know that is borne out by the evidence of the suffering that Gosins are going through on the ground. This is a UN report, and again the ICJ being a UN body, it's significant this comes from the UN.

Of course, this isn't like you know, the Hamasuled Health Ministry says, this is part the UN. Half of Gosin's are right now at risk of starving. According to the UN, more than ninety percent of palest means in the territory say they have regularly gone without food for a whole

day according to the United Nations. I'll just read you a little bit of this report, because as much as the visuals of the bombing and the bullets are horrifying and shocking, even potentially more deadly in the end will be the hunger and the disease that is running rampant through the Gaza Strip. So they start with this speaking with a father here. Whi la Zat's four children have been hungry for weeks, but she's sorry. A mother here, but she can barely find them food they ask for.

Sandwich is fruit juice, homemade Palestinian dishes like she used to cook before the war began, and a fleeting moment of internet access. She said. She once caught the children huddled around her phone to watch a YouTube video of

someone eating French fries. The most they can hope for these days, she said in a recent telephone interview, is a can of peas, some cheese and an energy bar distributed as a family's rations by the UN once a week in Rafa City in southern Gaza, where they fled to in early December to escape Israeli embardment farther north. Is not nearly enough to feed her family of seven. It is a daily ruggle, said mid Zetor, thirty seven, whose children range in age from nine months to thirteen years.

You feel you are under pressure and hopeless and you cannot provide anything. And here again are the numbers. Israel's war in Gaza has created a humanitarian catastrophe, with half of the population of about two point two million at risk of starvation and ninety percent saying that they regularly go without food for a whole day, The UN said in a recent report. Now, in an attempt to further rebut those numbers, the UN numbers that fifty percent are

on the verge of starvation. Other experts have said that they have not seen this level of famine and certainly how quickly it's set in that this has already surpassed the horrible famine that Yemen has grappled with, you know, during Saudi bombardment, that we also work complicit with, by the way, So in order to attempt to rebut that, the Israelis also showed videos of Hamas militants taking control of AID trucks coming in and according to them, comandeering

the aid supplies for their own fighters. That is very possible that there is some of that going on. I don't doubt it whatsoever. But we can go back to the overall numbers which AID agencies have repeatedly sounded the alarm on and said, this is nowhere near sufficient for what needs to come into the Gaza strip, especially given the fact that all of the agricultural not I shouldn't say all but some significant amount of the agricultural land in the Gaza Strip has been raised. There is no

ability for Gosins to produce their own food. At this moment, all but one of the World Health Organizations or the World Food Programs affiliated bakeries had been shut down. So there are unbelievably difficult situations unfolding on the ground, not to mention disaster in terms of famine and spread of

communicable diseases, incidents of diarrhea and children. These sorts of things have wildly surged because of the attacks on the civilian infrastructure, because of the blocking of sufficient aid to come into the Gaza Strip. I also thought this was another interesting thing I wanted to highlight for you guys.

We covered on Breaking Points how the day before South Africa was set to mount their case bb Netnah who came out and made the statement that was like, we are not at war with the Palestinian citizens, We are only at war with Hamas and also repudiating the idea that they had any interest in ethnic cleansing. He didn't use those words, but in you know, pushing Gazans out

of the Gaza Strip. This in direct odds, not only with the statements of extremist ministers Ben Kafir'smochrich, but also with reporting about Netnah who's own comments and own goals. So he very notably put this out the day before South Africa begins their case at the ic J, and in fact, those very comments were cited by Israel in their case today to say, yeah, he said that thing about Amelek, but what you really need to listen to is what he said two days ago where he said, no,

we're not at war with the Palestinian civilians. And they said, you know, yes, you have these ministers who are popping off. They're very upset about what happened on October seventh, very understandably, but the people who actually set power, they are the ones that you know, are much more cool and even headed. And take a look at these other comments that they've said are at odds with those that can be construed as having genocidal intent. I also, in that same vein,

I thought this was interesting. They also argued that the scope and intensity of Israel's operations have been decreasing, and claims that Israel's repeated pleasures to observe international law are enough to make provisional to block provisional measures and the reason I found that noteworthy as well. We did, and I believe we covered this on the show too, Yeah, we did. There have been recent comments from Defense Minister you Off Galana and others that they are moving into

another phase. It's going to be more targeted, it's going to be less massive bombardment as the early phases were. And so the fact that they raised this in this case raised a couple of questions for me. I mean, first, we got to see it before we believe it. The civilian tech toll has continued to be very high, so we need to see evidence of this first. That's number one.

Number two, it made me wonder if those comments about the new phase of war were actually that they were pressured into making those to try to bolster their case at the ICJ, basically saying like, look, yeah, the first part it was really brutal, it was really horrifying, lots of civilian infrastructure destroyed, people were hungry, people were being killed. But that's all over now already we're moving into another phase. So why would you issue this temporary injunction when we

already are done with that part. We're already moving into this other phase. So that was noteworthy to me that they cited both BB's comments that he literally made the day before this all started to say, look, what are you talking about. BB's saying very reasonable things here at odds with many other things that he has said, and that all of the various cabinet ministers have said as well, and also that they are citing this purported shift to

another phase of war. A lot of the media reporting had been that this change in tone from the Israelis was because of Biden administration pressure. I never really bought that this could be more accurately. What was going on is that they felt pressured by this case, which again is very interesting to me because my initial reaction when South Africa filed this petition was good for them, but

I doubt it will matter. The fact that the Israelis have responded in such a vociferous way, and in such a I think you can accurately say, panicked way sort of demonstrated to me that perhaps there is more to

this than I initially assumed. Let me talk just briefly about a couple of the legal technical matters, which I am, of course in not an ideal position to analyzes because I'm not a lawyer, but South Africa argued effectively that listen, there is you have to establish that there is an actual dispute between two countries to have standing to bring this case to the ICJ. South Africa yesterday late on Hey, we reached out to them here, we reached out to

them there. We issued a statement, they didn't respond, they didn't change, and so there is very clearly a dispute here with merit and that's why we have standing to bring this case. Israel disagreed with that. They said there wasn't that much time given it wasn't a serious engagement. It was just more of a perfunctory box checking in terms of establishing this standing and that there is actually technically a dispute. So who's right on that? I really I am not in a position to say, I don't

really know. It certainly seems to layman's perspective there a dispute here, but I don't know the technical legalese and whether that enables some members of the ICJ to not have to actually weigh in on the mass death and starvation and bombing of civilian infrastructure and hospitals, et cetera, gives them that little technical legal loophole to get out of having to deal with any of that. That's possible, just don't know. In addition, the argument for South Africa

is that we need a temporary injunction. And I'm using that language because that's how we talk about in the American court system. They use a different word in terms of the ICJ court system, but the idea is the same. We need a temporary injunction to stop is the Israeli government from impinging on the rights of Palestinians. Effectively, we need a ceasefire now while this case is being tried on the merits to figure out whether there is a

violation of the Genocide Convention. So our interest is in protecting the rights of Palestinians. The Israeli argument was, well, if you do that, you're not protecting the rights of Palestinians because anyway, by the way, we've shifted to this other phase now anyway, but you will be infringing on our rights to self defense. So those are the rights that you really need to focus on protecting. Here is our right to defend ourselves in the wake of October seventh.

The last thing I'll show you is after Israel concluded their presentation. There was a bit of a response from South Africa and I thought this part was particularly poignant, relevant, etc. It's a good point. South Africa's legal team basically said, listen, if Israel's right. If they're right now I'm adding this part. They're right about the their intent provisioning of aid. If they're right about that, you know, these various things are

Hamas's fault. If they're right that the death estimates are overestimated, that there's far less civilian death far fewer children who have been murdered here. If they're right about those things, then they would have allowed international investigation teams to enter Gaza. And I think that's a very good point because on a lot of this you just have to take Israel's word.

To take their word that they're really working hard to try to avoid civilian casualties, you have to take their word about the various supplies that they claim that they are shipping in and providing, and the responses that they are enabling. And so without having international observers in to actually see those things, you can't prove or disprove what

Israel is claiming in their own defense. So I think that is an incredibly valid point, and effectively, you know, the fact that Israel does not allow that to occur means we have to rely on things like the media loves to put it Hamas led Health Ministry for data about what is actually happening, because no one else can

really get in to assess what is happening. But we certainly know, you know, based on the UNS report, the level of hunger, the threat of starvation, the threat of a famine, and you know, the horrors that civilians have been subjected to. Israel doesn't really dispute that. They don't really dispute that this has been horrendous for civilians, that there has been massive pain and suffering as a result of these hostilities. They just say, listen, you're focusing only

on us. Really, most of this is Hamas's fault. They could end this now. If anyone it should be accused of genocide, it's Humas, not us. And that was the sort of bulk of their presentation to the International Court of Justice. I spoke for Crystal Colin Friends with Norman Finkelstein yesterday and he had originally which we played on the show. We asked him or Katie Helper had actually asked him, what do you think is going to happen here?

And he went through the list of the judges and what countries they're affiliated with, because even though we're talking a lot about the merits, a lot of this ends up being quite political. And he felt very pessimistic in that interview with Katie Halper that South Africa would prevail.

When we talked to him yesterday, Kyle and I, he was somewhat more optimistic that based on the merits and based on the fact that much of the data that is relied on in the South African case comes from the UN and the ICJZUN body, he felt a bit more optimistic. Now. He didn't think that it was open and shut, there was no guarantees, but he was a bit more hopeful that they might prevail. As for me, you know, I'm new to really understanding the workings of

this process. I have no idea where things go from here. They could find some legal technicality, like I said, to try to sort of find a loophole to get out

of really weighing in. They could find it is plausible Israel's committing in genocide and order and injunction and then it just is ignoring it doesn't really mean anything, or they could actually, you know, find on behalf of South Africa that it is plausible Israel is engaging in a genocide and it could actually sting, especially given the number of countries that have signed on to this, in countries like France that have said they'll abide by the ruling.

We just don't know. So that's the latest, guys. That's what I've got for you, and I'll see you guys, doon. I watched some of South Africa's presentation this morning. We're recording this on Thursday, just so everybody knows. I understand you were able to watch most but not all of it.

Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians with the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take.

disadvantage in this case. The disadvantage is this South Africa presented an eighty four page complained to a brief to the ICJ, so we knew exactly what they were going to argue, and the presentations were elaborations on or reiterations of what was in that brief. But they don't know what Israel is going to argue because Israel did not present a brief, and so they had to speculate if this is going to be your then we say this.

If that's going to be your argument, then we say that, So in effect, they had to squander a large amount of time trying to anticipate and preempt the argument which in fact South out excuse me, which in fact Israel may not make tomorrow. We don't know what, so they'll have the full time to make their case, whereas South Africa had to expend or squander a large amount of time trying to figure out what their argument might be and trying.

question what constitutes a dispute. So John Dugard, who I think it's fair to say is the most eminent, also the eldest of the representatives in South Africa, he handled the question of dispute because he anticipated that Israel might argue that this does not qualify as a dispute under the protocols of the ICJ, and therefore they should dismiss it out of hand. That's called the jurisdictional question. Does the court have jurisdiction over this particular issue? And another

lawyer focused on the legal question. You have to prove that, since they're bringing the case under the Genocide Convention, you have.

make a plausible case. And the other argument is that you can commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, all sorts of crimes. They may not be genocide, but the crimes in the real world often overlap with genocide. So the fact that these might be war crimes, crimes against humanity, and so forth doesn't preclude that simultaneously they also might be genocide. So if Israel were to argue, Okay, we don't agree, but we're not going to dispute that your claim.

We're not going to dispute your claim that war crimes were committed.

We're going to kill all of them, and they're dancing and they're very cheerful. That particular footage was targeting not Hamas but Hezbolah. So I assumed that was footage from the North Front, but the general idea that the soldiers had internalings what the senior government officials were saying. So you can't detach the statements at the upper tier from the actions at the lower tier.

Operation cast Led. Well, he composed this four hundred page report, and it was full of those statements made by the Israeli government. After that, Israel learned a lesson, don't make those statements because it might.

He kept saying, no, they're not so strong, don't fool yourself. And then he began to ridicule them, and he said, Israel's like a spider's web. You just blow on it and it disyntegrates. And nobody knew whether to take that literally or not. But suddenly, on October seventh, because I've talked and many obviously, I've talked many Arabs, many Palestinians, many Muslims, and the thought has suddenly sunk in.

very good granular satellite information. But no one can hold a candle to the kind of satellite intelligence that the US government has for kind of being picture stuff that can help inform their picture of the battlefield in Gaza. Now, you know what's the What's why?

but legal exposure as well. So you know, I've reported on this with the intercept in the past. The specific weapons systems we provided are not publicly disclosed. Unlike the war in Ukraine and the administration bullets what we're selling literally, yeah, you can go online and find it right now. They don't do that for these relies. They don't talk about the quantities of weapons. White House spokesperson John Kirby said in the past the reason for all of this is

operational security. But again, compare this to the Ukrainians. Where's the operational security with that? Nobody cared, everyone disclosed it, they were fine, it didn't hurt the Ukrainians to do so. So there's really this double standard between those two client conflicts, and it's quite telling when you look at the Administration's posture between the two.

the agencies that that's sending a larger team might. But what's what's critical about all this is that when you look at the war in Gaza, it's an unusual war. The vast majority of it is being fought long distance with artillery air power, and that's exactly the kind of things that satellite intelligence of the sort that these Air Force intelligence officers would would would uh specialize in providing the Israelis are gonna are going to be able to give them.

but it's only about hostage rescue. And so that's where this story moves the needle away from hostage rescue toward I mean, when you're talking targeting, that's a very different kind of operation. That's something the administration is never acknowledged. So certainly the Israelis are accepting some form of help in terms of the hostage response. There was a crash I think of an ospray and.

These kind of provide us some glimpse into what exactly is going on, because again the administration is not being forthcoming about it.

is there. But then there's also the idea of the political liability if somebody is killed in action that creates if an American and a member of the American military American intelligence community is harmed, that can also completely change the dynamic of a hot conflict like this.