War Crimes with Robert and James

because that's an important thing to be talking about. The downside of it is, as is often the case when people talk about things on the Internet, a lot of people are talking about war crimes and don't actually know what that means. So I figured, let's talk about like what war crimes is be do. And I'm going to bring on James Stout, fellow war crimes watcher, to talk with me about what war crimes be James, what's your favorite war crime?

first time Israel has killed a shitload of Palestinians. This is the first time that like a really substantial majority of the American populace has been like and that's bad, yea. And that owes a lot to the way in which

information is bread on social media. One of the downsides of that is because this is happening in kind of a colloquial diction, people are not always super accurate, and a term like war crimes in particular often gets used to mean like anything I don't like that happens in a war, And there are a lot of things that happen like war is bad, and everything that happens in war nearly everything is really bad. But most of the

things that happen in war are not war crimes. And I believe me, I'm not setting us up to say that, like Israel is not committing war crimes in Gaza. They are. I actually have a lot of issues with other kinds of conflicts and things that happen in conflicts that get discussed as if they were war crimes that I think

Muddy's the issue. We're going to be talking trying to make it clear like what international law actually covers and what kind of that coverage means and all that stuff, so that hopefully, you know, people can have a little bit more information going forward when they try to about like is this something that's just bad that happens in war versus is this a war crime, because that actually matters when it comes to, you know, the theoretical idea

of a rules based international order in prosecuting this stuff. So the first thing we have to get into is the idea that like war crimes are a pretty recent conception. The idea that like there would be a thing that you could do as a country that the international community would come in and have beef with does not go back very far. Right, Yeah, we are talking the eighteenth century, so really the last two hundred years has been when this really all started to get codified. We start with

the Geneva Convention in eighteen sixty four. There are several Geneva conventions in nineteen forty nine, and there's I think two more in nineteen seventy seven. You also have the Hague Conventions in eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh seven, and these are all so part of what that should suggest is that like, even within the kind of the realm of codified war crimes law, it's kind of been

a slap dash, catches catch can a fair right. Like people have come together and made rules that were largely based on the shit that either had just happened or that they thought was about to happen. And one of the consequences of this is that the actual legislation about like what is and isn't illegal to do in war is really uneven. A great example of this would be

the idea of dumb, dumb bullets. Right. This is a thing that you get kind of around the turn of the century, which is so bullets, most bullets that are used in war are what are called full metal jacket, right, And that just means that there's a copper generally jacket around the lead bullet and there's not like a hole in the middle or whatever like a modern Like if you go up to a police officer and take his gun, which is very easy and safe to do legally, that

was a joke, you will notice that all of the bullets in that gun have like a little divot in the middle of them, right. And the purpose of divot is so that when the bullet hits a person, it transfers more of its force into the meat of that

person's body. This is the same with any bullet that like someone carries for self defense generally, and this is actually a safety device in a way, because bullets like this do not penetrate as much, and you don't want bullets that you're using in like an urban area for self defense to penetrate as much because that increases the risk that if you miss or if you hit that person, that it goes through them and hits something else, right, But there was an understanding around the turn of the

century that these bullets, which initially were not manufactured. Soldiers would literally like cut like crosses in the tops of their bullets.

Law of Armed Conflict. Provided such weapons, projectiles and material and the methods of warfare are the subject of a comprehensive prohibition and are included in an annex to this Statute by an amendment in accordance with the relevant anyway, so you're not supposed to employing employ bullets which quote flatten or expand easily in the human body, such as bullets with the hard envelope which does not entirely cover

its core or is pierced with incisions. You're not supposed to employ asphyxiating, poisonous or their gases and all analogous liquids, materials, or devices that one obviously came about as a result of the horror in World War One, right, people start using a lot of these poisoned gas weapons, and it's decided by the international community that that absolutely should not be allowed to be done. You're not allowed to employ

poison or poisoned weapons. Now most people can see look at at and be like, well, yeah, I mean, hollow points sound extra meine. Poison sounds extramine. Gas sounds extra meine. You shouldn't be able to use those extra mean weapons in war. But and I don't have a problem with

trying to limit horrifying weapons. But we still allow, for example, artillery shells that are meant to create huge amounts of shrapnel that are their whole purpose is to cause grievous wounds to a large number of people in a large area. And from where I'm standing I don't think that like that's less horrible than a hollow point. I actually think

that's probably a lot worse than a hollow point. Yes, yeah, So one of the first things that you get when you look at what our war crimes is they're not actually all like things that you morally should have an issue with. Like, really, if you are looking at all of the weapons employed in war today, there's no reason a hollow point should frighten you, Right, there's so many

worse weapons right now. On the other hand of that, poison gas is much worse than the vast majority of weapons that are used in war today, and I think it's good that that's a crime.

to make. You're basically just taking a fifty gallon drum and filling it with gunpowder and shrapnel, right, Like, I mean, it's a little more complicated than that, but yea.

And also of all of the things I saw done in that war, like the fact that somebody threw a tear gas grenade did not upset me over much, right, Like the fact that I was watching apartment buildings get blown up by Apache helicopters really upset me a lot more than a little bit of tear gas.

through and with some commentary. Straight up, Lee read a large chunk of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article eight, which largely defines war crimes as that term has a meaning in a legal sense, and it defines war crimes as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of twelfth August nineteen forty nine, namely any of the following acts against persons or property committed against the provisions of

the relevant Geneva Convention. These include wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering, serious injury to body or health, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or their protected person

of the rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation or transfer, or unlawful confinement and taking of hostages.

like those are war crimes you are not as a soldier. Obviously, property will get destroyed in gunfights. It can get to like, so there's part of why it's kind of hard to this stuff is not prosecuted as much as it ought to be. But you are not supposed to just fuck with people shit as a soldier. That is legal, you know. Is it one of the war crimes that is probably least prosecuted and most common. Absolutely, I think that that is very fair to say.

I think what we're seeing, I think willfully is kind of an important term here, right, And I think that's really what we've seen very clearly in a lot of these IDF tiktoks, right, is people taking glee in the destruction of property. And I think that's very easy to prove as a war crime.

part in hostilities. That is a war crime. That's one example of I mean, that's just the clearest video that I saw recently, right.

It certainly have not seen evidence of it happening often in most of the places where there are attacks on mosques, but like periodically, like if somebody, if if a fighter or a military unit sets up inside a mosque or right, or a church or whatever, which happened in World War two a lot, Right, you would have like churches used

as strong points because they're well made buildings. You can attack that, right, like the It's not like magical, right, Like you can't suddenly not attack soldiers who are shooting at you from a church, but you are not supposed to intentionally direct attacks against civilian objects that are not

military objectives. Intentionally directing attacks against personnel installations, materiel units, or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under international law of armed conflict. Best example of this from Gaza recently would be those World Kitchen employees and their bodyguards who were essentially murdered

by the Israelis. Right, very clear internationally recognized humanitarian assistance, very clear war crime if you can prove it was intentional. I'm sure there's you know, that's a court case, right,

but I think pretty clear. And then there is intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause instident a loss of life or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects, or widespread, long term and severe damage to the natural environment, which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military

advantage and dissipated. This is one of the top things that is a war crime never gets punished because it is so hard, because that it seemed like most I would say, most of what I have seen planes do in war seems like it falls under this where it's like, wow, that's a lot of environmental damage, a lot of incidental loss of life and injury, But is it excessive in

relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage. Well, the people ordering those air strikes would say no, right, and like right, yeah, And that is one of those things where it's like, well, I know what looks like crime to me. Yeah, But could I win an ICC case about that? I don't know.

are undefended and which are not military objectives. And both of those last two points make it very clear that the Russian military committed war crimes against Ukraine from March fourth to March thirty five, twenty twenty two, when they occupied the town of Buka, which was about it is about thirty kilometers north of Kiv. This is one of the best, probably the best documented Russian war crime in Ukraine at the moment. And I'm not saying that this

is only it's not nearly the only. It's just like a particularly well documented example. As of this point, you know, we're almost two years past when Buka got liberated. The bodies of more than a thousand civilians have been discovered in the Buka region. At least about six hundred and fifty people are known to have been executed by the Russian army, and these are pretty hideous mass executions. A lot of people were held for a week or two

prior to being executed. There's significant evidence of torture of beatings of civilians before their summary execution. And yeah, it's like it's a very clear example of a war crime. Like I don't know how else to say it. I will read a quote from this Human Rights Watch article that interviewed some funeral home workers in Bukka. Another funeral homeworker Sergei Makyuk, who helped collect bodies, said that he personally collected about two hundred bodies from the streets since

the Russian invasion began on February twenty fourth. Most of the victims were men, he said, but some were women and children. Almost all of them had bullet wounds, he said, including around fifty whose hands were tied and whose bodies had signs of torture. Bodies with hands tied strongly suggest

that the victims had been detained and summarily executed. And that's a I mean a thousand pitce a hideous war crime, right Like, that's a mass killing of civilians in a crucially there's no argument and one way in which civilians always die are killed in war, and it's not usually a war crime because it generally happens while there's gun fights going on, while you're carrying and you can claim like, well, look, you know, you can't stop bullets from going through buildings,

you can't stop people from getting hit by a shrapnel. You're fighting in a city, Civilians are going to die. This is a very clear case of this town was occupied, there was not resistance ongoing in it, and they were mass executing civilians. That's illegal. You're not allowed to do that theoretically, if international law means anything. Now, I do want to get to another case of a war crime, that or a thing that people call a war crime

that isn't a war crime. And this we're actually going to go back to the Iraq the first Iraq war, desert Storm. Before we go to desert Storm, let's go to these ads. All right, we're back, James. What do you know about the Highway of Death?

war is. And I'm going to talk about why here, and like I'm not trying to justify this, because nothing in war make it does like you don't justify it, just is a thing that happens, right, Like it's all hideous if you've been through it, you see in humanity every second. But one of the things that you learn if you study war on an academic level is that a massive part of it is retreating. Like all the time, all throughout history, armies retreat, regroup, and then carry out

additional offensives. Right. That is war in a nutshell, Right, And so when armies are retreating, you're allowed to keep killing them. And in fact, that's the norm, and most soldiers, up until the modern era, the vast majority of combat deaths we're during retreats.

been allowed to occupy Kawait. Now there's a lot of things about like US involvement in Iraq prior to this, that are you could say extenuating, including the fact that like we had kind of pushed them to invade Iran and then played both sides of that conflict, and that was part of what Saddam was pissed about. But that doesn't justify in Kuwait being occupied.

Iraq to Kuwait. And what we do is we use our planes to blow up vehicles on both ends of this convoy of like three thousand vehicles, which then traps thousands and thousands of soldiers inside these walls of fire. So we can spend ten hours bombing them and this is fucking hideous. The event is memorialized, and this is part of why people think of it as a war crime.

In a picture by a photojournalist of the corpse of an Iraqi soldier hideously burned, frozen in time as he tried to flee his flaming tank, and that picture you can find it. It's I mean, it's horrible. It's a great example of why war is bad and we should do less of it. And it is, you know, it's one of those things. A lot of US soldiers who participate in this feel uncomfortable with it, feel like they are unnecessarily killing a large number of people. And you

can make that case. You can make a case and I'll listen to it that this was hideously evil, but it's not a war crime. Right now, Sodam's going to make that claim, arguing that his soldiers are trying to peacefully withdraw. But there's like a definition of that, and what the Iraqis were doing didn't meet it. What actually happened is that the Iraqi army made contact with the

US army and then they went into a retreat. They were attempting to leave the area after losing a fight and they had not formally surrendered, And there's nothing an international law that makes it illegal to kill soldiers who happened to be withdrawing.

and retreat. But again, the vast majority of soldiers killed in war are killed running away, right, Like that's just kind of how I mean, that's changed a bit in the modern era, But like, this is I think more falls under one of those things where everyone sees this as a nightmare, because it is a nightmare. Those random Iraqi conscripts did not deserve to burn to death in this Charnel house we created on the Highway eighty. And also like, well that's just what war is, man. You

think we didn't do that to the Nazis? You think the Nazis didn't do that to the fucking Russians. You think, like you think that hasn't happened to every war, Like, that's just what war is, man, That's why we shouldn't do it. It's really bad.

wasn't necessary? The question is was this not something that is generally acceptable in war, and it is because war like again, blowing, like making exploding pieces like giant boxes filled with shards of metal in order to wound hundreds of people at a time, it's acceptable in war, right, Like it's bad.

They have been taking particularly Ukrainian children and moving them to elsewhere in Russia, adopting them out to the families.

or charitable purposes. I'm thinking about historical monuments. Hospitals very easy to find examples of that in Gaza.

Israel both have extensive histories doing this. During the Syrian Civil War, Russian planes backing the ASAD regime regularly targeted medical facilities in Aleppo at least twenty seven times from fall of twenty fifteen to the winter of twenty sixteen. More recently, Russia has targeted hospitals in Kherson, per this Guardian article quote. Since December twenty two, the Russian army has been bombarding Karson from dug in positions on the

nearby left eastern flank of the Nipro River. It has attacked civilian infrastructure including schools, private residential houses, hospitals and the railway station. And yeah, it's pretty hideous like these are systematic attacks. The Cinema for in Information Resilience has documented fourteen separate attacks over six months between December of twenty twenty two and May of twenty twenty three, striking hospital facilities several times with the apparent purpose of degrading

their capacity to continue to serve the civilian population. The targeting of hospit has also been utterly endemic to Israeli activities in Gaza. In November of twenty thirteen, they killed at least twelve people in attacks on the Indonesian hospital in bait Lahia, Gaza, and basically every medical facility in Gaza has been targeted, and more than twenty of the thirty five hospitals in Gaza Gaza have at this point

been taken out of service due to damage. The most famous of these was the Al Shifa Hospital, which held dozens of premature babies, thirty one of whom had to be evacuated after weeks of losing power to their incubators and being fed a formula mixed with poisoned water. Eight infants died at least I'm sure that number is higher before evacuation. This is obvious war crime, right.

grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations, So using civilians as shields. Right, If you're hiding military forces among a civilian populace, you know that is also a war crime. Intentionally Directing attacks against buildings, material medical units, you know, that's supposed to be illegal. Starvation force starvation of civilians

is supposed to be illegal. And conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years old into the national forces, which I've noticed, you know when I would report on the YPG, some of the people that I reported on that were like seventeen and people like using child soldiers. You can enlist in the British Army at six team. That's not legal. Yeah, you seventeen year olds have always

been allowed to do war. Yeah, I think they don't deploy them, right, certainly not sixteen year olds, right, Yeah, but then the the yeah, and it's I've often women at She's from the YPKA, right, because they've come from abusive homes, and they also make an FM not to deploy it.

between the various different statutes and international agreements. Violation to life in person in particular, murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture, committing outrageous upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating or degrading treatment, which is maybe the most common by numbers thing that I see happening at Gotza, right, certainly, not like as it does, you know, the killing is much more offensive, but like there's so many examples of

like outrages upon personal dignity, you know, the taking of hostages, the passing of sentences, and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court. And then you get to paragraph two, there's a note like after this all of this stuff that like you're not supposed to do violence to life in person, committing outrages upon personal dignity, taking hostages, doing summary executions, and then

there's a note that like, this does not apply. This applies only to armed conflicts and not situations of internal disturbances and tensions such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence or other acts of a similar nature, which is fun to me because it's like the international agreements like, well, I mean, countries can do this to their own people if they want, right, Like, that's not a problem, you know, go, which I guess is probably we're in a gray area

with some of what Israel does to Palestinians here because like one of the things that has been happening for a long time is continue to happen, as there are presently ninety five hundred at least Palestinians from the occupied West Bank in captivity. Prior to October seventh, that was just fifty two hundred people, so this escalated significantly after that. Most of these were people who had been arrested before for stuff literally like waving a flag or like posting

on social media in sympathy with Gaza. Fifteen of these people have died since October seventh. A number of them have been tortured and beaten. This is the kind of thing that could be a warcrime, except for again you have that little note that like this doesn't apply to internal disturbances in the West Bank, you can say that that's an internal disturbance, right, which is you know, shit, yeah, yeah, I don't love that. That's the way that that works.

And yeah, it's one of those things. And another thing, you know, to be fair here, one thing I should note, because we're about to talk about the actual ICC investigation that's going on, the taking of hostages is a war crime.

So it's there's been a lot of talk about because there's been disinformation about how many civilians did Hamas kill, right, like how many we had that bleak period if we were arguing looking at dead babies and arguing where those babies beheaded or their heads just come off because they burned? To like, Hamas definitely committed war crimes, and we know that because they admitted to them, because they the Hamas

does not deny that they took hostages. That's a war crime. Right. Again, should you be as offended by the taking of hostages as the killing of thirty five thousand people from the sky? Well no, But I would also say that the taking of hostages is not like tear gassing a sniper. I think that that's bad. You shouldn't take civilian hostages. Yeah, that makes sense as a war crime to me. Now this kind of leads us to the crux of our discussion, which is like, should you actually care about what a

war crime is and isn't right? And I'm gonna argue yes, even though, as we've made the case here, it's not a perfect thing. This is not a perfect Whether or not something is a war crime does not make it a perfect measure of morality. I don't think a soldier tossing a tear gas grenade and a sniper because they don't want to get shot by a sniper is like

a thing that is horrifying to me. And I do think that, for example, the use of shrapnel shells is horrifying to me, having seen what happens to people when they get gutted by shrapnel. I don't think those are good, and I know what I think is a worse thing to do. But even with that taken into account, I think that a lot of this does matter, and that it is good that the ICC has recently announced a set of warrants both against Benjamin Netanyahu and against three

Hamas leaders, right. And I saw some people saying when this got announced that there were like these warrants against these Hamas leaders alongside net Yahou and his defense minister. You'll have gallant that like, oh, they're both sides in it. No, Hamas took hostages. If the ICC is going after Israel for its clear and obvious war crimes, we know that Hamas took hostages. It's not wrong that the ICC would

issue a warrant there. That's their job, right, And I think that that actually it's kind of important to do that because if you don't, the Israelis are going to be like, well, they took hostages, that's definitely a war crime. The ICC is invalid because they're not prosecuting this now.

The reality is that not only has Israel is now Israel kind of gearing up to go to war with the International Criminal Court, that they have been doing that for years prior to October seventh, right, and in fact, a couple of years ago, I think in twenty twenty one, the ICC launched an investigation into Israeli actions in Gaza.

ICC prosecutor and basically threatened him. And I'm actually I'm going to read a quote from a already an article here. Cohen's personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took place when he was the director of the Massad. His activities were authorized at a high level and justified on the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against

military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli source briefed on the operation against Bensuda said that the Masad's objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who could cooperate with Israel's demands. A third source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as

Netanya Who's unofficial messenger. Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu's closest allies, at the time and is emerging as a political force in his own right, and Israel personally led the massault Asad's involvement in an almost decade long campaign by the country to undermine the court. According to account shared with ICC officials, he's alleged to have told her, you should help us and let us take care of you.

You don't want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family, which is very much mob shit, right like, it couldn't be more mob shit. And it's like, I don't actually think that is a war crime. I don't even know, because I guess they didn't even think anyone would do that, right like that, you would just like, hey, you know, we could break your fucking legs, you know, misprosecutor lady, like

we the Masad. I don't even know that that because at least from my reading over of the Rome statutes, that's not listed. Maybe they should add that one in there. But yeah, this has been a brief overview of what be a war crime. I hope you find this helpful in your discussions of what be a war crime. But I do kind of want to end on the note again,

does any of this matter. What's going to Well, no, do I think that, like Benjamin that and Yahoo's going to actually be taken to den Haag and fucking chains. I mean maybe someday. Actually, I don't think that that's impossible. I don't think we should give up hope for that, and this is a necessary precursor to that. And I think it's good. I think the evidence that this is valuable.

If you actually, if you want my best case for why this matters, Israel spent ten years previous to the announcement of this warrant running devoting MASAD resources to an undergrand campaign to aboutage and threaten the ICC. That means

they see this as a threat. They consider prosecutions like this to be dangerous to them, and that means you should at least passively support what the ICC is doing here, right Netan, Yahoo's regime considers this a threat to their operations, to what they're doing in Gaza, and I think that's enough of a reason to think that it's good.