Reply #53: It Is Always A Pleasure To Be Seen As A Naif, Ma'am [View All]

[The Magistrate]

One multiplied by the rarity of opportunity to indulge in it....

The ruling of the court, the legal fact, that the the Geneva Conventions apply to the lands and people over-run in '67, and to the Israeli exercise of military occupation there, has no bearing whatever on any peace agreement that might be mutually accepted in future by the state of Israel and an established political leadership of the people of Arab Palestine. Such an agreement would no more be put aside over that ruling than it could be viewed as invalidating that ruling. The things are wholly seperate.

For the record, it is my view that while the element of the ruling recognizing the Geneva Conventions apply to the case is an excellent one, the court was in some degree of error in its rulings on the application of the right of self-defense by Israel under these rules. Not that my view matters in assessing the state of the law established on the question: that is, and will remain, a matter for competent courts to assess and decide. But that element does seem to me weak, and vulnerable to successful rebuttal in some possible future proceeding. The ruling that the Geneva Conventions apply to the area and people and administration by Israel of same, though, is iron-clad, and its over-turning in future is vanishingly unlikely.

The inaction of the United Nations, and the world, regarding the genocide in Sudan is both an outrage and a disgrace. There are binding treaty obligations that oblige that body, and the nations of the world in arms, to compell a halt to it, and to prosecute those at all levels responsible for it.