Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: What's warring my crimes? This is it could happen here
Speaker 2: a podcast about things falling apart? And you know what
Speaker 2: all the kids these days you're talking about is war crimes.
Speaker 2: That was me being kind of blithe, but they actually are,
Speaker 2: because you know what's continuing to happen to Gaza. More
Speaker 2: people than probably that I can recall in recent memory
Speaker 2: are talking about like war crimes, what it means to
Speaker 2: commit war crimes violations of international law, which is good
Speaker 2: because that's an important thing to be talking about. The
Speaker 2: downside of it is, as is often the case when
Speaker 2: people talk about things on the Internet, a lot of
Speaker 2: people are talking about war crimes and don't actually know
Speaker 2: what that means. So I figured, let's talk about like
Speaker 2: what war crimes is be do. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: bring on James Stout, fellow war crimes watcher, to talk
Speaker 2: with me about what war crimes be James, what's your
Speaker 2: favorite war crime?
Speaker 3: My favorite? That's a difficult one, isn't it? Because I'm yeah,
Speaker 3: because I.
Speaker 2: Asked in the best season a doctor who you know
Speaker 2: it is?
Speaker 3: Yeah. What I like to do with reference to war
Speaker 3: crimes is I wake up right and I sort of
Speaker 3: you know, you're just waking up, you get your phone
Speaker 3: off the charge, you there, and then you look and
Speaker 3: there's a message on telegram. But that's how that's how
Speaker 3: I consume war crimes, just a random.
Speaker 2: If it's on telegram, there's a forty percent chance it's
Speaker 2: a violation of the eighteen sixty four Geneva Convention or
Speaker 2: the subsequent Geneva Conventions. Yes, so I wanted to do
Speaker 2: this because I do think that one of the things
Speaker 2: that is unfortunate kind of about the colloquial way in which,
Speaker 2: like the positive side of the way social media has
Speaker 2: impacted the coverage of conflicts is that we are now
Speaker 2: seeing like, for the first time, this is not the
Speaker 2: first time Israel has killed a shitload of Palestinians. This
Speaker 2: is the first time that like a really substantial majority
Speaker 2: of the American populace has been like and that's bad, yea.
Speaker 2: And that owes a lot to the way in which
Speaker 2: information is bread on social media. One of the downsides
Speaker 2: of that is because this is happening in kind of
Speaker 2: a colloquial diction, people are not always super accurate, and
Speaker 2: a term like war crimes in particular often gets used
Speaker 2: to mean like anything I don't like that happens in
Speaker 2: a war, And there are a lot of things that
Speaker 2: happen like war is bad, and everything that happens in
Speaker 2: war nearly everything is really bad. But most of the
Speaker 2: things that happen in war are not war crimes. And
Speaker 2: I believe me, I'm not setting us up to say that,
Speaker 2: like Israel is not committing war crimes in Gaza. They are.
Speaker 2: I actually have a lot of issues with other kinds
Speaker 2: of conflicts and things that happen in conflicts that get
Speaker 2: discussed as if they were war crimes that I think
Speaker 2: Muddy's the issue. We're going to be talking trying to
Speaker 2: make it clear like what international law actually covers and
Speaker 2: what kind of that coverage means and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: so that hopefully, you know, people can have a little
Speaker 2: bit more information going forward when they try to about
Speaker 2: like is this something that's just bad that happens in
Speaker 2: war versus is this a war crime, because that actually
Speaker 2: matters when it comes to, you know, the theoretical idea
Speaker 2: of a rules based international order in prosecuting this stuff.
Speaker 2: So the first thing we have to get into is
Speaker 2: the idea that like war crimes are a pretty recent conception.
Speaker 2: The idea that like there would be a thing that
Speaker 2: you could do as a country that the international community
Speaker 2: would come in and have beef with does not go
Speaker 2: back very far. Right, Yeah, we are talking the eighteenth century,
Speaker 2: so really the last two hundred years has been when
Speaker 2: this really all started to get codified. We start with
Speaker 2: the Geneva Convention in eighteen sixty four. There are several
Speaker 2: Geneva conventions in nineteen forty nine, and there's I think
Speaker 2: two more in nineteen seventy seven. You also have the
Speaker 2: Hague Conventions in eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 2: and these are all so part of what that should
Speaker 2: suggest is that like, even within the kind of the
Speaker 2: realm of codified war crimes law, it's kind of been
Speaker 2: a slap dash, catches catch can a fair right. Like
Speaker 2: people have come together and made rules that were largely
Speaker 2: based on the shit that either had just happened or
Speaker 2: that they thought was about to happen. And one of
Speaker 2: the consequences of this is that the actual legislation about
Speaker 2: like what is and isn't illegal to do in war
Speaker 2: is really uneven. A great example of this would be
Speaker 2: the idea of dumb, dumb bullets. Right. This is a
Speaker 2: thing that you get kind of around the turn of
Speaker 2: the century, which is so bullets, most bullets that are
Speaker 2: used in war are what are called full metal jacket, right,
Speaker 2: And that just means that there's a copper generally jacket
Speaker 2: around the lead bullet and there's not like a hole
Speaker 2: in the middle or whatever like a modern Like if
Speaker 2: you go up to a police officer and take his gun,
Speaker 2: which is very easy and safe to do legally, that
Speaker 2: was a joke, you will notice that all of the
Speaker 2: bullets in that gun have like a little divot in
Speaker 2: the middle of them, right. And the purpose of divot
Speaker 2: is so that when the bullet hits a person, it
Speaker 2: transfers more of its force into the meat of that
Speaker 2: person's body. This is the same with any bullet that
Speaker 2: like someone carries for self defense generally, and this is
Speaker 2: actually a safety device in a way, because bullets like
Speaker 2: this do not penetrate as much, and you don't want
Speaker 2: bullets that you're using in like an urban area for
Speaker 2: self defense to penetrate as much because that increases the
Speaker 2: risk that if you miss or if you hit that person,
Speaker 2: that it goes through them and hits something else, right,
Speaker 2: But there was an understanding around the turn of the
Speaker 2: century that these bullets, which initially were not manufactured. Soldiers
Speaker 2: would literally like cut like crosses in the tops of
Speaker 2: their bullets.
Speaker 3: I used to do this when I was a child.
Speaker 3: I would spend a lot of time shooting rabbits. It
Speaker 3: was kind of my thing that I did when I
Speaker 3: was a kid, and we used to dumb dumb that
Speaker 3: rifle pede.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's this there was this understanding that developed
Speaker 2: that this should be illegal because it causes additional harm. Now,
Speaker 2: the specific I think this is like like line twenty
Speaker 2: or something from the Geneva Convention. But it's employing weapons,
Speaker 2: projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of
Speaker 2: a nature to cause superfluous injury or a necessary suffering,
Speaker 2: or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the International
Speaker 2: Law of Armed Conflict. Provided such weapons, projectiles and material
Speaker 2: and the methods of warfare are the subject of a
Speaker 2: comprehensive prohibition and are included in an annex to this
Speaker 2: Statute by an amendment in accordance with the relevant anyway,
Speaker 2: so you're not supposed to employing employ bullets which quote
Speaker 2: flatten or expand easily in the human body, such as
Speaker 2: bullets with the hard envelope which does not entirely cover
Speaker 2: its core or is pierced with incisions. You're not supposed
Speaker 2: to employ asphyxiating, poisonous or their gases and all analogous liquids, materials,
Speaker 2: or devices that one obviously came about as a result
Speaker 2: of the horror in World War One, right, people start
Speaker 2: using a lot of these poisoned gas weapons, and it's
Speaker 2: decided by the international community that that absolutely should not
Speaker 2: be allowed to be done. You're not allowed to employ
Speaker 2: poison or poisoned weapons. Now most people can see look
Speaker 2: at at and be like, well, yeah, I mean, hollow
Speaker 2: points sound extra meine. Poison sounds extramine. Gas sounds extra meine.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't be able to use those extra mean weapons
Speaker 2: in war. But and I don't have a problem with
Speaker 2: trying to limit horrifying weapons. But we still allow, for example,
Speaker 2: artillery shells that are meant to create huge amounts of
Speaker 2: shrapnel that are their whole purpose is to cause grievous
Speaker 2: wounds to a large number of people in a large area.
Speaker 2: And from where I'm standing I don't think that like
Speaker 2: that's less horrible than a hollow point. I actually think
Speaker 2: that's probably a lot worse than a hollow point. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: So one of the first things that you get when
Speaker 2: you look at what our war crimes is they're not
Speaker 2: actually all like things that you morally should have an
Speaker 2: issue with. Like, really, if you are looking at all
Speaker 2: of the weapons employed in war today, there's no reason
Speaker 2: a hollow point should frighten you, Right, there's so many
Speaker 2: worse weapons right now. On the other hand of that,
Speaker 2: poison gas is much worse than the vast majority of
Speaker 2: weapons that are used in war today, and I think
Speaker 2: it's good that that's a crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, doesn't stop people using it, It.
Speaker 2: Doesn't stop like Bashar al Asade, right.
Speaker 3: Friend of the show. I was just thinking about barrel bombs.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if barrel bombs are specifically prohibited, and don't
Speaker 3: think they are not. There would be a way to
Speaker 3: do that, really, that just a barrel stuff with explosion.
Speaker 2: Well, because I mean they were invented by Israel. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think forty seven is the first use. It might
Speaker 2: have been like fifty, yeah, but I believe it was
Speaker 2: forty seven was the first recorded use of Because if
Speaker 2: you have planes and you have reliable access to planes,
Speaker 2: but you know, can't reliably manufacture advanced like rockets and
Speaker 2: shit to shoot from them, a barrel bomb's very easy
Speaker 2: to make. You're basically just taking a fifty gallon drum
Speaker 2: and filling it with gunpowder and shrapnel, right, Like, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a little more complicated than that, but yea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Huntern Memba have started using them as sair
Speaker 3: access to Russia munitions drives up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's you know, again that's one of those
Speaker 2: things where it's like that's not technically a war crime
Speaker 2: other than that if you it can be if you're
Speaker 2: like using it indiscriminately in a civilian like against civilians.
Speaker 2: But like also they basically no one ever gets prosecuted
Speaker 2: for doing that, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, this is the case with many of
Speaker 3: these things.
Speaker 2: And again, like barrel bombs can be legal, holow points can't.
Speaker 2: That doesn't really make sense. It's also like I will say,
Speaker 2: I've witnessed at least one war crime in person that
Speaker 2: I really didn't feel like was a war crime, which
Speaker 2: when I was embedded with the Iraqi Army, they tear
Speaker 2: gassed an ISIS sniper to get him out of his
Speaker 2: position so they could kill him, and that's definitely illegal.
Speaker 2: And also of all of the things I saw done
Speaker 2: in that war, like the fact that somebody threw a
Speaker 2: tear gas grenade did not upset me over much, right,
Speaker 2: Like the fact that I was watching apartment buildings get
Speaker 2: blown up by Apache helicopters really upset me a lot
Speaker 2: more than a little bit of tear gas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of these like very sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: if you want to take the strict legalistic definition, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was a war crime. Yeah, a crime that was
Speaker 3: committed that day maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, I want to get into some of
Speaker 2: this in a little bit more of an organized fashion,
Speaker 2: But first let's let's have a little bit of an
Speaker 2: ad break. Ah. So we're back and we're talking about
Speaker 2: war crimes. So I want to just kind of go
Speaker 2: through and with some commentary. Straight up, Lee read a
Speaker 2: large chunk of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,
Speaker 2: Article eight, which largely defines war crimes as that term
Speaker 2: has a meaning in a legal sense, and it defines
Speaker 2: war crimes as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of
Speaker 2: twelfth August nineteen forty nine, namely any of the following
Speaker 2: acts against persons or property committed against the provisions of
Speaker 2: the relevant Geneva Convention. These include wilful killing, torture or
Speaker 2: inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering, serious
Speaker 2: injury to body or health, extensive destruction and appropriation of
Speaker 2: property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully
Speaker 2: and wantonly, compelling a prisoner of war or other protected
Speaker 2: person to serve in the forces of a hostile power,
Speaker 2: Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or their protected person
Speaker 2: of the rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation
Speaker 2: or transfer, or unlawful confinement and taking of hostages.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And you'll notice, among other things, a lot of that
Speaker 2: is stuff that you can find Israeli soldiers doing at TikTok, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, streaming themselves doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean particularly the clear not maybe not the clearest,
Speaker 2: but one that comes up to me just because of
Speaker 2: some stuff I've seen of like soldiers posing with like
Speaker 2: stolen canes from gosms who presumably were disabled and no
Speaker 2: longer have their canes for whatever. Terrible reason like these
Speaker 2: kind of like joking photos. That's a destruction and appropriation
Speaker 2: of property. Right, You have a lot of videos of
Speaker 2: soldiers like going through people's property, taking stuff, destroying stuff
Speaker 2: like those are war crimes you are not as a soldier. Obviously,
Speaker 2: property will get destroyed in gunfights. It can get to like,
Speaker 2: so there's part of why it's kind of hard to
Speaker 2: this stuff is not prosecuted as much as it ought
Speaker 2: to be. But you are not supposed to just fuck
Speaker 2: with people shit as a soldier. That is legal, you know.
Speaker 2: Is it one of the war crimes that is probably
Speaker 2: least prosecuted and most common. Absolutely, I think that that
Speaker 2: is very fair to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, Boris Johnson stoles stuff from Saddam U Sin's
Speaker 3: palace in right, you know, like he's yet to be
Speaker 3: called today, and that.
Speaker 2: Would be one of those Like I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't like Boris Johnson, but also I don't have a
Speaker 2: problem with anyone stealing from Saddam Husse exactly specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of all the bullshit he's done, but.
Speaker 2: This is I mean, that's one of those. Because I
Speaker 2: would say a lot of soldiers I know who have
Speaker 2: been and maybe didn't even realize themselves that what they
Speaker 2: were doing was committing a war crime. But just like
Speaker 2: you're in somebody's house, they are gone, they ran, and
Speaker 2: like you wind up fucking with shit like it happens.
Speaker 2: I think what we're seeing, I think willfully is kind
Speaker 2: of an important term here, right, And I think that's
Speaker 2: really what we've seen very clearly in a lot of
Speaker 2: these IDF tiktoks, right, is people taking glee in the
Speaker 2: destruction of property. And I think that's very easy to
Speaker 2: prove as a war crime.
Speaker 3: I think anyone can make a moral distinction right between
Speaker 3: Like I was recently in Rajava and I was talking
Speaker 3: to some friends and they were talking about how they
Speaker 3: a lot of people died in ied blasts because they
Speaker 3: were going into buildings to try and get food or tea, right, sugar, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a distinction between going into the kitchen of abandoned
Speaker 3: building and taking some sugar or whatever rice.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, these guys going through women's underwear drawers taking
Speaker 3: pictures with their underwear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know some some US Marines who like
Speaker 2: happened upon a cigarette factory during the invasion. I had,
Speaker 2: like the uncut cigarettes that are like five feet long
Speaker 2: and they just started like smoking up on them. I
Speaker 2: guess that's destruction of property. Probably not going to be
Speaker 2: my priority as the ic Z, but it also doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like the clearer stuff is their priority. So I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Free my man with the five foot cigarette he did?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So other war crimes include intentionally directing attacks
Speaker 2: against the civilian population as such, or against individual civilians
Speaker 2: not taking part in hostilities. There's a video going around
Speaker 2: right now, man in his fifties in Gaza who was
Speaker 2: working a market stall and was shot by an Israeli drone,
Speaker 2: just executed. There's no way to describe that other than
Speaker 2: intentionally directing an attack against a civilian not taking direct
Speaker 2: part in hostilities. That is a war crime. That's one
Speaker 2: example of I mean, that's just the clearest video that
Speaker 2: I saw recently, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard from people who listen. I think I
Speaker 3: think this was in the episode, but when we talk
Speaker 3: to our friends at PK Guy that they were talking
Speaker 3: about one of the members of their group was recovering
Speaker 3: bodies from a bombed building and was shot by a
Speaker 3: quad coptail, not like a drone, like ten thousand feet
Speaker 3: in the air dropping a missile like a drone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like in the air firing.
Speaker 2: A drone like you can buy at a fucking best
Speaker 2: Buy that's been modified.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that shoots like it shoots a rifle, like just
Speaker 3: like a soldiers shooting rifle, where the operator is looking
Speaker 3: and seeing that and pressing a button to fire bullet.
Speaker 3: It's not collateral damage. It's deliberate civilians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely continue from that list of war crimes
Speaker 2: intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which
Speaker 2: are not military objectives. A great example of this that's
Speaker 2: been happening in Gaza in particular is destruction of mosques, right,
Speaker 2: very clear, civilian objects. Now there are exceptions. For example,
Speaker 2: one thing that does sometimes happen. I don't think it happened.
Speaker 2: It certainly have not seen evidence of it happening often
Speaker 2: in most of the places where there are attacks on mosques,
Speaker 2: but like periodically, like if somebody, if if a fighter
Speaker 2: or a military unit sets up inside a mosque or right,
Speaker 2: or a church or whatever, which happened in World War
Speaker 2: two a lot, Right, you would have like churches used
Speaker 2: as strong points because they're well made buildings. You can
Speaker 2: attack that, right, like the It's not like magical, right,
Speaker 2: Like you can't suddenly not attack soldiers who are shooting
Speaker 2: at you from a church, but you are not supposed
Speaker 2: to intentionally direct attacks against civilian objects that are not
Speaker 2: military objectives. Intentionally directing attacks against personnel installations, materiel units,
Speaker 2: or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission
Speaker 2: in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as
Speaker 2: long as they are entitled to the protection given to
Speaker 2: civilians or civilian objects under international law of armed conflict.
Speaker 2: Best example of this from Gaza recently would be those
Speaker 2: World Kitchen employees and their bodyguards who were essentially murdered
Speaker 2: by the Israelis. Right, very clear internationally recognized humanitarian assistance,
Speaker 2: very clear war crime if you can prove it was intentional.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's you know, that's a court case, right,
Speaker 2: but I think pretty clear. And then there is intentionally
Speaker 2: launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will
Speaker 2: cause instident a loss of life or injury to civilians,
Speaker 2: or damage to civilian objects, or widespread, long term and
Speaker 2: severe damage to the natural environment, which would be clearly
Speaker 2: excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military
Speaker 2: advantage and dissipated. This is one of the top things
Speaker 2: that is a war crime never gets punished because it
Speaker 2: is so hard, because that it seemed like most I
Speaker 2: would say, most of what I have seen planes do
Speaker 2: in war seems like it falls under this where it's like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of environmental damage, a lot of incidental
Speaker 2: loss of life and injury, But is it excessive in
Speaker 2: relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage. Well,
Speaker 2: the people ordering those air strikes would say no, right,
Speaker 2: and like right, yeah, And that is one of those
Speaker 2: things where it's like, well, I know what looks like
Speaker 2: crime to me. Yeah, But could I win an ICC
Speaker 2: case about that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I want to actually move over to talk about Ukraine
Speaker 2: here because I think that that number one doesn't happen
Speaker 2: enough on the left, and I think there's really good,
Speaker 2: clear examples of Russian war crimes here, because one thing
Speaker 2: that you're not allowed to do is quote, attacking or
Speaker 2: bombarding by whatever means towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which
Speaker 2: are undefended and which are not military objectives. And both
Speaker 2: of those last two points make it very clear that
Speaker 2: the Russian military committed war crimes against Ukraine from March
Speaker 2: fourth to March thirty five, twenty twenty two, when they
Speaker 2: occupied the town of Buka, which was about it is
Speaker 2: about thirty kilometers north of Kiv. This is one of
Speaker 2: the best, probably the best documented Russian war crime in
Speaker 2: Ukraine at the moment. And I'm not saying that this
Speaker 2: is only it's not nearly the only. It's just like
Speaker 2: a particularly well documented example. As of this point, you know,
Speaker 2: we're almost two years past when Buka got liberated. The
Speaker 2: bodies of more than a thousand civilians have been discovered
Speaker 2: in the Buka region. At least about six hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty people are known to have been executed by the
Speaker 2: Russian army, and these are pretty hideous mass executions. A
Speaker 2: lot of people were held for a week or two
Speaker 2: prior to being executed. There's significant evidence of torture of
Speaker 2: beatings of civilians before their summary execution. And yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like it's a very clear example of a war crime.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know how else to say it. I
Speaker 2: will read a quote from this Human Rights Watch article
Speaker 2: that interviewed some funeral home workers in Bukka. Another funeral
Speaker 2: homeworker Sergei Makyuk, who helped collect bodies, said that he
Speaker 2: personally collected about two hundred bodies from the streets since
Speaker 2: the Russian invasion began on February twenty fourth. Most of
Speaker 2: the victims were men, he said, but some were women
Speaker 2: and children. Almost all of them had bullet wounds, he said,
Speaker 2: including around fifty whose hands were tied and whose bodies
Speaker 2: had signs of torture. Bodies with hands tied strongly suggest
Speaker 2: that the victims had been detained and summarily executed. And
Speaker 2: that's a I mean a thousand pitce a hideous war crime,
Speaker 2: right Like, that's a mass killing of civilians in a
Speaker 2: crucially there's no argument and one way in which civilians
Speaker 2: always die are killed in war, and it's not usually
Speaker 2: a war crime because it generally happens while there's gun
Speaker 2: fights going on, while you're carrying and you can claim like, well, look,
Speaker 2: you know, you can't stop bullets from going through buildings,
Speaker 2: you can't stop people from getting hit by a shrapnel.
Speaker 2: You're fighting in a city, Civilians are going to die.
Speaker 2: This is a very clear case of this town was occupied,
Speaker 2: there was not resistance ongoing in it, and they were
Speaker 2: mass executing civilians. That's illegal. You're not allowed to do
Speaker 2: that theoretically, if international law means anything. Now, I do
Speaker 2: want to get to another case of a war crime,
Speaker 2: that or a thing that people call a war crime
Speaker 2: that isn't a war crime. And this we're actually going
Speaker 2: to go back to the Iraq the first Iraq war,
Speaker 2: desert Storm. Before we go to desert Storm, let's go
Speaker 2: to these ads. All right, we're back, James. What do
Speaker 2: you know about the Highway of Death?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: And a little bit about the Highway of Death. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's a throwback, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's a throwback. I hear it described by particularly leftists
Speaker 2: on the internet a lot as a US war crime. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and as a spoiler, it's not. It's ugly, it's really hideous.
Speaker 2: It's like a horrifying thing. But it's just war, right,
Speaker 2: And it was come back to fighting combat Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was combatants killing retreating combatants, which people think sometimes shouldn't
Speaker 2: be allowed. But it doesn't really make sense for that
Speaker 2: to not be allowed if you just like know what
Speaker 2: war is. And I'm going to talk about why here,
Speaker 2: and like I'm not trying to justify this, because nothing
Speaker 2: in war make it does like you don't justify it,
Speaker 2: just is a thing that happens, right, Like it's all
Speaker 2: hideous if you've been through it, you see in humanity
Speaker 2: every second. But one of the things that you learn
Speaker 2: if you study war on an academic level is that
Speaker 2: a massive part of it is retreating. Like all the time,
Speaker 2: all throughout history, armies retreat, regroup, and then carry out
Speaker 2: additional offensives. Right. That is war in a nutshell, Right,
Speaker 2: And so when armies are retreating, you're allowed to keep
Speaker 2: killing them. And in fact, that's the norm, and most soldiers,
Speaker 2: up until the modern era, the vast majority of combat
Speaker 2: deaths we're during retreats.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This is the primary way in which soldiers are killed.
Speaker 2: This is when they're retreating.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And so what actually happened is in August. So obviously
Speaker 2: August of nineteen ninety, the US leads a coalition against
Speaker 2: the Iraqi army who have invaded and occupied Kuwait illegally.
Speaker 2: You know, one of my stances on this is that
Speaker 2: Iraq very clearly violated international law and they shouldn't have
Speaker 2: been allowed to occupy Kawait. Now there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things about like US involvement in Iraq prior to this,
Speaker 2: that are you could say extenuating, including the fact that
Speaker 2: like we had kind of pushed them to invade Iran
Speaker 2: and then played both sides of that conflict, and that
Speaker 2: was part of what Saddam was pissed about. But that
Speaker 2: doesn't justify in Kuwait being occupied.
Speaker 3: Right. You can't just get mad and invade somewhere unless
Speaker 3: you're America.
Speaker 2: Unless you're America, which we're going to do to Iraq
Speaker 2: not much longer after this, but in this case, you know,
Speaker 2: we're more or less on the on the on the
Speaker 2: better side of things, right, and we basically immediately throw
Speaker 2: the Iraqi army into a full fledged retreat. This culminates
Speaker 2: in late February nineteen ninety one with a huge number
Speaker 2: of Iraqi soldiers and military vehicles jammed up on a
Speaker 2: convoy on Highway eighty, which is the highway that connects
Speaker 2: Iraq to Kuwait. And what we do is we use
Speaker 2: our planes to blow up vehicles on both ends of
Speaker 2: this convoy of like three thousand vehicles, which then traps
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of soldiers inside these walls of fire.
Speaker 2: So we can spend ten hours bombing them and this
Speaker 2: is fucking hideous. The event is memorialized, and this is
Speaker 2: part of why people think of it as a war crime.
Speaker 2: In a picture by a photojournalist of the corpse of
Speaker 2: an Iraqi soldier hideously burned, frozen in time as he
Speaker 2: tried to flee his flaming tank, and that picture you
Speaker 2: can find it. It's I mean, it's horrible. It's a
Speaker 2: great example of why war is bad and we should
Speaker 2: do less of it. And it is, you know, it's
Speaker 2: one of those things. A lot of US soldiers who
Speaker 2: participate in this feel uncomfortable with it, feel like they
Speaker 2: are unnecessarily killing a large number of people. And you
Speaker 2: can make that case. You can make a case and
Speaker 2: I'll listen to it that this was hideously evil, but
Speaker 2: it's not a war crime. Right now, Sodam's going to
Speaker 2: make that claim, arguing that his soldiers are trying to
Speaker 2: peacefully withdraw. But there's like a definition of that, and
Speaker 2: what the Iraqis were doing didn't meet it. What actually
Speaker 2: happened is that the Iraqi army made contact with the
Speaker 2: US army and then they went into a retreat. They
Speaker 2: were attempting to leave the area after losing a fight
Speaker 2: and they had not formally surrendered, And there's nothing an
Speaker 2: international law that makes it illegal to kill soldiers who
Speaker 2: happened to be withdrawing.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: A great example of this would be nineteen forty four
Speaker 2: during the Battle of Normandy. There are reports of retreating
Speaker 2: German soldiers shot by US soldiers and there was debate
Speaker 2: at the time as like, well, is this a violation
Speaker 2: of the Geneva Conventions, right, And the conclusion that was
Speaker 2: generally reached in is that you shouldn't kill an enemy
Speaker 2: who is number one not in combat and number two surrendering,
Speaker 2: and there is kind of a blurry line between that
Speaker 2: and retreat. But again, the vast majority of soldiers killed
Speaker 2: in war are killed running away, right, Like that's just
Speaker 2: kind of how I mean, that's changed a bit in
Speaker 2: the modern era, But like, this is I think more
Speaker 2: falls under one of those things where everyone sees this
Speaker 2: as a nightmare, because it is a nightmare. Those random
Speaker 2: Iraqi conscripts did not deserve to burn to death in
Speaker 2: this Charnel house we created on the Highway eighty. And
Speaker 2: also like, well that's just what war is, man. You
Speaker 2: think we didn't do that to the Nazis? You think
Speaker 2: the Nazis didn't do that to the fucking Russians. You think,
Speaker 2: like you think that hasn't happened to every war, Like,
Speaker 2: that's just what war is, man, That's why we shouldn't
Speaker 2: do it. It's really bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fucked. The things are allowed to do a
Speaker 3: fuck so you think you're allowed to do Yeah, we
Speaker 3: did do some things in the specifically in that incident,
Speaker 3: which are now I don't think the war crimes, but
Speaker 3: like they used cluster bombs on the highway of Taks. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's a separate agreement. It's not part of THEMA Convention, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a separate agreement. And like
Speaker 2: obviously things have, like at our doctrine and kind of
Speaker 2: internet like has changed as a result of that, in
Speaker 2: part because like a lot of American soldiers were like,
Speaker 2: I really didn't feel good about this. My kid, doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like this was necessary at all. Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: don't think it was necessary, right, Like, I don't think
Speaker 2: it was needed to do this to beat I think
Speaker 2: the Iraqi army was already beaten. But the question isn't
Speaker 2: wasn't necessary? The question is was this not something that
Speaker 2: is generally acceptable in war, and it is because war
Speaker 2: like again, blowing, like making exploding pieces like giant boxes
Speaker 2: filled with shards of metal in order to wound hundreds
Speaker 2: of people at a time, it's acceptable in war, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bad things happening. Well, we should have wit if
Speaker 3: we can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's continue our list of things that be
Speaker 2: war crimes. One of them is making improper use of
Speaker 2: a flag of truce. So you're not allowed to like
Speaker 2: pretend to surrender or pretend to try to negotiate and
Speaker 2: then start shooting. That's a war crime. Actually, you're not
Speaker 2: allowed to transfer parts of the population of like the
Speaker 2: civilian population of a territory you occupy, to other parts
Speaker 2: of your territory, which the Russians have done in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: They have been taking particularly Ukrainian children and moving them
Speaker 2: to elsewhere in Russia, adopting them out to the families.
Speaker 3: That is a war crime. Turkey's done it in Aphrem.
Speaker 2: Turkey does a hell of a lot of this, right,
Speaker 2: They've done a lot of that in Afrin, yes, as
Speaker 2: you said, and obviously the Israelian well, I mean these
Speaker 2: really military we're actually gonna talk about their abduction and
Speaker 2: imprisonment of Palestinians, because that also violates that arguably violates this,
Speaker 2: but there's a separate segment of the Roman statues that violates.
Speaker 2: And then intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science,
Speaker 2: or charitable purposes. I'm thinking about historical monuments. Hospitals very
Speaker 2: easy to find examples of that in Gaza.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Again, the little bit of wiggle room here is like
Speaker 2: if they're being occupied as like an enemy HQ, which
Speaker 2: is basically what everyone claims when they bomb hospitals. Right.
Speaker 2: The US has done this a lot too, like we have,
Speaker 2: especially in Afghanistan. We had a number of hospitals and
Speaker 2: it was always like, well, we thought there were some
Speaker 2: guys there we were trying to right, and Russia and
Speaker 2: Israel both have extensive histories doing this. During the Syrian
Speaker 2: Civil War, Russian planes backing the ASAD regime regularly targeted
Speaker 2: medical facilities in Aleppo at least twenty seven times from
Speaker 2: fall of twenty fifteen to the winter of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: More recently, Russia has targeted hospitals in Kherson, per this
Speaker 2: Guardian article quote. Since December twenty two, the Russian army
Speaker 2: has been bombarding Karson from dug in positions on the
Speaker 2: nearby left eastern flank of the Nipro River. It has
Speaker 2: attacked civilian infrastructure including schools, private residential houses, hospitals and
Speaker 2: the railway station. And yeah, it's pretty hideous like these
Speaker 2: are systematic attacks. The Cinema for in Information Resilience has
Speaker 2: documented fourteen separate attacks over six months between December of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two and May of twenty twenty three, striking
Speaker 2: hospital facilities several times with the apparent purpose of degrading
Speaker 2: their capacity to continue to serve the civilian population. The
Speaker 2: targeting of hospit has also been utterly endemic to Israeli
Speaker 2: activities in Gaza. In November of twenty thirteen, they killed
Speaker 2: at least twelve people in attacks on the Indonesian hospital
Speaker 2: in bait Lahia, Gaza, and basically every medical facility in
Speaker 2: Gaza has been targeted, and more than twenty of the
Speaker 2: thirty five hospitals in Gaza Gaza have at this point
Speaker 2: been taken out of service due to damage. The most
Speaker 2: famous of these was the Al Shifa Hospital, which held
Speaker 2: dozens of premature babies, thirty one of whom had to
Speaker 2: be evacuated after weeks of losing power to their incubators
Speaker 2: and being fed a formula mixed with poisoned water. Eight
Speaker 2: infants died at least I'm sure that number is higher
Speaker 2: before evacuation. This is obvious war crime, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, A friend, Tara Klubani, who I've interviewed for the
Speaker 3: show before, was in the was working with the premature
Speaker 3: babies at that time. Yeah, you can find excuse with him.
Speaker 3: It's just it's like, I would not recommend reading it
Speaker 3: evenless you want to traumatize yourself. It's honestly one of
Speaker 3: the most horrible things I've ever had to try about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nightmarish stuff. And I mean a lot of
Speaker 2: these are right. The Rome Statues continues with committing outrages
Speaker 2: upon personal dignity and particular humiliating the degrading treatment. And
Speaker 2: my god, there's a lot of examples of that from Gaza.
Speaker 2: Committing rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution, forced pregnancy as
Speaker 2: to find an Article seven paragraph too, and forced sterilization
Speaker 2: or any other form of sexual violence also constitutes a
Speaker 2: grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. Utilizing the presence of
Speaker 2: a civilian or other protected person to render certain points,
Speaker 2: areas or military forces immune from military operations, So using
Speaker 2: civilians as shields. Right, If you're hiding military forces among
Speaker 2: a civilian populace, you know that is also a war crime.
Speaker 2: Intentionally Directing attacks against buildings, material medical units, you know,
Speaker 2: that's supposed to be illegal. Starvation force starvation of civilians
Speaker 2: is supposed to be illegal. And conscripting or enlisting children
Speaker 2: under the age of fifteen years old into the national forces,
Speaker 2: which I've noticed, you know when I would report on
Speaker 2: the YPG, some of the people that I reported on
Speaker 2: that were like seventeen and people like using child soldiers.
Speaker 2: You can enlist in the British Army at six team.
Speaker 2: That's not legal. Yeah, you seventeen year olds have always
Speaker 2: been allowed to do war. Yeah, I think they don't
Speaker 2: deploy them, right, certainly not sixteen year olds, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but then the the yeah, and it's I've often women
Speaker 2: at She's from the YPKA, right, because they've come from
Speaker 2: abusive homes, and they also make an FM not to
Speaker 2: deploy it.
Speaker 3: And I understand, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: But you are theoretically you're allowed to deploy sixteen year olds, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so at least as regards international law. So and then
Speaker 2: of course we get to kind of some of the
Speaker 2: some of our our final war crimes, which you know,
Speaker 2: I haven't gone over a comprehensive list, but this gives
Speaker 2: you a good list of the things covered, you know,
Speaker 2: between the various different statutes and international agreements. Violation to
Speaker 2: life in person in particular, murder of all kinds, mutilation,
Speaker 2: cruel treatment and torture, committing outrageous upon personal dignity, in
Speaker 2: particular humiliating or degrading treatment, which is maybe the most
Speaker 2: common by numbers thing that I see happening at Gotza, right, certainly,
Speaker 2: not like as it does, you know, the killing is
Speaker 2: much more offensive, but like there's so many examples of
Speaker 2: like outrages upon personal dignity, you know, the taking of hostages,
Speaker 2: the passing of sentences, and the carrying out of executions
Speaker 2: without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court. And
Speaker 2: then you get to paragraph two, there's a note like
Speaker 2: after this all of this stuff that like you're not
Speaker 2: supposed to do violence to life in person, committing outrages
Speaker 2: upon personal dignity, taking hostages, doing summary executions, and then
Speaker 2: there's a note that like, this does not apply. This
Speaker 2: applies only to armed conflicts and not situations of internal
Speaker 2: disturbances and tensions such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts
Speaker 2: of violence or other acts of a similar nature, which
Speaker 2: is fun to me because it's like the international agreements like, well,
Speaker 2: I mean, countries can do this to their own people
Speaker 2: if they want, right, Like, that's not a problem, you know, go,
Speaker 2: which I guess is probably we're in a gray area
Speaker 2: with some of what Israel does to Palestinians here because
Speaker 2: like one of the things that has been happening for
Speaker 2: a long time is continue to happen, as there are
Speaker 2: presently ninety five hundred at least Palestinians from the occupied
Speaker 2: West Bank in captivity. Prior to October seventh, that was
Speaker 2: just fifty two hundred people, so this escalated significantly after that.
Speaker 2: Most of these were people who had been arrested before
Speaker 2: for stuff literally like waving a flag or like posting
Speaker 2: on social media in sympathy with Gaza. Fifteen of these
Speaker 2: people have died since October seventh. A number of them
Speaker 2: have been tortured and beaten. This is the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that could be a warcrime, except for again you
Speaker 2: have that little note that like this doesn't apply to
Speaker 2: internal disturbances in the West Bank, you can say that
Speaker 2: that's an internal disturbance, right, which is you know, shit, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't love that. That's the way that that works.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's one of those things. And another thing,
Speaker 2: you know, to be fair here, one thing I should note,
Speaker 2: because we're about to talk about the actual ICC investigation
Speaker 2: that's going on, the taking of hostages is a war crime.
Speaker 2: So it's there's been a lot of talk about because
Speaker 2: there's been disinformation about how many civilians did Hamas kill, right,
Speaker 2: like how many we had that bleak period if we
Speaker 2: were arguing looking at dead babies and arguing where those
Speaker 2: babies beheaded or their heads just come off because they burned?
Speaker 2: To like, Hamas definitely committed war crimes, and we know
Speaker 2: that because they admitted to them, because they the Hamas
Speaker 2: does not deny that they took hostages. That's a war crime. Right. Again,
Speaker 2: should you be as offended by the taking of hostages
Speaker 2: as the killing of thirty five thousand people from the sky?
Speaker 2: Well no, But I would also say that the taking
Speaker 2: of hostages is not like tear gassing a sniper. I
Speaker 2: think that that's bad. You shouldn't take civilian hostages. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that makes sense as a war crime to me. Now
Speaker 2: this kind of leads us to the crux of our discussion,
Speaker 2: which is like, should you actually care about what a
Speaker 2: war crime is and isn't right? And I'm gonna argue yes,
Speaker 2: even though, as we've made the case here, it's not
Speaker 2: a perfect thing. This is not a perfect Whether or
Speaker 2: not something is a war crime does not make it
Speaker 2: a perfect measure of morality. I don't think a soldier
Speaker 2: tossing a tear gas grenade and a sniper because they
Speaker 2: don't want to get shot by a sniper is like
Speaker 2: a thing that is horrifying to me. And I do
Speaker 2: think that, for example, the use of shrapnel shells is
Speaker 2: horrifying to me, having seen what happens to people when
Speaker 2: they get gutted by shrapnel. I don't think those are good,
Speaker 2: and I know what I think is a worse thing
Speaker 2: to do. But even with that taken into account, I
Speaker 2: think that a lot of this does matter, and that
Speaker 2: it is good that the ICC has recently announced a
Speaker 2: set of warrants both against Benjamin Netanyahu and against three
Speaker 2: Hamas leaders, right. And I saw some people saying when
Speaker 2: this got announced that there were like these warrants against
Speaker 2: these Hamas leaders alongside net Yahou and his defense minister.
Speaker 2: You'll have gallant that like, oh, they're both sides in it. No,
Speaker 2: Hamas took hostages. If the ICC is going after Israel
Speaker 2: for its clear and obvious war crimes, we know that
Speaker 2: Hamas took hostages. It's not wrong that the ICC would
Speaker 2: issue a warrant there. That's their job, right, And I
Speaker 2: think that that actually it's kind of important to do
Speaker 2: that because if you don't, the Israelis are going to
Speaker 2: be like, well, they took hostages, that's definitely a war crime.
Speaker 2: The ICC is invalid because they're not prosecuting this now.
Speaker 2: The reality is that not only has Israel is now
Speaker 2: Israel kind of gearing up to go to war with
Speaker 2: the International Criminal Court, that they have been doing that
Speaker 2: for years prior to October seventh, right, and in fact,
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, I think in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: the ICC launched an investigation into Israeli actions in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This started when the former prosecutor of the ICC, Fatub
Speaker 2: Bensuda made the call to like yes, start a formal investigation,
Speaker 2: and that culminated a couple of weeks ago in the
Speaker 2: ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Nan Yahoo. And
Speaker 2: when that process started, there is evidence that the former
Speaker 2: head of the Massad, the guy who's running the massade
Speaker 2: at the time, Yo C. Cohen, made contact with an
Speaker 2: ICC prosecutor and basically threatened him. And I'm actually I'm
Speaker 2: going to read a quote from a already an article here.
Speaker 2: Cohen's personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took
Speaker 2: place when he was the director of the Massad. His
Speaker 2: activities were authorized at a high level and justified on
Speaker 2: the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against
Speaker 2: military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli
Speaker 2: source briefed on the operation against Bensuda said that the
Speaker 2: Masad's objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her
Speaker 2: as someone who could cooperate with Israel's demands. A third
Speaker 2: source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as
Speaker 2: Netanya Who's unofficial messenger. Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu's
Speaker 2: closest allies, at the time and is emerging as a
Speaker 2: political force in his own right, and Israel personally led
Speaker 2: the massault Asad's involvement in an almost decade long campaign
Speaker 2: by the country to undermine the court. According to account
Speaker 2: shared with ICC officials, he's alleged to have told her,
Speaker 2: you should help us and let us take care of you.
Speaker 2: You don't want to be getting into things that could
Speaker 2: compromise your security or that of your family, which is
Speaker 2: very much mob shit, right like, it couldn't be more
Speaker 2: mob shit. And it's like, I don't actually think that
Speaker 2: is a war crime. I don't even know, because I
Speaker 2: guess they didn't even think anyone would do that, right
Speaker 2: like that, you would just like, hey, you know, we
Speaker 2: could break your fucking legs, you know, misprosecutor lady, like
Speaker 2: we the Masad. I don't even know that that because
Speaker 2: at least from my reading over of the Rome statutes,
Speaker 2: that's not listed. Maybe they should add that one in there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this has been a brief overview of what
Speaker 2: be a war crime. I hope you find this helpful
Speaker 2: in your discussions of what be a war crime. But
Speaker 2: I do kind of want to end on the note again,
Speaker 2: does any of this matter. What's going to Well, no,
Speaker 2: do I think that, like Benjamin that and Yahoo's going
Speaker 2: to actually be taken to den Haag and fucking chains.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe someday. Actually, I don't think that that's impossible.
Speaker 2: I don't think we should give up hope for that,
Speaker 2: and this is a necessary precursor to that. And I
Speaker 2: think it's good. I think the evidence that this is valuable.
Speaker 2: If you actually, if you want my best case for
Speaker 2: why this matters, Israel spent ten years previous to the
Speaker 2: announcement of this warrant running devoting MASAD resources to an
Speaker 2: undergrand campaign to aboutage and threaten the ICC. That means
Speaker 2: they see this as a threat. They consider prosecutions like
Speaker 2: this to be dangerous to them, and that means you
Speaker 2: should at least passively support what the ICC is doing here,
Speaker 2: right Netan, Yahoo's regime considers this a threat to their operations,
Speaker 2: to what they're doing in Gaza, and I think that's
Speaker 2: enough of a reason to think that it's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, they think it's going to stop them murdering civilians,
Speaker 3: then yeah, it's good that we don't need to be
Speaker 3: around the bush too much like anyway, Yeah, it would
Speaker 3: be nice to see someone who wasn't from Africa prosecuted
Speaker 3: at the Hague.
Speaker 2: That would be hey, yeah, they got those Serbians, right,
Speaker 2: they did get they got a couple of Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's true. Uh yeah, yeah, let's throw an Israeli or too,
Speaker 2: and they're and yeah, some of those some oscarys. I'm like,
Speaker 2: look something, let's try to do something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe maybe let's let's make a statement that it's
Speaker 3: bad to murder and kidnapped civilians.
Speaker 2: It's bad to Yeah, I don't know. We're very critical
Speaker 2: of the idea that there ever was a rules based
Speaker 2: international order, but I think we should try that sometime.
Speaker 3: It's pretty nice to have some rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, James, anything else to add before we cut
Speaker 2: out here.
Speaker 3: Don't engage in warar crimes.
Speaker 2: Don't commit a war crime. Yeah, don't commit a war crime.
Speaker 2: Avoid that if you can.
Speaker 3: Don't engage in war if you don't have to, really.
Speaker 2: Try to avoid war. Because one of the things reading
Speaker 2: through this just I think about all the things I've
Speaker 2: seen that I'm like, well, I could argue that that
Speaker 2: was a war crime. You know, they happen a lot,
Speaker 2: it turns out, or at least edge cases are most
Speaker 2: of the things you see in war. Yes, anyway, We're done.
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