Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Well, to be clear, they apply where a country has agreed to be bound by them at least. And Israel is not a member of the ICC and has traditionally refused to entertain any investigations of war crimes under that body.
So the "laws" in question, which are really just international agreements, don't really apply in any real sense. What we're talking about here is applying the moral standards of what constitutes a war crime according to the nations that ARE bound by those rules to judge whether Israel's actions are morally wrong.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with doing that, because you have to apply SOME moral standard to conduct. If someone commits a rape, and the country that happens in is one in which that act is instead defined as the victim having instead committed the "crime" of adultery, we don't say "well, our sexual assault laws don't apply there, therefore she wasn't really sexually assaulted".
EDIT: I should say that Israel has ratified the Geneva Convention (1949) and has adopted other international standards of conduct that might be applicable, so it really depends what specific things we're talking about as to whether Israel is "bound" by them.
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FWIW, the ICC does have jurisdiction in Palestine, which covers anything done by Palestine and by other nations acting within those borders, which includes Israel when it comes to Gaza, the West Bank, etc.