> language

I dont think js is needed for either of those things.

If you want to make the world a better place, fight for that world. Assigning blame is an activity for the historians to do after everyone is dead.

Well they won't be heads of state forever. The Israeli guy might even be out of power at the end of the month. And it does restrict their travel - fairly significantly. They of course didn't just issue warrants for heads of state, although the same analysis probably applies to the other accused.

Ultimately i think it was an ideological stand - The ICC prosecutor wanted to say nobody is above the law, even if practically there are limits.

At the same time, i do kind of agree, it undermines the ICC when it puts itself in a position where it knows it cant really win, and makes it seem in some ways like it is making a political statement rather than pursuing justice.

> If you go by the UN it's a non-member observer state. If you go by the de facto government of Gaza they(Hamas) clearly never signed the Rome statute.

Well yeah, that is why its a contentious question. People who recognize the state of Palestine generally view Gaza as part of it, despite the fact that the (official) state of palestine only controlled the area for a very short time long ago. Not to mention Palestine lacking some of the traditional attributes associated with states. It would be up to the judges of the ICC to determine what the ICC thinks. I think there was already a preliminary ruling, but if the Israeli accused surrendered themselves, i'm sure that would have to be relitigated.

> The de jure government [of afghanistan] may have, but not the de facto government

well, de jure & de facto at the time. Governments change, but treaty obligations stay. I think the taliban considers itself the successor state. They could have withdrawn at any point (with 1 year notice) if they felt like it. they still havent.

> They withdrew in practice since the ICC has no independent enforcement capability

The main point of withdrawing is rescinding the ICC's permission to use the states soverign ability to prosecute crimes as a basis of jurisdiction. Like yeah, there is also the cooperating in apregending fugitives bit as well, but that was always mostly on the honor system.

>It's a very strange situation where a courts rulings can be almost completely detached from the de facto jurisdiction on the ground. This whole strategy of asserting jurisdiction by the ICC without having any real enforcement capability makes it look like the ICC is making decisions that are totally detached from reality and undermines their own credibility.

I'll grant you its strange in the Palestine case, where the state of palestine does not have de facto juridsiction in gaza, but that is kind of exceptional.

In most cases the situation is more that the accused has either fled or otherwise not present in the territory, which is pretty normal for courts. Like with ukraine, i'm sure ukraine would have no problem prosecuting putin if he presented himself to ukraine. The issue is he is at large outside of the territory. That seems pretty common thing to happen in normal courts.

People give most of the attention to the weird cases, but i think the less famous icc cases tend to be a lot more normal.

In many ways, the ICC is best viewed as an extradition pact with its own court.

Extradition treaties are common among soverign states. This is no different.

> For example members states have refused to arrest Putin despite having a theoretical legal obligation to do so.

Sometimes you have to bow to realism. Nobody is arresting the head of state of a nuclear armed power. That is a death wish.

Also while the idea of throwing aside soverign immunity for international crimes has quite a bit of precedent, especially for multinational tribunals, its not exactly as on firm ground as the rest of this.

> The ICC has issued warrants for individuals for alleged crimes committed in at least two states that reject ICC jurisdiction, those states being Afghanistan and Israel.

The jurisdictional theory for the Israeli nationals is that the crime took place in palestine which is a member state. If a trial took place im sure they would try and argue that palestine is not really a state, not competent to join the rome statute, or failing that, its territorial extent does not include gaza. It would be up to a judge to rule on that

Afghanistan joined signed the treaty. They have not done the proper procedure to withdraw.

I don't think its willy nilly. The office of the prosecutor did significant investigation to get to this point. Its just far away from a guilty verdict.

Even at the pretrial stage the court rejected some of the charges proposed by the prosecutor. The prosecutor asked for a charge of extermination, but the pre trial chamber found there wasn't evidence of the requirements being met. Its entirely plausible at an actual trial some of the other charges might be rejected.

From what i understand the conviction rate of the ICC is fairly low (if you include people who had warrants/summons but had case dropped before it went to trial as while as people acquited). Which isn't a bad thing, it means it is a fair court.

> Pillay's UN commission of inquiry alone provided ~7000 pieces of verified evidence

Justice isn't a numbers game. The quality not the quantity rules the day (not necessarily saying the evidence isn't quality - i havent seen it, just that the number of items is irrelavent)

> several state parties refered the situation in Palestine to the court,

state party referrals tend to be a joke. People refer things to the court for all sorts of political grandstanding reasons. The prosecutor is the person that matters when bringing a case.

Ultimately, part of the reason to have trials is so the accused can present evidence in their defense. Its an important part of determining a just verdict.

The people most responsible for getting their candidate elected is the campaign team. If the plan is just for your opponents to do a bad job, you don't deserve to win.

This is untrue. ICC sometimes issues warrants for crimes that were in the past where it is unlikely the crime will continue.

>tamper with investigation (killing witnesses, etc

While this is something the ICC could issue a warrant for if there was reasonable cause, to date they have not publicly. So far the ICC has not accused Israel of this.

>And you don't know much about the ICC process and could not have observed it if you think warrant is step 1. It's like step 7. If you did not watch the process, you can still learn the ICC procedure from the rules of the court. It's all freely available on their website.

i was oversimplifying a bit, like yes, there is some process around letting complemtary take its course, but the warrant is the first step where the accused can actually do anything about it. my point was its very far away from a guilty verdict

People forget, that a war crime is simply a crime that (state) combatants dont have immunity for in war. The geneva convention gives immunity for everything that is not a war crime.

they dont like the specific court, and more generally they dont like when the rule of law applies to them and their allies instead of just enemies. But they do recognize all these things as crime

i feel like this misrepresents what the ICC has found. They found there was enough plausible cause to issue a warrant. That means they think that a trial should take place to figure out what is going on. It does not mean they think anyone is guilty. Lots of people subject to warrants end up being found innocent. Its step 1 of the process not the entire process.

And to further clarify, if your implication is that its similar to accusations of genocide - the ICC has jurisdiction over genocide and did not publicly issue a warrant for that charge against any israeli national.

To be clear i find the us campaign disgusting.

And the ICC never tried to diminish their sovereignty. Juridsiction at the icc works the same way as it does with states.

If you commit a crime on the territory of a sovereign state, that state gets to punish you. If you are a citizen of a soverign state then that state gets to punish you.

That is how it works in countries, and that is how it works at the ICC . ICC is no different from any country. The crime has to happen on the territory of a member state or be comitted by a national of a member state (im ignoring the referral from UNSC part as that is obscure)

Meanwhile, i have been apt-get install'ing apache since i was a teenager, and it still all works the same.