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If your justification for the genocide of the Palestinian people is that what Israel’s doing is legal, may I remind you the Holocaust was legal too. Hitler was acting entirely within the laws of Nazi Germany while committing the genocide of the Jewish (and Roma, and gay, and disabled, …) people.
Legal does not mean moral, just, or right.
If something is legal but unjust, it is your moral duty to break the law.
No social progress has ever come about without moral people breaking unjust laws.
@aral I saw 10.000 dead children, and I turned away because they had been killed legally
@jkxyz President Biden approves this message.
@aral This is why democray has already died by the time far-righters are elected.
The far right want to make murder legal.
In fact, most of them get their first wave of popularity based on a kind of murder: Closing the borders to refugees and migrants, leaving them to die outside the walls or in the wastelands.
@ZillaMon @aral Yes, in order to "steal back votes from the far right".
The problem is that the left has stopped even trying to keep the working class informed, and hence the proletariat is getting more and more lumpen, to the point where they're more inclined to vote for fascist policies than for policies that actually benefit workers and poor people.
But this is part of the process that leads to the death of democracy. For-profit media following the profits, selling hatred at the behest of the highest bidder.
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@aral@mastodon.ar.al
If it's some nation/state committing genocide, it's always legal, the law and order always cave under the government.
Which is why people should have long been disillusioned to "the law".
@aral during the trials after WWII the judges that carried out the sentencing of all kinds of 'undesirables' were sentenced for following the law because they had abandoned all ethical considerations.
The law is a weak argument. It's there to serve the ones in power and to suppress those that aren't.
@aral if i hear one more journalst refer to mass murder as a "humanitarian disaster" i will break something. there is humanitarian aid, then there are doubly murderous israeles destroying aid covoys. and stealing west bank land and killing anyone who objects.
C'est la différence entre la légalité et la légitimité.
Constitution de 1793, jamais appliquée, article 35 :
Article 35. - Quand le gouvernement viole les droits du peuple, l'insurrection est, pour le peuple et pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacré des droits et le plus indispensable des devoirs.
@aral The sort of people who would argue that genocide is legal might as well be chanting Whose laws? Our laws! Whose laws? Our laws!. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/19/us/whose-streets-our-streets-chant-trnd/index.html
@aral also note that authoritarians don't mind breaking the law while it lets them gain more power, until they no longer have to because they've gained total control over the law and it's enforcement. if one insists that what is legal is moral then the moment Hitler assumed full control and put himself outside of the law everything he did after became definitionally morally correct.
I know people will try to tie themselves into logical pretzels to insist that breaking the law to gain power makes any subsequent actions illegitimate, but for every state in existence one can point to a moment where people had to go outside established law to create the system that exists. Whether it was in overthrowing kings or dictators, creating an entirely new state, seizing control, or something as mundane as breaking electoral laws to get a few more seats in parliament, allowing them to determine subsequent law. Nation states and their laws do not pre-exist as some sort of platonic ideal.
@aral The evil is in the obedience to immoral laws (Hannah Arendt)
@aral I mean, legality can't really be an argument here or the ICJ would have not sought arrest warrants for Israeli government officials. Like, even in legal terms, there is no justification.
@aral Problem for many politicians appears to be the temptation of profit and addiction to capitalism. Yesterday in Dutch front page news, army celebrating the bonus financial win, including exporting arms to Israel. https://nos.nl/artikel/2522139-geopolitieke-spanningen-spekken-nederlandse-defensie-industrie #palestine
@aral I fully agree with your sentiment, but to my knowledge the factual part of your statement is incorrect: The common legal interpretation is to my knowledge that the Holocaust was actually illegal at the time and place.
Unsurprisingly Nazis aren't super smart and forgot to make their actions properly legal and that is why they could be prosecuted without the need for special exceptions along the lines of certain crimes being illegal despite the local law declaring them legal at the time.
That said, a little known fact is that Germany assumes universal jurisdiction for crimes against international humanitarian law. Independently of whether there is any further connection to Germany. So even if what the IDF is doing was legal under the law of Israel, it is illegal under international humanitarian law and thus under a German criminal law that knows no “has nothing to do with us”-excuse. Yes, Germany assumes jurisdiction over Israel here!
(That said the law is sadly not acted upon as often as it should be, see e.g. the Iraq-war.)
@aral The argument I've always used against the "but is legal people" (without wanting to end in Goldwin territory) is "so it was the prima nocte, but we threw that shit away"
They tend to stfu afterwards
Beyond legality, there is also no democratic legitimacy for genocide. If people vote according to fair rules and a majority of them elect someone to carry out genocide, that does not make it legitimate.
@aral
Something I stressed every day when my kids were growing up:
Not all authority is legitimate. If they ask you to do something that's against your conscience and/or obviously causes harm to innocent people, that authority has lost any claim it ever had to calling itself legitimate.
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IDGAF what the "law" says if what Israel is doing counts as "legal" under it.
@aral @IntentionallyBLANK If what’s happening is legal, that’s actually worse.
@aral Regardless what we think about Israel/Gaza, are you serious comparing it with the Shoah?!
@aral And 113 people think that's something ok to share???
@project1enigma Go away.
@aral 1/2 The #Shoa was never legal, not even under contemporary #Nazi law. While the Nazis did enact laws ordering massive dehumanization of #Jews, the mass #murder itself was never formally legalized. (What proof that would have been in the Nuremberg trials!)
And the Nazi lawyers were well aware of this. That's why the early mass shootings took place outside of german territory and the six death camps Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau were as well.
@aral 2/3 Among the most important evidence presented in the #Nurembergtrials were the two Posen speeches by Heinrich #Himmler to the #SS from 1943. The "motivational" approach when talking to his men in the first speech reveals that you got it exactly the wrong way around: The Nazis knew perfectly well that what they did was illegal, but they felt morally right - so to them, it was OK to commit mass murder "for the common good".
In their view, they were "moral people, breaking unjust laws".
@aral 3/3 The second speech makes those two aspects - awareness of illegality and believe in moral high ground - even more evident: "I ask of you that that which I say to you in this circle be really only heard and not ever discussed."
As Daniel #Goldhagen has shown, there was popular consensus among #germans in favour of killing #Jews - but even that doesn't make it legal.
Ignorance of #history breeds #fascism. And it all starts with #antisemitism and #victimblaming.
Yeah no I'm sorry but as someone who was a child not so long ago I'd rather not be carpet-bombed because a prime minister of some neighboring country thinks I'm somehow a terrorist at the age of 10
@aral I will never forget a pivotal moment during my visit to Auschwitz. I asked about these large pools of water I noticed. They were water supplies for firefighters, installed to comply with their insurance policy. They literally had a general insurance policy that was required to “operate a business.” That’s how normalized the genocide was.
@markwyner Bloody hell :( This is what they must mean by the banality of evil.