War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

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      The International Court of Justice’s Ruling on Israel Tests International Law

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      Over the past month, we’ve watched an astonishing, high-stakes global drama play out in The Hague. A group of countries from the poorer, less powerful bloc some call the Global South, led by South Africa, dragged the government of Israel and by extension its rich, powerful allies into the top court of that order, and accused Israel of prosecuting a brutal war in Gaza that is “genocidal in character.”The responses to this presentation from the leading nations of the Western rules-based order were quick and blunt.“Completely unjustified and wrong,” said a statement from Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister.“Meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the United States National Security Council.“The accusation has no basis in fact,” a German government spokesman said, adding that Germany opposed the “political instrumentalization” of the genocide statute.But on Friday, that court had its say, issuing a sober and careful provisional ruling that doubled as a rebuke to those dismissals. In granting provisional measures, the court affirmed that some of South Africa’s allegations were plausible, and called on Israel to take immediate steps to protect civilians, increase the amount of humanitarian aid and punish officials who engaged in violent and incendiary speech. The court stopped short of calling for a cease-fire, but it granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures to prevent further civilian death. For the most part, the court ruled in favor of the Global South. Accusing the state created in the aftermath of the slaughter that required the coinage of the term genocide is a serious step. Scholars of genocide have raised alarms about statements from Israeli leaders and its conduct in the war while stopping short of calling the killing genocide. Some have welcomed South Africa’s application as a necessary step to preventing genocide.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      U.N. Court Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide, but Does Not Demand Stop to War

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      The top United Nations court in The Hague did not rule on whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, the accusation that South Africa brought before the court.The International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take actions to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.Remko De Waal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe United Nations’ highest court said on Friday that Israel must take action to prevent acts of genocide by its forces in the Gaza Strip, adding to the international pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reduce death and destruction in the battered Palestinian enclave.But the court did not rule on whether Israel was committing genocide, and it did not call on Israel to stop its military campaign to crush Hamas, as South Africa, which brought the case, had requested.While the ruling had elements that each side could embrace, the court allowed the case charging Israel with genocide to proceed, which will likely keep the country under international scrutiny for years to come.“The court is acutely aware of the extent of the human tragedy that is unfolding in the region, and is deeply concerned about the continuing loss of life and human suffering,” Joan E. Donoghue, the president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, said as she announced the interim ruling. The decision also ordered the delivery of more humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and called for the release of hostages held by armed groups in Gaza.The South Africans who argued the case this month have equated the oppression they faced under apartheid with the plight of Palestinians.The genocide accusation is acutely sensitive for Israel, which was founded in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Many Israelis argue that it is Hamas that should face charges of genocide after its attack on Oct. 7, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 were taken captive, according to Israeli officials.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      In Bali Bombing Trial, Victims Describe Their Pain and Prisoners Apologize

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      A Guantánamo military court heard anguishing testimony at the sentencing hearing for two Malaysian prisoners who pleaded guilty after 20 years of detention.Relatives of tourists killed in the 2002 terrorist bombing in Bali, Indonesia, spoke of endless, devastating grief, and two prisoners who conspired in the attack renounced violence in the name of Islam on Thursday for a U.S. military jury assembled at Guantánamo Bay to deliberate their sentence.The prisoners, Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, both Malaysians, pleaded guilty last week to war crimes charges for conspiring with an affiliate of Al Qaeda that carried out the attack. The bombings killed 202 people from 22 nations.“No God of any religion rewards such acts of horror,” said Solomon Lamagni-Miller, 18, of London. He was born after his uncle, Nathaniel Dan Miller, 31, was killed in the bombing and read a statement written by the victim’s mother, his grandmother.Christopher Snodgrass of Glendale, Ariz., said the loss of his daughter, Deborah, 33, in the bombing and other “terrorist activities worldwide” left him despising “over 20 percent of the world population, Muslims. I’m a religious person, and the hate-filled person I have become is certainly not what I wanted.”Echoing the sentiment of several family members, he appealed to the jury to “deal with these murderers in such a manner that they can’t do to others as they’ve done to us.”For hours this week, fathers, mothers, a brother and three sisters of the victims offered anguished descriptions of searches for missing relatives, of life-altering burns and of the vacuum left by the deaths of young people who had gone on vacation in Bali and never came home.Two of Mr. Bin Amin’s elder brothers tearfully asked the jury for leniency. Then both defendants renounced their terrorist pasts, apologized to the families and said they were tortured while in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prison network from 2003 to 2006.The men were captured in Thailand in June 2003. A U.S. military jury is hearing the case to decide a sentence in the 20- to 25-year range, and cannot grant credit for time served. There is, however, a secondary, secret agreement in which the men could return to Malaysia later this year.Mr. Bin Amin’s brothers flew in from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, and sat in the public portion of the spectators’ gallery, where a blue curtain separated relatives of the dead from the United States, Britain and Germany.The oldest brother, Fadil, 62, an architect who was educated in Birmingham, England, sorrowfully told the court that his mother taught all 10 of her children a peaceful form of Islam. “He somehow got sidetracked” and made bad choices, he said.In the gallery sat Matthew Arnold, who traveled to Guantánamo from his home in Birmingham and testified that his brother Timothy, 43, was in Bali for a rugby tournament when he was killed “by this atrocity.”“My family’s lives have been changed completely by the actions of the perpetrators of this crime,” he said. “And I would like the court and Mr. Bin Amin, and Mr. Bin Lep, to be aware of the devastating effects of their actions on so many innocent and decent people.”Mr. Bin Amin, who hung his head at the defense table throughout the hours of testimony, apologized to the victims, his family and “all Muslims. This is not what I was taught as a child,” he said.In his two decades of U.S. detention, he said, “I have changed. I am not an angry young man anymore. I am a reformed man. My faith has evolved.”As part of their plea deal, both men offered secret testimony earlier this week for the future war crimes trial of Encep Nurjaman, a prisoner known as Hambali whom prosecutors portray as a mastermind of terrorist attacks in Indonesia in 2002 and 2003. But both men said in their confessions that they had no firsthand knowledge of Mr. Hambali’s role in the attack.On Thursday, Mr. Bin Amin went further.“I didn’t know anything about the Bali bombing until after it happened,” he said, describing his role in the plot as helping some of the perpetrators after the bombing and assisting in money transfers that could be used for other attacks.He showed drawings he made of himself being tortured, which were recently declassified to show the jury.Col. George C. Kraehe, the case prosecutor, did not object to the artwork that showed Mr. Bin Amin nude, hooded, shackled in painful positions and at one point held spread-eagle on a plastic tarp by masked guards, with one pouring water into his nose and mouth.Christine A. Funk, Mr. Bin Amin’s lawyer, said the artwork display was to help the jury “in weighing appropriate punishment.” Mr. Bin Lep said he did not want the legacy of torture “to define who I am.”Also, he said, “I forgive the people who tortured me.”He admitted to his crimes. “I am guilty of my role in the Bali bombing,” he said.He described himself as “young, immature and stubborn” when he was drawn to Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001 to train with Al Qaeda.“All I wish for now is peace,” he said. “I wish that peace for everyone here, but especially the victims and their families.” More

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      Trump’s Landslide Victory in Iowa

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      More from our inbox:Young Voters: Vote!U.S. Strikes in YemenThe Genocide Charges Against IsraelDonald J. Trump at a caucus site in Clive, Iowa, on Monday evening. His victory was called by The Associated Press only 31 minutes after the caucuses had begun.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Wins Iowa in Key First Step Toward Rematch” (front page, Jan. 16):If you weren’t scared before Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, you should be terrified now. The disgraced, twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted former president came within one vote of winning all 99 of Iowa’s counties, and received 51 percent of the vote.Ron DeSantis came in a distant second with 21 percent of the vote, and Nikki Haley was a distant third with just 19 percent of the vote.The bid for the Republican nomination for president is all but over, leaving America with a terrible choice between the autocratic and awful former president, and the obviously too old and frail current president.Unless Ms. Haley can win convincingly in New Hampshire, and match Donald Trump in South Carolina, the former president will be the nominee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Some Very Difficult Questions About Israel and the War in Gaza

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      It’s become something of a tradition on “The Ezra Klein Show” to end the year with an “Ask Me Anything” episode. So as 2023 comes to a close, I sat down with our new senior editor, Claire Gordon, to answer listeners’ questions about everything from the Israel-Hamas war to my thoughts on parenting.We discuss whether the war in Gaza has affected my relationships with family members and friends; what I think about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; whether the Democrats should have voted to keep Kevin McCarthy as House speaker; how worried I am about a Trump victory in 2024; whether A.I. can really replace human friendships; how struggling in school as a kid shaped my politics as an adult; and much more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Courtesy of Ezra KleinThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      The Overlooked Crisis in Congo: ‘We Live in War’

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      Artillery boomed, shaking the ground, as a couple scurried through the streets of Saké, their possessions balanced on their heads, in the embattled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.At a crossroads, they passed a giant poster of Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, who is standing for re-election on Dec. 20. “Unity, Security, Prosperity,” read the slogan. They hurried along.“Our children were born in war. We live in war,” Jean Bahati, his face beaded with sweat, said as he paused for breath. It was the fifth time that he and his wife had been forced to flee, he said. “We’re so sick of it.”They joined 6.5 million people displaced by war in eastern Congo, where a conflict that has dragged on for nearly three decades, stoking a vast humanitarian crisis that by some estimates has claiming over six million lives, is now lurching into a volatile new phase.Making sense of the mayhem is not easy. Over 100 armed groups and several national armies are vying for supremacy across a region of lakes, mountains and rainforests slightly bigger than Florida. Meddlesome foreign powers covet its vast reserves of gold, oil and coltan, a mineral used to make cellphones and electric vehicles. Corruption is endemic. Massacres and rape are common.For all that, aid groups struggle to draw attention to the suffering in a country of about 100 million people, even when the numbers affected dwarf those of other crises.“There’s a sense of fatalism about Congo,” said Cynthia Jones, the World Food Program head in eastern Congo. “People seem to think ‘that’s just the way it is’.”However this latest phase of the war, which began in earnest two years ago, is drawn in unusually clear lines.On one side is the M23, a well-organized but ruthless rebel group that the United States and the United Nations say is backed by Rwanda, Congo’s eastern neighbor, which is one-hundredth the size of Congo. (Rwanda denies any link.) Since October, the M23 has seized the main roads into Goma, the regional capital, as well as the hilltops overlooking Saké, 10 miles to the west.People fleeing fighting this month pass an election poster for Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, in Saké. Parts of eastern Congo are so unstable that voting has been canceled there.An aerial view of the regional capital of Goma. Since October, the militia group known as M23 has seized the main roads into Goma.On the other side is Congo’s army, whose troops are notoriously ill-disciplined — even as fighting raged near Saké last week, drunken soldiers careened through its streets. But their strength is boosted by two new allies.One is the Wazalendo, Swahili for patriots, a coalition of once-rival militias that the government cobbled together to repel M23, despite the fighters’ reputation for factionalism and brutality.The second is a force of about 1,000 Romanian mercenaries, many formerly with the French Foreign Legion, deployed around Goma and Saké. If M23 tries to seize the city — as it briefly did once, in 2012 — the Romanians are charged with defending it. “They are the last line of defense,” Romuald, a retired French officer advising the Congolese military, said at a lakeside restaurant in Goma. He asked to omit his surname to protect his security.Amid all that, an election is taking place. More

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      Israeli Army Escorts Journalists to Gaza Hospital, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — it’s available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes.A view of Al-Shifa Hospital in a darkened Gaza. Israel says Hamas maintains a command center beneath the hospital, a claim rejected by Hamas and hospital officials.Mohammed Saber/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Today’s Episode:The Israeli Army Escorted Times Journalists to Al-Shifa, a Focus of Its Invasion, by Philip P. Pan and Patrick KingsleySantos Won’t Seek Re-election After House Panel Finds Evidence of Crimes, by Grace AshfordSean Combs Is Accused by Cassie of Rape and Years of Abuse in Lawsuit, with Ben SisarioEmily Lang More

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      Haley Slams Trump and Ramaswamy Over Israel Remarks

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      Nikki Haley on Friday knocked two of her Republican presidential rivals, Donald J. Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, over their recent comments on Israel, underscoring the deepening divide within the party around the “America First” anti-interventionist stance that Mr. Trump made a core part of his first campaign.Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley suggested, lacks moral clarity and has not left “the baggage and negativity” of the past behind, an apparent reference to Mr. Trump’s still-simmering animosity toward Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over events that include his congratulating President Biden on winning the 2020 election. Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, sounds more like a liberal Democrat than a Republican, Ms. Haley said.“To go and criticize the head of a country who just saw massive bloodshed — no, that’s not what we need in a president,” Ms. Haley said of Mr. Trump, the former president and current Republican front-runner, in a news conference in Concord, N.H., after filing to get on the state’s primary ballot.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump who has been running on her foreign policy experience, said the next president of the United States needed to be someone who “knows the difference between good and evil, who knows the difference between right and wrong.”“You don’t congratulate or give any credit to murderers, period,” she said. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, accused Ms. Haley of using Democratic talking points and said that “there has been no bigger defender and advocate for Israel than President Trump.” But Mr. Trump has drawn scorn from both sides of the political aisle for referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart” while criticizing Israel’s prime minister and Israeli intelligence.His tone shifted on Friday, though, as he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he had “always been impressed by the skill and determination of the Israeli Defense Forces.” A second post said simply: “#IStandWithIsrael #IStandWithBibi.”Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Ramaswamy campaign, dismissed Ms. Haley’s remarks on Friday — including Ms. Haley’s accusation that he sounded like a member of the group of progressives known as “the squad” — as a scripted attack from a candidate whom Ms. McLaughlin sought to portray as beholden to special interests.“Pre-canned quip brought to you by the Boeing squad,” she said in an email, invoking Ms. Haley’s tenure of less than a year on the corporate board of Boeing.Ms. Haley’s dig at Mr. Ramaswamy on Friday escalated an ongoing feud between the G.O.P. rivals that has pitted those with more traditional conservative positions, who believe the United States should play a major role abroad, against those espousing anti-interventionist views, who want Americans to focus on issues at home.Mr. Ramaswamy was sharply rebuked by his opponents over his conversation with Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this week.He called the Republican response to Hamas’s attacks on Israel another example of “selective moral outrage” and argued that politicians on both sides of the aisle had largely ignored other atrocities, citing fentanyl deaths in the United States and the accusations of genocide of ethnic Armenians by Azerbaijan.“It comes down in most cases — some people do have ideological commitments that are outdated that are earnest — but a lot of it comes down to money, the corrupting influence of super PACs on the process,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.In a statement on Friday, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, another Republican candidate in the race, condemned Mr. Ramaswamy’s remarks, saying that he was “pulling out the oldest and most offensive antisemitic tropes possible.”He added: “To say that outrage is fueled by donor money and the media is beyond offensive. It is morally wrong and it is dangerous.”Mr. Ramaswamy accused critics and even conservative media outlets of taking his words out of context. Ms. McLaughlin, his campaign spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday that he was talking about Azerbaijan, not Israel.But Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator, was not persuaded. In a tense exchange between the two men on Thursday night, Mr. Hannity said that Mr. Ramaswamy had a history of retreating from his incendiary statements and had made wild claims without backing them up.“What are the financial corrupting influences that Nikki Haley is taking a position on?” he said. “We’ve got pictures of dead babies decapitated, burned babies’ bodies. We’ve got the equivalent of what would be, population-wise in the U.S., over 37,000 dead Americans. So, how much more evidence do you need? What are you talking about?”Mr. Trump, during his time in the White House, virtually did not challenge Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.As his United Nations ambassador, Ms. Haley forcefully spoke out in support of the president’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as his decision to cut American funding to Palestinian refugees. She has since made her foreign policy credentials and staunch support for Israel pillars of her campaign. Her sparring with Mr. Ramaswamy over foreign policy on the national debate stage in particular helped to boost her in the polls, propelling her to the second position behind Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.On the trail and on the Republican media circuit this week, Ms. Haley has been talking up her on-the-ground experience in the Middle East and calling for the elimination of Hamas. In town halls in New Hampshire on Thursday, she ratcheted up her criticism of Mr. Trump for his reaction to the Israel-Hamas war, saying the former president was too focused on himself.In a small room crowded with reporters at the New Hampshire State House on Friday, Ms. Haley again pitched herself as “a new generational conservative leader” who knew how to negotiate with world leaders.“I know what it takes to keep Americans safe,” she said. She later added: “You don’t just have Israel’s back when they get hit. You need to have Israel’s back when they hit back, too.” More