What's the first board game you learned to play? Snakes & Ladders comes to mind with its roll of the dice precipitating promotion or a rapid decline in fortunes. Then there was checkers with the red & white squares and the chance to decimate an opponent, especially if you could advance a piece to your opponent's home row and get crowned as a transformation into a free-moving engine of destruction - a king. That may be the only game ever learned by the Big Orange Taco next door.
All of those early games had one basic rule; namely, you took turns. And everyone else as your opponent(s) watched to make sure you followed the rules. Well, in big-person land the game is politics. Even chess originated as an analogy to politics with its concluding "shat mat" or "checkmate" meaning "the king is dead". Taking turns is still fundamental to the game of chess, but in politics, not so much. Pre-emptive attacks are now used as a winning strategy in military events, with varying levels of success - ask Putin.
We have, in our games of international politics, the players and the onlookers and sometimes they are the same body of very interested parties. But we can separate them if we consider media - the reporting on political moves (and war is just politics carried on by other means as some famous person said) - as being the onlooker or the agency to cry "foul" when a player violates a rule.
The rules governing international conflicts have been generated over time in an attempt to minimize harm to innocent populations. So now we have some internationally-recognized agreements, and hopefully a free and responsible media to check up on how well the nations of the world are keeping those agreements.
1. The Geneva Conventions which informed the set of UN sponsored codes known as International humanitarian law: (IHL) is a set of rules that seeks, for humanitarian reasons, to limit the effects of armed conflict. It protects persons who do not, or no longer, take part in the fighting (including civilians, medics, aid workers, wounded, sick and shipwrecked troops, prisoners of war or other detainees), and imposes limits on the means and methods of warfare (for instance, the use of certain weapons). IHL, also known as 'the law of war' or 'the law of armed conflict', is made up of treaties (the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols are the main ones) and customary international law.
2. The CWC (Chemical Weapons Convention) came into force in 1997. 165 states had signed the convention, allowing them to ratify the agreement after obtaining domestic approval. As of March 2021, 193 states, representing over 98 percent of the world's population, are party to the CWC. Of the four United Nations member states that are not parties to the treaty, Israel has signed but not ratified the treaty, while Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan have neither signed nor acceded to the convention. Taiwan, though not a member state, has stated on 27 August 2002 that it fully complies with the treaty.
3. There are certain banned weapons in the protocols of the Geneva Conventions and these include:
Nuclear weapons
Chemical weapons –– This is hard to police since some chemicals are hard to
Biological weapons determine specifically as weaponry, eg phosphene.
Anti-personnel landmines
Cluster munitions
Blinding laser weapons
So much for the international agreements and whatever degree they are ratified or ignored by member states in our (supposedly) United Nations. What happens if states violate the agreements? Well that's where the issues get complicated. They shouldn't, but look at these examples.
The International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice are two bodies that render judgements on matters of international consequence. They aren't the same. The ICJ resolves disputes between States, while the ICC prosecutes individuals for crimes. Russia, Israel, Myanmar and even the United States are not signatories to the Int'l. Criminal Court. Netanyahu can visit the US with impunity; if he comes to Canada we arrest him.
The Int'l. Court of Justice was petitioned in July, 2024 to hear arguments relevant to Israel's conduct towards Palestinians in this following directive.
What are the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures?
How do the policies and practices of Israel referred to in paragraph 18 (a) above affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all States and the United Nations from this status?”
The judgement, with some dissenting opinions, held Israel responsible for the forced displacement of Palestinians, illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, refusal to comply with previously negotiated treaties and various breaches of international humanitarian law. Nothing changed.
The same Int'l Court of Justice had been petitioned by South Africa in Feb, 2024 to rule on Israel's conduct of its actions against Hamas in Gaza with accusations of probable genocide and apartheid. Genocidal intent was too elusive a term to be applicable at the time, but Israel was ordered to comply with certain measures to limit its harsh treatment of the civilian population in Gaza. Two months after that ruling with Israel condeming the court as an "arm of Hamas" nothing had changed and civilian deaths continued to rise. These following agencies filed reports. Could they all be lying?
Human Rights Watch said that Israel had not complied with at least one provisional measure, stating fewer humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza after the ruling than in the weeks preceding it.[20][120] Amnesty International similarly said Israel had not complied with the ICJ ruling to ensure sufficient aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, described what was occurring in Gaza as "a situation of genocide".[121] Oxfam stated, "The risk of genocide is increasing in northern Gaza because the Government of Israel is ignoring one of the key provisions of the International Court of Justice, to provide urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance".[122] Doctors Without Borders stated, "There are no signs of Israeli forces attempting to limit the loss of civilian life or alleviate the suffering of people."[123]
The International Criminal Court was convened and found on Nov 21, 2024, after it said that it "rejects the State of Israel’s challenges to jurisdiction" and issued warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
“With regard to the crimes, the [Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber I] found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Netanyahu…and Mr. Gallant…bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
The warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif also alleges crimes against humanity and war crimes, although Israel has said that he was killed in an air strike in Gaza in July.
Netanyahu has responded to the warrant by accusing the ICC of antisemitism.
So, all this is history ongoing, and many of you have been following the news as closely as I have and probably have desktop folders of information on all of the events surrounding the wars going on in the world. I'm an old retired English teacher and one of my pasttimes is checking the checkers, an interesting activity - interesting in revealing sources. The red highlighted (highlit?) texts above reference what for me are unimpeachable sources. But here's a couple of lighter stories to set the stage for what follows.
Once upon a working time, a student provided me with a text to prove the arguments he had made in an essay after I had commented that some of his points seemed a little exaggerated - something about food additives I think. At first, I complimented him on his willingness to check references. Then I looked at the book he held out. The author made a lot of claims and put citations for all of them, but those citations were all circular; they all referenced his own work. It would be like my claiming that the earth is flat with a footnote or citation reference to a previous essay of mine where I claimed that I was a member in good standing at the Flat-Earther Society and a reference there to another text of mine about some notable historical person (like the eccesiastical magistrate at the trial of Galileo). You have to go outside your own work to claim that results are replicable.
A few years later in a seminar with my cadre of PhD candidates, we were given an exercise to sharpen our own critical skills. It seemed too simple. All we had to do was take any paper we had recently submitted and check all of the citations we had made.
Well, we all had our favourite paper - that one where we put forward our particular slant on our particular subject in our particular field of study - the paper where we posited our unique micro-examination of our thesis - the one that would have our thesis committee awestruck. OK, enough with the BS; the results were shocking.
When we checked who had said what and who they had referenced in saying that and then who it was who had researched that element and so on down to the last item in the trail of evidence, we found far too many errors. There wasn't any grand collapse of human knowledge in all this, but it was disheartening to find that our favourite reference had cited a piece of research that didn't exist because he or she had put in the wrong journal or the wrong date or was talking about something other than the proof that was supposed to be there. And this was at doctoral level research! Ugh!
Now, here's some of my recent fact checks.
1. Charlie Angus hosts "the Resistance" substack and one of his posts concerns the appointment of Trump's US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra. Charlie is a former NDP cabinet minister and a rocker and he showcases our Canadian resistors in their various "elbows up" campaigns whether against genocide in Palestine or sovereignty threats from the big TACO in the White House. I dug into his statements about Mr. Hoekstra. Charlie's assertions are below. My research is added in red.
-founded Tea Party caucus Yes- with Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin
-made false claims about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" Yes, and continued to do so even after the Bush administration stopped saying so because it was proven unfounded.
-received CNN award of 4 pinocchios (great term) for talk of anti-Muslim conspiracies as reported in UK's Guardian on Jan 2018 re politicians being set on fire by radical Islamists. Yes, the article is here -
-He held a fundraiser for alt-right Forum for Democracy in Netherlands at US Embassy. Still checking, but if so, it is a violation of international law.
In addition to Charlie's work, I found the following:
He is listed as a "contributor" to Project 2025
His Wikipedia page gives this information:
Hoekstra had a conservative voting record, consistent with the conservative nature of the 2nd congressional district. He
opposed abortion rights, opposed expanding health care benefits for children, opposed gay adoption rights and gay marriage,
and voted against paid parental leave for federal employees. However, he also opposed amending the Constitution to prohibit
flag desecration.
Hoekstra consistently opposed gun control during his tenure, earning an A rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund. In 2005
he voted to prohibit product lawsuits against gun manufacturers. In 1994 he voted against the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.
2. Israel will be "A land without a people for a people without a land" according to politicians at the end of WW2.
– but the "land" had lots of people before and after the 1918 collapse of the Ottoman Empire and
– the 1947 forced displacement of Palestinians after the Balfour Declaration was "the nakba" (catastrophe) for Palestinians and although the UN "required" compensation for lands taken after forced displacement, none was given and Israel initiated a plan whereby any such compensation would be offset by claims of Jewish people who had left land in Arab countries when emigrating to Israel. Here's a link to the article:
– dry-land farming techniques were used by Palestinians; thus large irrigation
projects of Israel although impressive, were not necessary
– little assistance was given to Palestinians from neighbouring Muslim nations
because: (a) it kept Palestinians dependent on Arab benefactors and
(b) anti-Israel aid was sporadic without coordination and deep
pockets of US Jewish organizations, and
(c) Israeli military benefitted from intelligence and technology of US
3. From the substack Maple by Judy Haiven (prof. emerita of St Mary's U. of NS).
– Canada has given in to demands of pro-Zionist institutions and rescinded offers or blocked or refused employment or fired employees on advice of such pro-Zionist organizations as B'nai Brith, Simon Weisenthal Cntr. and The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). I checked some and accepted as valid others which were supported by reproduced texts.
I noted earlier that the Commissioner for Human Rights Committee Birju Dattani was forced from his position by pressure from the above pro-Israel lobbyists. I wrote to complain to ministers of the government but received no response.
– There have also been verified cases of cancelled residencies of medical school graduates and withdrawal of hiring invitation for lawyers. The complete details are in the following articles:
https://socialistproject.ca/2023/12/censorship-civic-terror-in-canada/
https://www.readthemaple.com/a-list-of-some-people-in-canada-fired-for-pro-palestine-views/
4. Israel has instituted an apartheid state in Gaza and appears to be conducting genocide.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder recently arrived in Gaza for his fifth visit to the region since Oct. 7. He pushed back against Israeli claims that Hamas has been diverting aid away from the United Nations.
“When it comes to Hamas aid diversion, show us the proof. It doesn’t exist,” Elder also says that the “level of indiscriminate attacks [by Israel] has led us to … levels we have never, ever seen before… There’s nothing I’ve seen here [Gaza] that is close to other conflict zones.”
5. Israel has snipers who target babies, media personnel and aid workers.
These are the words of the Secretary General of the United Nations at a ceremony honouring the staff killed in the Gaza war:
… and doctors working in the few remaining hospital settings report the necessity for limb amputation without anaesthetic and autopsy findings of infants killed with two and three bullets lodged in the brain cavity.
6. Demanding Israel not "defend itself" is said to hold Israel to a higher standard of conduct than other nations and that is counter to the accepted definition of anti-semitism. Example #10 of antisemitic behaviour from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is: "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."
But the definition is contentious, even by its author, and other nations have been held to a high standard, eg. Serbia conflict with arrests and trials of Slobodan Milošević, and Ratko Mladic and 160 others.
The Guardian article by Kenneth Stern is illuminating of the way the definition has been "weaponized". It can be accessed here.
7. The phrase "From the river to the sea" is deemed a call for the elimination of the state of Israel, and creates a climate of fear for Jewish students where protests are being held.
But on many campuses, police reported "orderly conduct" of protesters.
University students who feel "a climate of fear" just because people say things they don't like do not belong at an institution for adults.
Antisemitism has been with us for a long time and it does need to be confronted and addressed whenever it appears. However, calling "Antisemitism" at every criticism of Israel dilutes a very real cause.
And I wrote too much about media and truth. Here's one from waaay back.
https://www.derekpeach.com/blog/politics-palestine
Lastly, and we all thought I'd never get here didn't we, what media outlets do you trust? Here's some:
Globe & Mail
Le Devoir
Hill Times
Tyee
CBC
We have these mainstream outlets, although some independent online publications have accused them of being too much under the control of advertisers and owners with a particular worldview that they impose on content. In the end, you just have to consult a few differet sources and make sure they aren't just referencing each other in the old circular-citation fallacy. If you want a test of your fact-checking competence, tell me the answers to these questions.
How many babies were cut from their mothers' wombs by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 2023?
Why did Ryerson Institute in Toronto change its name to Toronto Metropolitan University? Was the change justified in your opinion?