Benjamin Netanyahu: International Fugitive?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:45 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1035. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing?

0:00:53 Matt: Thomas, I'm having a two -flags kind of day. It's time to make that a thing.

0:00:58 Thomas: Yeah, I give this podcast cast two flags way upside down. I don't know. Yeah.

0:01:05 Matt: Well, this one was right set up, at least. It was just another terrible flag.

0:01:10 Thomas: I don't know if you that's get credit for that. No, yeah, this is crazy. Okay, I really wonder if this will will do anything. I'm very curious. It's gonna be gonna be interesting.

0:01:14 Matt: It to. I mean, in case you thought the first thing was a fluke, this is for real. We have an actual Christian nationalist flag. It means nothing else. This is literally something that was resurrected in 2015, an obscure flag resurrected by Christian nationalists used by the New Apostolic Reformation Movement is pretty scary, dominionist kind of stuff, followed yes, that's

0:01:25 Thomas: Yeah wait Do we actually spell it out? A second flag is at the Aledo Towers. Just in case we didn't actually say it, and this one was at like some sort of beach home, or or something?

0:01:44 Matt: Right yeah, on Long Beach Island actually, fond memories there around my own family, I didn't know he had a place there, but my grandparents actually, still on a beach house there, yeah, fond fond childhood memories. But it's a nice, fun Jersey vacation place and exactly the kind of place I'd expect Samuel Alito to own a second home. Sense.

0:01:54 Thomas: Did you used to go insurrectioning there? There you very interesting. But we may, for Monday's episode, we may have a nice interview for you folks, a along those lines.

0:02:14 Matt: Just did not have time to talk about all of the different ways that Samuel Alrito sucks, so we can just keep that going.

0:02:18 Thomas: You got to pack so much. How do you do it? We're announcing things, we just recorded a Law'd Awful Movies of the worst show I've ever seen. Like, this was This was incredible. This was all-time Law'd Awful Movies because this was a show called For the People that had like a couple seasons in 2018. And it's, of produced by Shonda Rhimes, but I don't know if I don't really think she's to blame for it that much.

You know, it's I think there's someone else to blame for it and it is so bad, I have never seen it, might be an all-timer for a Law'd Awful Movies because it's it's thinks it's the combination of it thinking it's so smart and being so terrible and wrong on every point. It was, I almost died, like I I gotta apologize, Matt, for my behavior on the recording the other day. I was, I couldn't stop yelling, I couldn's say, like, it was just, it's so bad.

So don't worry. I'll, I'll smooth it out in the edit, everyone. It won't be so hard to listen to, hopefully, but boy, I just want to let you know that's in the works too.

0:02:20 Matt: We more. Yeah.

0:03:21 Matt: Was a lot of yelling at our TV in our household when we watched this. It's the worst law content I've ever seen, I can confirm.

0:03:26 Thomas: Really bad. It was so perfect. And so yeah, patreon.com/law, if you'd like to check that out. And with that said, I think we need to get going here and we'll take our usual break, which you can avoid on Patreon and we will get to our main segments. You want to start us off with an update on On the Trump trial, boy, a lot of headlines there.

0:03:27 Matt: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:03:49 Matt: Couple of quick things. Of all, we want to congratulate Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis and Judge Scott McAfee for winning their primaries this week. Of her vote, and Scott McAfee won 83% of his. And as I understand it, there's really no question that either of them are going to be installed when the time comes. Was actually McAfee's first actual election because he was appointed to fill a retiring judge's spot in 2022. So we look forward to many more hours of listening to them whenever that trial gets going.

0:03:54 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:04:16 Thomas: Well, congrats, I guess. I mean, we often, we talked about during that coverage that the way to solve these issues was in a primary or an election, I suppose. And so we'll see how the general goes, but, you know, whatever. I guess the people have spoken, and they don't give a shit about whatever happened.

0:04:28 Matt: 87%. Yeah, I mean it. Yeah.

0:04:33 Thomas: For better or worse, I don't know.

0:04:35 Matt: Well, the appeals court doesn't do something totally out of line, which I can't think that they're going to reverse that decision from McAfee and we'll be back in trial sometime after the election, probably, but it will happen.

0:04:46 Thomas: Know, somebody did ask on Patreon, maybe while we're on this topic, happens when a judge, like, what if he had that case and he lost his election? Happens there? Do they switch out judges, or are they like, all right, you can finish this one out, or what?

0:04:47 Matt: It'd be pretty awkward if it were mid-trial, but no, they would just assign a new judge, I think, um, you know, at that point. But we don't have elected judges around here. We, we're a little more civilized up here in Massachusetts, so I

0:04:59 Thomas: Yeah, sure, that's civilized. I don't know if that's civilization or not. I'm not sure, actually.

0:05:10 Matt: Just think the whole thing is distasteful, electing judges, and you can always see the, the data, when they're about to be elected, how they come down harsher and things, and they run ads, like, based on you know, how many people they've had sent to the chair or whatever. It's bad.

0:05:13 Thomas: Yeah, that' s fair. However, can you make the apples to apples comparison and see the appointed judge, are they just doing that all the time? Maybe there's all the times super harsh, I don't know, I don't have to see the comparison

0:05:28 Matt: Oh, we've had some pretty bad appointed judges, too. But yeah. So let's move on to New York, where, of course, we're wrapping up the Trump trial. As of this week, the prosecution and defense have both rested. The defense rested on Tuesday after putting on two witnesses and pretty much spiking their own case. I think they really did themselves in with that last witness, if you saw me.

0:05:31 Thomas: Yeah crazy I'm waiting until, I, we can do it on Gavel Gavel, so I don't know the details, but I've, what I've seen is crazy

0:05:52 Matt: We won't get into too much. It is. It is. It is, absolutely. And I mean, everything from an email that pretty much totally tanks the case to Robert Costello, the final witness who worked with Cohen. Robert he was brought in to undermine Cohen, but he ended up undermining himself and the entire case. Just turned out to be actually worse than Cohen. It turns out that's possible. The news you saw, of course, about the courtroom being cleared, we'll have some fun with that on Gavel Gavel.

0:06:17 Matt: It was pretty unusual. Yeah, closing arguments are scheduled for Tuesday, next Tuesday, the 28th. So we will see. Now I've been wondering, and a patron had a question I wanted to address, something I've be thinking about a lot. Catherine Koldehoff asked, given how long the Trump jurors will be out this weekend, it seems likely that the mischief odds go up. Happens if multiple jurors are exposed to news or worse, pressure? And there was a follow-up question from civilpoliticsradio.com. They aren't sequestered. So I want to talk about sequestration and also the issues that we might be having with the jury here. And if there are any members of the Trump trial jury listening right now, please stop.

0:06:07 Thomas: Oh, boy. Yeah, shame.

0:06:50 Thomas: On you, yeah, doing

0:06:51 Matt: Please do not listen anymore. Come back to us after you're done. Happy to catch you up. But please, we don't want to be part of this. Know, I've been thinking about this because, like I think most people probably listening. I hardly ever have my phone out of arm's reach. And I still, especially now that I'm running the OA Twitter, I'm pretty into social media.

0:07:11 Thomas: A great job, by the way. Yeah,

0:07:13 Matt: Much as I've tried to get off of social media every so often, I keep coming back. And if I were in this jury, I would have a very difficult time sequestering myself from this information. I mean, I don't watch watch cable news, but I do read the paper every day and I see news, I see headlines, I look at social media. They're going to be going to Memorial Day cookouts and I'm sure people will find out that they're in this jury and want to ask them questions and tell them things. I mean, you can just imagine all the different ways this could go wrong.

I really hope it doesn't, but all it takes is for the news to come out after this conviction, if there is one, that one juror was in the jury room talking about something they weren't supposed to know about, or that there was somebody out there bragging to his friends that he was going to get Trump convicted or whatever, and all this could be for nothing. That is concerning. So I hope everybody's staying in line. But when we think about high-profile cases like this, we think about the jury being sequestered, stuck in a hotel room somewhere,

0:07:22 Thomas: Geez. Yeah,

0:08:02 Matt: Or hotel rooms. And most as we've talked about before, the O.J. Simpson trial, it was actually the longest sequestration in U.S. history. It was 265 days. Very expensive of sequestration.

0:08:13 Matt: And it's pretty rare anymore that this actually happens, that they actually isolate the jury and essentially lock them up and take their phones away. The most recent famous case that I could find with full sequesteration...

0:08:12 Thomas: It's poor people, they took their big ass giant car phones away in 1990, whatever, that was, yeah, yeah,

0:08:24 Matt: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, a lot easier to sequester people back then. Mean, it's just so impossible to keep people offline. Yeah, the most recent famous case that I could find with sequestration was actually Bill Cosby's conviction in 2017. was a long one, and the jurors were basically followed by court officers everywhere. Looks like part of the Derek Chauvin jury was sequestered, but I couldn't find many more examples. And that's something I think that's generally completely disfavored now at this point. And actually, I learned that it was mandatory in New York. I went looking just to answer Catherine's question. It was actually mandatory until 1995 for every jury that was, in certain cases, in most cases, to be sequestered. They changed the law in 95 to leave it to the discretion of the judge, and they ended up saving so much money that they liked it, and they kept it permanent in 99.

0:08:32 Thomas: Hmm.

0:09:05 Thomas: Like justice

0:09:08 Matt: Because even in those...

0:09:08 Thomas: Is terrible, but we're saving money, so yeah.

0:09:11 Matt: Yeah, right, yeah. Because the court officers alone, because they have to do all this overtime, guarding people in hotel rooms, let alone the hotel bills. York estimated that just in four years they saved $3.5 million, and they managed not to inconvenience 14,000 people. It is a significant inconvenience. Know, I even went looking at the juror handbook to see if I could learn anything about this in New York. And it does say that the judge will inform the jurors in advance if there's a possibility that the jury may be sequestered. And, of course, that didn't happen here because there was a question as to whether they might be sequestered during the deliberations. So that's just not going to happen.

And deliberations, of force, may begin as soon as Wednesday if both parties can get through their closing statements on Tuesday. And I'm not going make any real predictions here, but I have a feeling we're going to have a verdict by the end of the week. That's my guess. And I'm happy to do an emergency episode, you know, if and when we get that going, maybe we can jump in and talk about it. Me, I don't think this is going to take extensive deliberation because,

0:09:23 Thomas: Well, yeah, I mean, the way I was thinking about this, Lydia and I were talking about this, and I don't know, maybe this is every case, but I feel like, okay, with a case where you think it's pretty much much super straightforward, which I think it is, I don't know, people can disagree, but seems like, uh, sure seems like he faked those business records to do that, the other set of crimes, so it seems to me that it'll either be everyone being like, yeah, no, that's pretty obvious, or one holdout. I feel, I, I feel like it would either be like really fast or an incredibly long time, which would be a bad sign, but maybe that's too simple, I don't know, what do you think? Yeah.

0:10:29 Matt: Yeah, no, I do think because, I complicated at first when you start to describe it, but it really is just kind of a binary thing. It's like either you think that he covered up this whole thing, or he didn't. If you don't think that he knew about it, or wasn't responsible for it, then you have to acquit him. And I think it's, you know, let alone, I guess, in the alternative, if you think he was responsible for it but he wasn't doing it for any other corrupt intent, then I guess you'd have to to acquit as well. But the jury instructions were shored up before the break here.

And we'll talk about them at length in Gabble Gabble, because there's some interesting issues there. But the defense didn't really get most of what they wanted. They were asking for some special instructions that would have been pretty favorable. But it seems like Marchand was trying to keep it simple and down the line. So I think that's what we'll be getting in the jury directions whenever they get there on Tuesday or Wednesday. So that's pretty much what's going on in New York. We will will continue to see. And maybe we'll be talking about it sooner than we think. Maybe we won't be talking about this again for weeks. I

0:10:37 Thomas: Maybe it'll take so long that Gavel Gavel can catch up. We'll see. I highly doubt it. But yeah, gavel, gavel. Though it started on this Trump trial, it's intention won't be to try to live cover anything. It's going to be so much easier when we're dealing with historical trials where we can, you know, do it on on the schedule and not feel so much time pressure. So it's a little bit of an awkward one to start on. But hey, we started this thing. We're we're going to finish it and I'll see

0:11:25 Matt: Let's hope.

0:11:40 Matt: Yeah. Sure. And is also a little more production because we're hoping in the future to deal with trials that have audio and video that we can draw from. But as fun

0:11:49 Thomas: Yeah, I'm not doing the transcripts again for a while. I've been, yeah.

0:11:53 Matt: As they are.

0:11:54 Thomas: Or it'll allow us to be like, all right, let's plan to cover this thing down the line, start working on transcripts. And once those are completely done, then we could, you know, record. So it'll be a lot easier. It's, you know, it is what it is, but I'm excited for that, and see, very interesting. Um, what's next, best only, only, correct answer to what the best candy is, that's how I feel

0:11:59 Matt: Right. Yeah, get a full show. Yeah. Thomas, how do you feel about Reese's peanut butter cups? Me too absolutely, I'm so glad we're in agreement they are fantastic

0:12:19 Thomas: Here's A weird thing, they, I don't know if this is intentional by the whatever one corporation operation, Comcast, whoever controls everything that makes Nestle, Comcast, whatever, Microsoft. What's weird about Reese's is, as, as they're the best. And I feel like, oh my God, I eat two of those peanut butter cups. And I'm like, I don't even know that I did it. I need to eat 50 more. I can't even notice them. And then you try like a single bite of a third one. It's like, ooh, too much. I think it's the weirdest thing. I, maybe it's just me, but like, I'm always, when I start on the Reese's Pieces. I'm like, oh my God, I could eat thousands of these. And then I get to like the appropriate amount. And I'm Like, if I have more, I'm, like, these, wow, I've really ruined it. It's crazy to me. Like I've never had such a combination of I could eat infinite of these, nevermind I'm done right now.

0:12:40 Matt: Know I know exactly what you mean that's so true, which is good to have a built -in failsafe like that

0:13:07 Thomas: Yeah. Interesting. Seems bad for business, but it's good for probably us. I don't know.

0:13:12 Matt: But, well am Sending you something right now, and if you can go to page 4 of this, you'll see a helpful visual it will it will it will be a picture of something you're going to want to eat, um, something that the consumer was very disappointed by, for you can describe what you see on page four, Mr. Smith. Yeah.

0:13:19 Thomas: Will it be a delicious Reese's Tasty Peanut peanut butter cup in digital form. Looking at some sort of snack that's Reese's peanut butter bats. Like as in spooky Halloween, it's a bat.

0:13:36 Matt: Themes that's fine, right?

0:13:38 Thomas: Okay. OK, and then it seems as though once you open it, it's just a zero detail sort of bat shaped turd. I don't know. It's just nothing. OK.

0:13:52 Matt: So Uh, and if you go up to page, uh, just for comparison, page two, uh, this is one of the main points of contention, uh, have, have a similar disaster that the consumer is very Upset about.

0:14:00 Thomas: OK, A pumpkin, a Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkin. And this one is like, it's almost like made up like a jack-o'-lantern. It's got the eyes and then whatever on the package. That is the picture. You open it up. Guess what it is? A no detail, vaguely turd looking thing. Wow, they are really mailing it in on this, it's like kind of pumpkin shaped, kind of bat shaped, for the bat one. All right, and this is, uh, worth suing over, huh, for somebody

0:14:16 Matt: Just a lump. Yeah. This is worth suing for quite a lot of money for because this is a deceptive product. So these consumers desperately wanted their pumpkins to have a cute little smile and the bats to have eyes and the ghosts to have ears.

0:14:26 Thomas: Wow. Wow wow good To know some people don't have any real problems, that's a nice reminder in these tumultuous times.

0:14:43 Matt: On if you're listening, Anthony Ruso of the Russo Farm in Delray Beach, Florida, because he sued a lot of different companies with these kinds of theories, including Burger King and others. The Burger King one actually made a little more sense because it was showing this burger piled high with toppings, and you don't quite get that.

0:14:51 Thomas: Wow oh yeah yeah that is pretty deceptive Yeah, yeah.

0:14:57 Matt: Maybe not $5 million worth of deceptive, they're looking for five million dollars in this very important rhesus suit, uh, he believes in holding corporations to their packaging and, uh, you know, I, that's what's going on here.

0:15:07 Thomas: Yeah. I wonder if there's a better way. Cause like for one, we don't have too much time for this, but like talk about the McDonald's coffee suit. Like the big problem with any of this is no money is punishment at all because not only is it not enough, usually these courts or these judges, for whatever reason, they decide, well, we got to trim this down. And like later on you'll see like $20 million awarded.

And then like, if you actually, you know, tune in years years later, it's like, well, they got about $100 ,000. And it's because some judge was like, this is too much. I don't understand it. It's not the focus of today's show. But the point is, if anyone has the attitude that like, oh, these consumers get too much money from these companies by these nuisance lawsuits or whatever, that's completely wrong.

And I'm wondering, wouldn't a better solution to this be, you just have to publicly apologize and acknowledge it. You know, like you have to, you have like put a little insert in all your reasons. That's like, we tried to get away with making shapeless, detail-less little turds in here. And we admit we were wrong. That's worth so much more than money to an avid Reese's fan, you know?

0:15:08 Matt: Yeah.

0:16:15 Matt: I mean, because at the end of the day, probably most of the class members are going to end up getting, I don't know, more rhesas pumpkins or something, like that's usually what they do, is to give you more of the product you didn't want, uh,

0:16:20 Thomas: Yeah. Now, who's the victim here? Does he get to sue and be like, I'm the most mad about it, so give me that money? Or is it like everyone gets one penny? I can't tell you how many times I've gotten an email saying I was part of a class action thing, and I just don't even bother with it, it'll be like you can collect your four dollars and 67 cents by registering because of this, like, video game that had a loot box problem, or, you know, it'll do something like that, and I'm just like, boy, I do not, the chances that this, maybe it's a scam, so I don't even care, I don't even bother with it, of those, oh,

0:16:28 Matt: Cynthia Galley yeah No, Totally, right Totally. Totally. Totally. Me too. And the only time it's ever benefited me was actually with Barbri, the bar prep company, when I was studying for the bar. And they were actually engaging in some kind of price fixing with other bar companies. And so we ended up getting like $400 back each or something. It was a Pretty good deal. It did pay off. But otherwise, it's stinky little dollar settlements or the Ticketmaster litigation, where you get a whole bunch of vouchers that you can't use and a dollar or two at a time.

0:16:59 Thomas: Wow Okay. Nice. Yeah boy And they're more evil than ever, although I just saw a headline, the Justice Department is recommending, yeah, we'll cover that, I'm sure

0:17:16 Matt: Yes. I want to do an episode on that for sure because I do you hate Ticketmaster and Live Nation, as I'm sure we all do. They sure do. So

0:17:20 Thomas: Yeah they suck I have an important Reese's take, though, that I, this is well, this isn't even a take, this is an important message that I just, any family members that happen to be listening to this, I hope no, none of my family ever listens to this, but if you do, people, my family tends to understand that I like Reese's, and the times that you want to buy people stuff tend to be special occasions, like holidays, and so the only Reese's I ever get are some bullshit pumpkin or egg or something. And I've the feeling that, hey, the original cup is the good one. I don't want... These

0:17:23 Matt: Yes, it's true.

0:17:56 Thomas: Mess up the ratios. The ratio is wrong. I can't have a big just bag. It's like just a pumpkin with a bunch of leftover factory reject Reese's peanut butter that they sloshed in there. That's not the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup that I know and love. It is not. The only one that I like is the exact one that it's always been in the exact ratios. They nailed the ratios. All the other ones are probably because they like had a problem and need to use extra ingredients that weren't good or something. Cause they're just bullshit. And yeah.

0:18:26 Matt: Too much peanut butter.

0:18:27 Thomas: And so I can't tell you how many times it's like, boy, I sure wish I could be happy, pretend I like this, but I, I think I've expressed that I don't want a big giant egg of peanut butter. I don'T like it Anyway, so I'm going through divorce right now, probably having said that. So we need to get on to our main segment.

0:18:27 Matt: All the way too much.

0:18:39 Matt: No, no, stop it. We do. But Reese is serious. Stop it with the R &D. We love the original product. It's so good. Good enough.

0:18:47 Thomas: Yeah, you make one thing that's, hey, I'll give you the Reese's Pieces. That was a good invention. I like those actually quite a bit. So two things, make two things. Stop all other expenditures, advertising, whatever. Just make those two things and you're golden.

0:18:53 Matt: Sure. Great. Sounds like you've been harmed more than any of the class members in this lawsuit.

0:19:03 Thomas: Know, I want my Reese's money. Yeah, only my problem is like, yeah, I don't care if it had a face on the pumpkin or anything. I just, the whole thing, this whole court is out of order. I don't want any of this. Is brought you by trade coffee. Trade Coffee beliefs anyone can be a great coffee maker. Anyone can make coffee at your home. All you need is the best beans, roasted to order and curated for your personal taste, which is exactly what they provide thanks to their in -house team of coffee experts, 50 -plus small batch specialty coffee partners, and 450 -plus rotating roasts. I love a good rotating roast.

0:19:45 Thomas: No, that just means they have all kinds of different options. From dark roasts to decafs, espressos to cold brew, and with graduations, Father's Day, and summer, Birthdays coming up. Not too early to begin thinking of the perfect gift. And, there is nothing better than the smell of coffee that is 100% the best. But, you love something, why would you not love even more better options for that thing? And trade coffee gives you that. And it's The delivery is so convenient, that's the thing.

Never want to wake up, go to make yourself coffee and realize you forgot to get more, you ran out of beans, you're screwed. That's the worst. If you set up these deliveries, it's always going to be there when you need it. So give Trade a try for a month and see how you can make better coffee at home. Right now, they're offering 30% off your first month of coffee when drinktrade.com slash OA. drinktrade.com slash OA for 30% off a month of coffee.

More time, drinktrede .com slash OA Arguments is brought to you by Rocket Money. Folks, true story, I was a Rocket Money money user long before they were a sponsor, and I'll tell you why. Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions.

0:20:57 Thomas: Okay, well, they didn't ask me that. I would not have gotten it that wrong, but most Americans get it that wrong. They think they spent about $ 62. What do you think in your mind right now. What do you think the real number is? Well, but on average it's more like $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year. Half of which you're probably forgotten about and don't even use.

So that's why I started using Rocket Money and they found a bunch of subscriptions I'd completely forgotten about. And this is the best Part. They help you cancel the ones you don't want anymore. And That is priceless. I am a typical millennial in that that I don't want to talk to anyone at any time or anything. I shouldn't speak for all millennials. Maybe that's just me. I am me and I don'T want to TALK TO ANYONE. Ever. Rocket money can do that for you. Your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash opening. That's rocketmoney.com slash opening, rocketmoney.com slash opening.

0:22:11 Matt: Well, I wanted to have some fun before we get into the serious stuff. We have a very serious story to talk about. This is the single most requested story this week when we put out calls to patrons to ask about what we should talk about, and it was actually something I wanted to be sure to get into myself. The International Criminal Court made some history today by seeking warrants for leaders of Hamas and leaders of Israel.

And I think, as far as I know, this is the first time the ICC has simultaneously sought warrants from both parties in a conflict, in a two -party conflict. Also one of the very few times the ICC has issued a warrant for a sitting head of state because Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister are both named. Netanyahu, who now joins such luminaries as Slobodan Milosevic and Vladimir Putin and Joseph Kony, have all been charged this way while sitting in some kind of authority.

I want to talk a little bit about what this means and what the ICC is all about and this what actually might mean in the future because it's a little complicated, as international law always is.

0:23:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:01 Matt: I've always been particularly interested in international law. I actually took an international criminal law seminar in law school and learned a lot. It was something I was seriously considering doing until I realized just how much of a thicket it is. It's a very confusing and very, very detailed and,

0:23:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No agreed upon like this has jurisdiction over everyone and we all agree that is my understanding. So it's a really difficult balance of like, what can we actually do here? What will actually happen? And I guess I'm saying I would be scared to go into that line of work, too, because I imagine it could feel a little bit hopeless in some ways or futile.

0:23:37 Matt: On both sides. And, you know, it's actually one of the most interesting things.

0:23:37 Thomas: Yeah. On the On the genocide side, too? Or what do you you were gonna go into the genocide business and you're like, "I don't this side's bad too, I don't like either side."

0:23:43 Matt: No, it is actually. So I actually, Actually, one of the most interesting days, we had

0:23:50 Thomas: Here. Oof.

0:23:50 Matt: The head of the genocide defense bar come and talk to our seminar out of New York. And it was incredibly interesting, because imagine, it's hard enough to defend one person for one murder, right? But defending somebody for hundreds of thousands of murders. But he was making the point that these prosecutions, they really pile on. And what you're trying to do here on both sides is make sure that history is properly recorded. And, you know, it's not as if we're out there to say that Slobodan Milosevic didn't do anything, you know, or that Vladimir Putin is innocent.

The idea is just to say, like, to limit, you know, what is actually—what the charges are, what the facts are, to make sure they can prove the facts, just like in any other criminal case. But he was talking about sort of the unique realities of doing this kind of defense, which, you know, these are the worst crimes that anyone can commit. Like, these are absolutely—in the scope of criminal law, there's nothing worse than genocide. Absolutely nothing. And so it's a very interesting perspective. I wasn't seriously considering the defense side. I guess I don't know if I was really considering the prosecution side either. I just wanted to get involved with international criminal law somehow because I thought it was so interesting.

0:24:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:47 Matt: But at the end of the day, it's also fairly toothless, as we're going to be discussing. But

0:24:51 Thomas: That's What I was trying to say that

0:24:53 Matt: Yeah, it is true. I had a friend who worked actually on the International Tribunal for Yugoslavia, the ICTY, which was one of the predecessors of the ICC. And it is very interesting. Her project basically for the time that she worked there was to flesh out one of the many charges that was either against Milosevic himself or one of his deputies. And again, Serbia committed all kinds of war crimes and attempted genocide during that conflict. But the charge that she was working on was actually a false imprisonment or unjust imprisonment charge where they'd rounded up, I think it was either maybe a few hundred people in a farm, like in a barns or a warehouse somewhere. And if you or I conspired to round up a bunch of people and keep them in a warehouse in California, that would be a pretty serious felony, but compared to genocide.

0:25:34 Thomas: Would be bad. Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:37 Matt: Making the point that if somebody doesn't write this down and put it in as one of the charges, then that's not something that happened. It can be erased from history. And it's your job to help write the history and make sure that they're held accountable for every single thing that you can find that they did.

0:25:39 Thomas: Yeah. Boy. Looking at it that way, I that is very interesting, I actually totally makes it makes me feel a little bit better about how this often doesn't seem to do anything. But like, I, looking at it from that perspective, it makes a ton of sense.

0:25:59 Matt: It Does, especially when you think back to Nuremberg, which is where this all came from, of course, after the war, when the Allies kind of did an ad hoc tribunal to hold the Nazi leaders was responsible. And of course, you know, they were held responsible and a lot of them were hung in prison, although many of them are released within a few years after that because of all the political pressure once Germany got its political power back. But there was a lot of criticism of Nuremberg. And a lot about it was valid, that, you know, this was Victor's justice, that there were no previous international rules that Germany or anyone else was held to. They were just kind of making it up retroactively.

And so the world kind of was trying to figure out how to deal with something like this again. And there's talk about about doing this during the 50s, just to give a quick history of how we got here. But the Cold War kind of kept that from happening, kept the world from being able to agree on How we could actually have some kind of international judiciary. There was a commitment to do it after the war. And it wasn't until 1989 that the president of Trinidad and Tobago, Arthur Robinson, actually stood up in the UN. It was like, "Hey, remember that time when we said we were going to have an international criminal tribunal?" So very cool guy, it seems like. He stood up and reminded everybody that it's time to get this going again.

Then, of course, during the 90s, we had Serbia and Rwanda, major acts of genocide and massive war crimes. Those were ad hoc tribunals too, but they were a little more organized and more formalized than something like Nuremberg that had to be thrown together more quickly with no precedent. And so the ICTY and the ICTR were kind of models for this. The International Criminal Court was in the works at that point, but they didn't have anything.

So it wasn't until they had the Rome Conference in 1998 that 120 countries, including the U.S. at the time, got together and hashed out the Rome Statute that would govern International Criminal Court. And obviously, this has always been controversial. Not everybody wants to be held internationally liable for things that they do, including this country,

0:25:59 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

0:27:44 Thomas: I imagine.

0:27:45 Matt: Us. And depending on who's the president, because the Clinton administration was willing to work with us and sign off onto it. But by the time that George W. Bush was in charge and things were really getting going with the ICC, of State for Arms Control and International Security at the time in the State Department, sent a short note to the Secretary General of the UN just letting them know that we did not intend to become a party to the Rome Statute, that we have no legal obligations.

0:28:06 Thomas: Yeah, we're taking kind of a different position on war crimes now than we were. So just kind of reorganization, new mission statement over here. So sorry.

0:28:11 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And not just that, but Congress then passed the American Service Members Protection Act. You know about this in 2002? This is actually a real law. I remember this one that's passed. I don't know. I didn't even have to say that about this. But not only are we not going to comply in any way with the ICC, but that we reserve the right to invade the Hague if they try to punish U.S. soldiers for any war crimes, like to actually carry out a military invasion of the Icc. So, yeah, the good news is actually that non -signatories, including U.S. and Israel, can still be held accountable even if they're not parties to the convention, to the Rome Statute. Is because the ICC has jurisdiction over people, not jurisdiction over countries,

0:28:25 Thomas: Remind me.

0:28:38 Thomas: Oh, my God. God, that's Yeah.

0:28:56 Matt: The way that the ICJ does. So you might have heard about the ICG suit a couple months ago that South Africa brought against Israel. And they were trying to get a formal finding that war crimes and, I think, genocide were being committed. But that was one country against another, bringing this in front of the ICJ and trying to get a ruling. And the ICJ, as far as I know, is next to useless. It doesn't have any kind of enforcement branch that it can actually do anything. It just sort of resolves things between countries. And South Africa wanted this sort of symbolic declaration, this firm statement with supported findings. I believe that's still going on. Maybe we'll talk about it if it comes out.

There were some preliminary findings that were pretty strong. But the ICC has jurisdiction over the individuals involved in these things, which means that that any signatory to the ICC, which includes all of Europe and all of South America, Central America, Australia, and quite a lot of Africa, if you as an individual who has been issued an arrest warrant by the Icc find yourself in one of these countries, that country has an obligation to arrest you and bring you to the Hague.

0:29:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:52 Matt: So even if Israel itself doesn't have, and it has not, it actually withdrew the same way the U.S. did, I believe, from the ICC. Just means that that Israeli authorities will not carry out an arrest warrant because they're not parties to the treaty. But individuals can still be held responsible. So this does limit Netanyahu's travel options for a while, the same way that Putin hasn't really been able to go anywhere in a while because he's facing the same problems.

0:29:53 Thomas: It's pretty Cool. I Right. Right. Sure. Yeah.

0:30:13 Matt: One, I believe, was over the treatment of children in Ukraine. Happened a few years ago, that warrant. We have here, though, is it's a very interesting balance violence of Hamas leaders are being accused for war crimes arising from October 7th. We all know, you know, obviously the kidnapping and forced abduction of hostages. They're also alleging the use of sexual violence in war.

0:30:31 Thomas: I mean, they committed, uh, about every crime I imagine you could. It's awful, horrible thing. Yeah. Interesting.

0:30:36 Matt: Yeah, no, and it's the of the irony here is that Palestine, the Palestinian authority, and the position of the ICC that Hamas and everyone else is included, anybody who's in charge in any Palestinian territory, they are actually signatories to the IEC. So Hamas is actually more accountable than Israel is to all of this. Because Palestine was granted status in the UN General Assembly in 2012. They joined the ICC in 2015 as sort of legitimation. The leaders of Hamas, again, this is all kind of symbolic because there's no real government in Gaza right now, as far as I know.

It's not really in the same way that there is a government in other places. But the ICC is still taking the position that it has this authority over anything that happens in Gaza. Want to play something quickly. This is a very Interesting interview. It's well worth watching that we'll link to with Christiane Amanpour with the chief prosecutor, Kareem Khan of the ICC. He's an interesting guy in his own right. He has a long history in working in international criminal law. He was actually on the defense side for quite a while, defended one, one Qadдаfi's, of Qaddafi's son, among other people, and then he went over to the prosecution side.

He's been working in one way or another in international criminal law for 27 years, so this is, you know, it's about as long as you can possibly have worked in international criminal law. It's been as long as it's existed in this form. Really interesting guy, and I really like the way he talks about these things.

So he was asked by Christiane what he feels, how he feels about the political aspect of all of this, and I wanted to play this so you can hear him talking about it, but he starts off by being asked about a statement from Tom Cotton and the Senate Republicans. Let's start it, start there.

0:30:49 Thomas: Wow. Wow.

0:31:15 Thomas: This

0:31:57 Clip: To read you some heavy criticism that you've received from the United States. As we know, the United State is not a party to the ICC, nor is Israel. Recently, when word came out that this may be happening at some point, U.S. Senators and U. S. Congress people, mostly Republicans, wrote you a letter signed by Senator Tom Cotton, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and others. This is the quote, "Target Israel and we will target you.

If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States. You have been warned." Is that a threat? I think that's the plain meaning of it in English. But, you know, there's hotheads everywhere, and there's people that are mature statesmen and stateswomen and leaders.

There are those that have fidelity to something greater than themselves, whether it's their constitutions, but ultimately it's the rule of law. The good news is, I think, for the last two and a half years we've had very positive engagement with the Biden administration in the United States. We're working across a range of situations, whether it's in Ukraine or Darfur, and I've said to distinguished members on the Hill and to the administration that Rome's Statute values are quintessential American values.

It's against bullying, it's against the untrammeled power against the most vulnerable, it's the rights, the dignity of the individual, it's the protection of babies. I mean, these are fundamental American values that should engender bipartisan support. Now, of course, this situation unfortunately lies on the San Andreas Fault of international politics and strategic interests, and of course I've had some elected leaders speak to me and And be very blunt, "This court is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin," was what one senior leader told me.

We don't view it like that. This court is the legacy of Nuremberg. This court ist a sad indictment of humanity. This court should be the triumph of law over power and brute force.

"Grab what you can, take what you want, do what you will," and we're not going to be dissuaded by threats or any other activities, because in the end we have to fulfill our responsibilities as prosecutors, as the men and women of the office, as judges, as the registry, to something bigger than ourselves, which is the fidelity to justice, and we are not going to be swayed by the different types of threats, some of which are public and some and maybe you're not.

0:34:47 Clip: You

0:34:47 Matt: Thought that was worth playing in its full, because I really like the ways he talks abut that, but that moment when he says that he was told, and of course he's not naming names, but somebody told him this court is built for Africa and thugs like Putin. That is so telling. Is so telling because that's been a criticism of especially the Rwanda Tribunal was you've got a bunch of colonial powers coming in and telling Africa that they've sinned. And obviously there was a genocide.

0:34:53 Thomas: Yeah. Unbelievable.

0:35:09 Matt: It was horrible. There has been a lot of talk about how it's very much global north against global south in some of these. Just a lot lot of African war crimes, obviously. So I just wanted to set that up as think about Israel and their responsibility and their response, because the response was incredibly indignant, obviously, saying that this is an outrage and that the ICC, very much the same response that the US had that you saw in that Tom Cotton statement that I wanted to include. We and our allies really think that we're above any of this, and it doesn't count when we do it.

0:35:09 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:35:37 Thomas: It's really sickening. I mean, again, I'm incredibly disappointed in Biden on this issue. Issue. I firmly, just because it always will start some some, online fighting, and I get it. Don't I believe the solution is to elect someone who's actually worse on this issue and will enable more people to die. I don't Don't t think think that's the answer. I think that'd be an incredibly stupid thing to do if you actually care about these people. That being said, I'm immensely disappointed in Biden. And we don't know who said that, but I certainly hope it wasn't anyone in the Biden administration, just a senior, U what .S. politician or something?

0:35:56 Matt: It the most I've been able to find about who actually said it. Yeah. So that's not great.

0:36:12 Thomas: I really hope it's, yeah, I mean, that's terrible. That's just, is I so many things. I think it is racism. I think it's also just, again, why would the genocide be different if someone else is doing it? Like, no, we only want to stop the genocide of certain people. What what are you talking about? There's no sense in which that quote is true or anything. It's terrible. Incredibly disappointing to see this reaction. I mean, you know, Israel is going to react like that because, you know. They're the ones doing it. So, they're not going to be like, oh, shit. Yeah, you're right. You know they're going to do that. But we maybe have a choice to make.

0:36:48 Matt: Matt Miller of the State Department, who has been having a pretty rough year, I have to say. He's not doing well. But how could he? I mean, it's just because he keeps getting hammered on these questions. But he has said something about how the U.S. has some kind of jurisdiction here because they're using our weapons, apparently. There's the Leahy Bill that allows some kind jurisdiction when our weapons are involved in war crimes, but that's not better. That makes it worse to acknowledge that we have jurisdiction because we know there are war crimes happening. I mean, that's, come on.

0:37:04 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, was he saying that in the sense of like, we should do it instead of this court? Like we should be event?

0:37:16 Matt: That we might have. That was my understanding of what he said. It was a little confusing, but yeah.

0:37:17 Thomas: Oh my God. Yeah, that's okay. That's terrible.

0:37:20 Matt: Hamas hasn't actually responded yet. They haven't had anything to say about this. But I will say that the charges against Israel, I mentioned the ones against Hamas. And again, just in case anybody thinks that this is somehow purely anti-Israeli, the charges against Hamas are very detailed and complete as well. This is clearly intended at both sides.

0:37:20 Thomas: Oh yeah. Terrible. Yeah wow.

0:37:38 Matt: There's no good people in this one. I mean, it's really just the leadership on both sides, but this is actually the first time in the history of international criminal law that starvation of civilians has been brought up. Those charges have been put in. So starvation of civilians is a method of warfare, as a war crime, causing great suffering, willful killing, intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population, extermination slash murder, including in the context of starvation, starvation, interference with aid convoys and bombing aid conpoys and hospitals and ambulances and everything else we've been seeing in the news for all this time.

0:38:07 Thomas: I can think of a specific example of each of those things. It's like, I don't know what, what is the defense here? But anyway, sorry.

0:38:11 Matt: Exactly. Yeah. Right. No, that's, I mean, you can see those pictures as I say it, because we've been watching and the world is watching. And I want to see international law work. I think that this is where humanity should be going. It's where the world should be going, is the rest of the world noticing when these things happen. And not just noticing when it's happening in Rwanda or in Liberia, but noticing when it's in Ukraine and when it is happening in Israel.

I think this is the right direction. Now, it's going to take a while. This is just an application for a warrant. And one interesting thing, too, that this interview really is fascinating. It is very interesting to watch. Going to watch for a couple minutes to try to find a clip. But I ended up watching the whole thing because I thought I really liked what he had to say. Just really interesting guy.

But he actually voluntarily raised the standard for these warrants because I think he knew how controversial this was going to be. And instead of just reasonable cause like you'd have for a warrant in American law, had something to the effect of reasonable prospect of conviction. That was the standard that they went with.

0:39:07 Matt: So they wanted to believe when issuing these warrants, excuse me, in these applications for the warrants, they were going with things they thought could can actually be sustained. So they voluntarily put a higher standard on this. This is not some kind of kangaroo court thing. This was very well thought out and very well documented. And I'm sure that they'll be presenting a pretty compelling case, you know, beyond what we've seen in the headlines. And again, this is so essential just for making sure we write the history as it's happening, because, you the world has to know. And putting Benjamin Netanyahu on notice that he could be arrested if he tries to take a vacation in France or whatever, right?

0:38:56 Thomas: Yeah Wow. Yeah Yeah. Yeah. It's

0:39:36 Matt: I mean, that's just, it's not nothing at all. I think that's really worthwhile. And, you know, as always, all of these things are worth documenting and going forward, even if you don't think you're ever going to have a chance to bring these people up. Be following this, I'm sure, but it's probably been a couple of months. The judges have to consider it. It's a long, slow process. They have to decide which charges should actually issue before they issue the warrants.

0:39:36 Thomas: It's not nothing.

0:39:53 Thomas: Who makes making these decisions? Because I, you me as quite important who you were to find out that, like, oh, yeah, but, you know, these particular people are working on this and they might have some sort of bias, like how do they protect against that kind of thing?

0:40:05 Matt: The oversight of the court actually falls to the Assembly of State Parties, which is a specific body that just governs this court. And this is not exactly a UN court, they're just sort of UN adjacent. One representative from each state party gets together twice a year to oversee the court. And one of the things they do is elect judges for seven-year terms. You know, these are people from all over the world representing all kinds of different legal systems that are working with this code that has been agreed upon by all the parties. And so they're going to be investigating all of this. I will also mention that in the charges, the word genocide is not used, and charges of genocide are not being brought. There's been a lot of talk about how Israel is committing genocide. There's an argument for it, certainly. I don't have time to go through those arguments that might be worth talking about. Well, I'm sure—excuse me, let me take that back.

It is absolutely worth talking around, because if there's even a hint of genocide or possibility of it, I think we need to address it. But they're kind of in early stages here, and I think they're bringing charges that they know that they can sustain with the evidence in front of them. And these are serious enough as it is. Genocide is a much higher standard and much harder to show. So these judges will investigate this for a couple of months before issuing these warrants. And

0:40:25 Thomas: Interesting.

0:41:01 Thomas: Many judges, you know, do they do a big panel or do they, how do they do that? Do you know?

0:41:06 Matt: Panel three judges in the pre-trial division of the court will be determining, you know, many of these issues, excuse

0:41:09 Thomas: That's just for the warrants, right? So that part.

0:41:12 Matt: Just for the warrants, right? And then they'll begin a very, very long process of, you know, assuming that these warrants go forward, you know, they can't start until they have a defendant in front of them, but they'll be putting the rest of it together.

0:41:13 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, is that how? Okay, so I was going to say, do they have a trial in absentia or something? But you're saying they just issue arrest warrants and then that's, is that basically the end of it if they never were able to arrest anyone?

0:41:31 Matt: No, the ICC has never conducted a trial in absentia. Article 63 of the Rome Statute says the accused shall be present during the trial. So you'd You'd have to show up. But again, if one of those defendants happens to be in a country that is a signatory, they have the obligation to grab them, to detain them, and to send them to the Hague. So that certainly could happen. But we might remember Milosevic was held for a very long time during that tribunal. Milosevic died of a heart attack in prison in 2006, shortly before the tribunal concluded. Again, that's one of the reasons that you want to get all that history together, just in case somebody doesn't make it through the proceedings. You want to have some kind of written record of everything that there was. It's going to be a very long process.

0:41:38 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Oh, okay. Yeah.

0:42:10 Matt: And obviously, these people are not going to voluntarily submit themselves to the jurisdiction of the Hague. And if they ever are brought in front of them, then maybe we'll have some real justice. But for now, it at least shows that the world is watching and that this has risen to the level of something that the Hague knows that it has jurisdiction over, that they can prosecute.

0:42:15 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:42:26 Thomas: I mean, it does help looking at it in that way in the in the more of the, you know, documenting, making sure these stories are told and kept. Does make me feel a little bit better about it, because it's, it's hard to feel optimistic about this kind of thing. With just much of, you know, our power and other power is going into just making this fine, just whitewashing it.

0:42:44 Matt: Yeah, yeah. And also just the amount of work it took to get to this point, you know, as in the law, right? Because Nuremberg, as I said, was so ad hoc and thrown together. And that Kareem Khan mentions in his interview several times, he brings up Nuremburg and the Holocaust and talks about how that's the legacy of this court. About, it sort of came from this understanding after World War II that something so completely out of line, so unacceptable, even in terms of war had happened, that the world had to do something about it. And so we've just been kind of evolving international law since then, these ad hoc tribunals and finally getting to this organized international criminal code. And I think it's very promising. I think that there's a lot of room to grow here. But from what I've seen of the Rome Statute and the way that it all works, it's certainly a tremendous into some kind of due process. And I can't, you can't say it's Victor's justice because this is the world coming together to do it.

0:42:50 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:43:30 Matt: So a lot to recommend it. And I'd really hope we get to see more of this kind of thing, please. Let's hear from Joe Biden about the current U.S. position on this issue.

0:43:42 Thomas: We have to?

0:43:44 Matt: We really do.

0:43:44 Thomas: Let

0:43:45 Clip: We've made our position clear on the ICC. We don't recognize the jurisdiction, the high ICC, the way it's being exercised, and it's that simple. We don't think there's an equivalence between what Israel did and what Hamas did.

0:44:03 Matt: So, a couple of things there. Yeah, it is. But let's start with the man standing to his left in this shot. Very quickly before it cut away to Biden there, you saw that there was another world leader standing next to him, Kenyan President William Ruto, who was himself prosecuted by the ICC in a 187-day trial for a lot of violence that happened in the 2007 election. Election, I worked with a lot of Kenyan asylum seekers. It's actually one of my specialties, and I know a lot about recent Kenyan history. And it seems like, I don't want to defame, I mean, so the prosecution was actually dropped, but the ICC noted that it seemed as if a lot of witnesses had been intimidated and that there were quite a few things that they could have been able to prove, dissent.

0:44:05 Thomas: Yeah, that's Two different Things. So convenient, Interesting.

0:44:45 Thomas: Why

0:44:46 Matt: When they dropped it actually said that they really thought there was enough to go forward on. And he is still the president of Kenya, and And Joe Biden is standing up there and talking about the ICC while he's standing. It's just, it's really surreal to me. I don't know if anybody's really noticed how bad that is.

0:44:59 Thomas: Do you mean you don't recognize their jurisdiction? Like, I guess that the u .s like is that all he means? Like the u s doesn't join that thing? That Yeah.

0:45:04 Matt: I don'T know exactly what he means because, I mean, maybe he's saying that he doesn't recognize they have jurisdiction over Israelis, but that's not true either. There. Also the fact that he's saying that he... And other leaders and people have said this, that somehow you're drawing an equivalence between Hamas and Israel by...

0:45:20 Thomas: Well, That's The second part, but That has nothing to do with jurisdiction, does it? Okay. So, The first thing seems uh kind of nonsensical. I don't really know what they said. They kind can go after whoever they want, essentially. It's just a question of whether or not some country will arrest the people they say they should arrest, right? Hmm.

0:45:21 Matt: Yeah. No, that's just a political opinion. Yeah.

0:45:38 Matt: That's right. They have jurisdiction over people, not countries. And so the interesting issue here with Palestine is that they have already decided this because there have already been extensive reviews of any number of things that have happened in Palestinian territory in the last 10 years. And the ICC has decided through its experts and through a lot of litigation that it actually has territorial jurisdiction over anything that happens in Palestinian territories since 2014, when they agreed to have that jurisdiction. That means that any crimes committed in Gaza or the Palestinian territories are prosecutable by the ICC. And so arguably, well, maybe not even arguably, I think it's pretty obvious at this point. Yeah, sure.

0:46:16 Thomas: We Don't want to make Sure I understand, because I thought you said there are two components. I thought it was like, yeah, they can prosecute anybody, but it's a questionof who will actually agree to arrest them. So I have that wrong, or are you saying that Palestine agreed to arrest whoever say to arrest, right?

0:46:33 Matt: I thank Netanyahu and Biden and people on that side of things are saying that they don't have any jurisdiction over anybody in Israel, over anything that happened, everything done by the Israeli government. Technically speaking, since this is a little complicated, but since the Palestinian state, which is not officially officially recognized by the ICC and is nothing but an observer at the UN, but since they have agreed to the jurisdiction of the IEC, that means they should be turning over the Hamas leaders. That's not going to happen, obviously, but that's

0:47:00 Thomas: So That part makes Sense, but I thought they didn't have to agree in order to be prosecuted. Otherwise, how is How would they even start the Israeli prosecution of any kind?

0:47:07 Matt: Right. They don't. They just have to be able to show, the IFC has to be allowed to show that this happened on Palestinian soil. That's all that matters for this purpose. A territorial jurisdiction. And then conversely, What's interesting is they found that they have jurisdiction both over the territory, but also over the people in Palestine, which means that they can prosecute, in their view, of Hamas for things they did in Israel, even though Israel is not a party.

0:47:31 Thomas: Right.

0:47:31 Matt: So it works both ways. I thought that was pretty interesting.

0:47:32 Thomas: Huh. That Was going to be my next question, like, how, how are they prosecuting the Hamas leader? But, uh, misunderstood. I thought you were saying they can kind of do whatever, just the purpose of, you it all down, getting it all straight. And then it was a question of, would anyone cooperate with the rest? But I guess that's not true. Are you saying if somebody, so if, if, if tomorrow, you know, Trump genocides us in all within this country, are you saying they can't do anything? They wouldn't do a investigation or anything?

0:48:02 Matt: That's right, because we are a non-party state and our territory is not under its jurisdiction.

0:48:07 Thomas: OK. Well, that clarifies that.

0:48:08 Matt: Tried to bomb Germany or whatever, then we're getting somewhere. More. Yeah, Germany itself has actually said that they would arrest Netanyahu provisionally. And once he got to the Hague, that was sort of my question, is what happens, right? If somebody who's a leader of a non -party state gets to the Haig, could he file a motion to dismiss? It does seem like the Hage has already determined that it has jurisdiction over Israelis who commit crimes in Gaza, but he could take it to the appeals chamber. I checked on this, the appeals chamber actually, as a matter of right, will automatically review a jurisdictional challenge. It's not discretionary. All five judges on the appeals court, essentially, in the ICC will look at it. But it seems like from the prior rulings they have here that I've looked at and their extensive determination, including, very interesting, we'll link to it, but there's a panel of experts in international law advised on this particular question about the Palestinian situation, including Amal Clooney, George Clooney's much talented wife.

0:48:14 Thomas: Nice.

0:48:56 Thomas: I saw that headline. So she was just involved in the jurisdiction, not the prosecution.

0:48:58 Matt: Yeah. She was in this panel of experts that recommended, put a report basically about how this should work, the charges and the jurisdiction.

0:49:09 Thomas: Oh, both. Oh, I was thinking you said the jurisdiction was like already a settled question previously. Previously,

0:49:10 Matt: Yeah. Was, it was. But they confirmed it in this, that they agreed with the assessment from before that this is going to work.

0:49:15 Thomas: Oh, Ah, Kind of reiterating it, sort of.

0:49:22 Matt: Because obviously that's the first question is how do they get to do this? The itself is pretty interesting. It's worth reading. The other thing about this as well is, is this an international conflict? That's another question that the report raised.

0:49:31 Thomas: Hamas is not a nation, huh?

0:49:35 Matt: Not recognized as a state by the ICC. So the answer is, it is and isn't simultaneously an international Conflict. That's actually what it says here, that it comprises an international armed conflict and a non-international armed conflict running in parallel. It's Schrodinger's war at the same time. So that is because Palestine and Israel are both high contracting parties to the Geneva Convention, which means that an armed conflict between any two high contracting parties is international automatically, even if they're not recognized as states. Also just that Palestine is a state in accordance with ICC jurisdictions. So if a state uses force against a non-state actor in the territory of another state without the letter's consent, et cetera. So there's several different ways they're getting there with all, all of this. It's extremely complicated, but, uh, haven't heard kind of the, the nitty legal basis of all this talked about much, so I thought it was worth getting into at the end here. Yeah.

0:49:50 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, as for the equivalence, um, want to emphasize that there's absolutely no equivalence. What Israel's doing is way worse, so I don't know who would even say that. What, what, just the whole, that whole thing is just so frustrating, you know. Where it's like he's saying, "At the, oh, we don't think there's an equivalence because what Hamas did was, yes, obviously horrible attack that killed 1,200 people, whatever it was, and now Israel is genociding and killing, now we've got how many kids, 10, 15,000 children dead, but you're still saying like there's no equivalence here because you can kill children if you're mad, that's fine, but, but like, you do an, it's attack, terrorism, then that's worse than the genociding and bombing an entire, like, just flat to the ground schools, hospitals, homes, all that."

It's really hard to, like, I know that there are some people, uh, I guess on maybe on the other side of this issue, I don't know, I get the feeling that, um, I think people have largely woken up to like how bad what Israel is doing is, but if there are, I just, I strongly, strongly suspect that you're not getting an accurate picture of what Israel has done because

0:50:37 Matt: It is so many Yeah. Yeah.

0:51:33 Matt: Yeah.

0:51:34 Thomas: That's the only possible way you could think there was any chance this was justified. And it doesn't, it doesn't mean that what Hamas did was fine. That's just a distraction. That's just a way to try to like make some rhetorical point. Went into Iraq and, you know, we killed how many? As a result of the conflict, a lot of people died later. I guess it wasn't directly the U.S. Yeah, yeah.

0:51:55 Matt: A million people, total, estimated. Yeah.

0:51:57 Thomas: And it's like, you don't just get to keep pointing to, but those buildings, man, those buildings. It's like. Yeah, no, that's that's all. That sucked. Not a fan of 9-11. Going to go on the record. Bold take. You don't have to back me on that one, Matt. I'm not a big fan of 9-11. Going to say that a little distasteful.

0:52:01 Matt: Yeah.

0:52:14 Thomas: But it mean, you get to go do a genocide, okay, that's just, okay, but

0:52:13 Matt: No. No, I'm with you, and who's saying that this somehow says that their equivalent needs to read the charges, because it's very clear that when they're talking about Hamas, they're taking about October 7th, 2023. When they're talking about Israel, they're talking about everything else, which is so much worse, as you said. So,

0:52:32 Thomas: I know that Biden doesn't meet it that way, so that's awesome, he means it the other way, because when you're a state, then you restate they let you do it.

0:52:40 Matt: And, that's where we're at with everything. Wanted to bit more on the jurisdiction because I've been thinking about it all day.

0:52:45 Thomas: Would like all those warrants to to be, what do There you go. I'd like all those warrants to be executed.

0:52:48 Matt: Executed. Of course, the people themselves will not be because the maximum penalty at the ICC is either, I believe, 30 years or life. Those are the two options for the maximum, in some cases, life.

0:52:58 Thomas: That's also interesting. The maximum penalty for genocide is lower than what we do for, like, a lot of stuff here. And I think that's how it should be, honestly. The way the ICC is doing it is more humane, the anti -death penalty, but I just think that is interesting to note yeah

0:53:17 Matt: Yeah, they reserve the right for the really serious cases to go to life, but that is more the European approach to criminal justice, that 30 years is considered to be the maximum sentence, something like that, that you still have a chance to have a life afterward and real actual rehabilitation as possible, which we don't, we've given up on, obviously. So I

0:53:22 Thomas: Yeah uh Now is when I would normally be throwing over to T3B, but I got a, mini you little announcement. Not going to be any T3BE today because I've got something very special for you. That a kind little bit came out of nowhere, but I think it's going to be a very, very cool thing. I think, um, tell you more about it. Uh, I'm going to release a T3B kind of special over the weekend and that'll explain everything. But let's suffice to say that, one uh, thing I always want to make sure to do and that I have done in my podcasting career is, really you recognize an opportunity to work with really cool people and, you take advantage of when, fortune aligns and all that kind of things. And I think I've got a really cool thing to present to you and look for it this weekend in a little special release. So that's why there's no T3BE and you'll have to find out about that in a few days.

0:54:16 Matt: I got to ask the question that I'm sure is on everyone's minds. Are you going to be resetting your score?

0:54:22 Thomas: I don't know, not, not since the new reset, no reason to, too. We'll keep the ongoing. That was like 20 -something questions.

0:54:26 Matt: Okay. Just want to be sure if we're changing up the format.

0:54:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be, but it'll be, I'll tell you this, this less about me and my score and much more about helping other people learn. It's going to be a lot of fun. So, yeah, look for that in a day or two. So, that means we're done with the show, Matt. Yeah, thank you you for the deep dive, Matt. And thanks for listening. And thanks most of all to our patrons, patreon.com/law who make this happen. We'll see you Monday. No sooner than that. We will see you Saturday or something. And then Monday.

0:54:29 Matt: All right.

0:54:55 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.