erik milito

Dad of 4 Crazies, Husband, Son and Brother. President of National Ocean Industries Ass’n, Army Vet-JAG Corps! GoIrish! GoSteelers! GoPirates! GoPens!

[0HOUR1 @__0HOUR1_]

This fucking retard thinks he is President.

[Tom Cotton @SenTomCotton]

Pathetic.

The United States stands with Israel.

[Pat Condell @patcondell]

No, I’m not Jewish. I was raised as an Irish Catholic. You don’t need to be Jewish to support Israel against Islamic jihad. You just need a moral compass.

[Sam Raus @SamRaus1]

I had a dead homeless body in front of my apartment, but the mayor’s focused on playing Model UN. What a joke.

[David M Friedman @DavidM_Friedman]

This may be the most horrific package of lies against the State of Israel ever promoted by a government official. Even Hamas does not lie to this extent! It is despicable and entirely unbecoming a mayor of New York City. To those who voted for this Jew-hater, shame on you.

[Ambassador Mike Huckabee @GovMikeHuckabee]

Would be easy to say NY Mayor is just an ignorant bigot, but he is not dumb. He's an evil anti-Semite who deliberately lies about serious things like "genocide" to stoke Jew hate. If anyone should be arrested, it's the Mayor of NY for incitement. NYC should be ashamed.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

Marlboro cigarettes font.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Homelessness doesn’t cause drug addiction.

Drug addiction causes homelessness.

3 year olds understand this. Why doesn’t Karen Bass?

[Benjamin Domenech @bdomenech]

In fairness my siblings and I were all homeschooled and all we did was get full rides to college, write speeches for presidents, become senior admin officials and decorated war heroes while on the other hand Jennifer Welch has a podcast.

[Dr. Brian L. Cox @BrianCox_RLTW]

As a law prof & retired military lawyer who specializes in international law involving armed conflict, this is one of the most mind-numbing exchanges I've encountered in quite some time - and that's saying something.

The short answer - and only answer - is NO‼️

"Palestinians" do NOT "have a right to kill Israeli soldiers." And on October 7, "Palestinians" did NOT have a right to attack" @IDF bases in the #Gaza envelope.

Period. As a matter of international law, there is no other legitimate, informed answer other than: "No, no."

The way @RoKhanna squirms finding a way to answer no - but to still find some way to justify the demand to limit military aid to @Israel nonetheless - is truly pathetic. And the false claim by @jeremyscahill that "Palestinians" do have the right to kill Israeli soldiers would, if taken to its logical conclusion, lead to the complete abolition of public international law as it exists in doctrine today.

Since one participant in this conversation is hellbent on finding a way to justify one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in living memory, while the other is too ignorant & pathetic to explain why "Palestinians" do not have that right, allow ME to explain.

The tl;dr version is that there is no mechanism by which "Palestinians" involved in the Oct 7 terrorist attacks can acquire combatant status. Without combatant status, they're civilians taking a direct part in hostilities.

And civilians taking a direct part in hostilities, who do not acquire combatant status, cannot engage in lawful acts of belligerency. Period.*

(* There is one exception, colloquially referred to as levee en masse, but it isn't relevant to Oct 7 & subsequent hostilities - so I won't include this term as part of the current analysis.)

Any guesses what qualifies as acts of belligerency? That's right! Killing Israeli soldiers - or attacking Israeli military members. Actual combatants fighting in a conflict between 2 or more actual states may lawfully direct attacks against adversarial combatants.

Civilians taking a direct part in hostilities canNOT. Period.

For present purposes, I'm not going to directly engage with the controversial nature of Palestinian "state"hood. This is contested, which means the status of the "State" of 🇵🇸 as a High Contracting Party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (or any other treaty pursuant to international law) is also debatable.

Even so, we don't need to get hung up on this because even if 🇵🇸 is an HCP to the GCs, the nonstate (terrorist) group known as Hamas is NOT the regular armed forces of this "State" & it does NOT meet all requirements as an official militia or other organized resistance movement.

For anyone curious, pic 1 (top) shows those criteria. It is doubtful whether Hamas meets any of them, but they most certainly do NOT meet the last requirement of "conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."

So if Hamas is NOT designated as the regular armed forces of the "State" of Palestine, and they do NOT qualify as a recognized militia (and levee en masse doesn't apply here), there is NO mechanism for Hamas fighters to qualify as prisoners of war if they are detained by 🇮🇱.

And only POWs are immune from prosecution for acts which were not forbidden pursuant to international law - that is, lawful acts of belligerency - during captivity.

A subsequent conventional source of international law (AP I) further ties combatant status to these criteria established in GC III, art. 4A (again, pic 1 top for the relevant provisions). But even this combination alone of GC III, arts. 4A2 & 99 demonstrate why members of an organized armed group - like Hamas - have no capacity to engage in lawful acts of belligerency.

Without that capacity, members of an organized armed group, such as Hamas, are simply referred to as civilians who take a direct part in hostilities (see pic 2 for a doctrinal example of a DPH formulation, also from AP I). And civilians who take a direct part in hostilities - come on, say it with me - HAVE NO CAPACITY TO ENGAGE IN LAWFUL ACTS OF BELLIGERENCY.

You may have noticed I kept putting quotation marks around "Palestinians" at the outset of this post. That's the term Scahill kept using - but the analysis related to combatant status reveals why it's misleading to ask whether "Palestinians" had the right to kill Israeli soldiers on Oct 7 (or any other time, for that matter).

If you believe 🇵🇸 is a "State" (it's not), and if you can demonstrate the "Palestinians" responsible for Oct 7 & subsequent hostilities were the regular armed forces or qualifying militia of that "State", then you can make the case that those Palestinians had the "right" to attack 🇮🇱 soldiers (we would still have to deal with the nascent jus ad bellum issues, but that's a separate topic altogether).

But it wasn't just "Palestinians" who attacked 🇮🇱 on Oct 7. It was Hamas terrorists. Hamas terrorists don't qualify for combatant status, so they have no capacity to engage in lawful acts of belligerency, so they had no "right to kill Israeli soldiers." Period.

But wait! I heard peoples have a right to engage in armed struggle against an occupying force. And that's what Hamas was - and is - doing, so THAT makes their conduct legal, right?

Wrong.

First of all, the entire "occupation" narrative is a hoax. I've covered this in some detail before, so I won't do so now. But for now I'll just point out the "effective control" doctrine everyone relies on now - including in the @CIJ_ICJ "o"Pt advisory opinion (2024) - was fabricated by Yoram Dinstein in 2009 as a way to argue that the law of belligerent occupation (today, primarily GC IV (1949)) still applied to Palestinian territories even after Disengagement by 🇮🇱 in 2005 (see pic 3 for the source of this fabrication).

For now, though, I'm not going to go into detail refuting the "effective control" hoax because, even assuming the law of occupation does still apply to 🇵🇸 territories (it doesn't), there is still NO right to "armed resistance" against an "Occupying" Power.

But wait!! That "right" to armed resistance is enshrined in international law, right⁉️

Wrong, yet again.

There are some sources of international "law" purporting to recognize the right of armed resistance against foreign occupation. @UN General Assembly Resolution 38/17 (1983) is an example of this source of international "law."

However, "law" gets quotation marks here because the UNGA has no capacity to establish binding international "law" merely by adopting a resolution.

Oh sure, a UNGA resolution can reflect customary law if it represents extensive & virtually uniform state practice that is implemented out of a sense of legal obligation. But it is that character of such a resolution that confers binding authority to a UNGA resolution - not the fact that it was adopted by the General Assembly alone.

And ... any guesses what doesn't qualify as extensive & virtually uniform state practice with an accompanying opinio juris? Right again!! The "right" of peoples to engage in "armed resistance" against "foreign occupation." This "right" doesn't exist - even though a handful of UNGA resolutions suggest otherwise.

The General Assembly has no authority to establish binding international law merely by adopting a resolution, and that is all that has been done so far in order to recognize the "right" of "armed resistance" against "foreign occupation."

There. That wasn't so hard, was it?

If Rep. Ro Khanna's pathetic response to "journalist" Jeremy Scahill's pro-terror line of questioning is any gauge, along with the rest of the pro-terror crowd amplifying this nonsense since then, apparently the answer is yes - yes this is that hard.

That's okay. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm an international law prof & retired military lawyer, and I'm here to help.

#TheMoreYouKnow

[Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufo]

Still laughing about the fact that this self-styled Bolshevik backed down when faced with a barrage of Sopranos memes from enraged online Italians

[BuffaloRon @BuffaloRon]

Me: I'm going to eat healthy

Lettuce: I'm going to give you explosive diarrhea

Oreos in the pantry: I would never do that to you

[Jimmy Failla @jimmyfailla]

We’re like an hour away from Ro Khanna claiming it was HIM getting hit by the bison.

[Halle MAGA @Halle2017]

@anasalhajji Oops! Norway relies on their vast oil income to support their government.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

The guy who can’t even build 1 foot of train tracks with $120 Bn and 7 years in office is trying to take shots at the guy who is landing rocket ships backwards and catching them in midair with chopsticks?
Ok, bro.

[Jaimee Michell @JaimeeUSA]

Ro Khanna visiting Pallywood (2026 colorized)

[Ambassador Yechiel (Michael) Leiter @yechielleiter]

Let's not lose our grip on the facts - instead of recriminations and accusations - just the facts.

1) Congressman @RoKhanna was offered to coordinate his visit with the State of Israel - this goes beyond notifying of his presence in the country. He was offered in-depth coordination of his schedule to avoid misunderstandings, and he chose to ignore that offer.
He also chose not to coordinate his visit with the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

2) He chose to conduct his visit accompanied by Palestinian activists, and, for some reason, @nytimes journalists with cameras at the ready. With him was also a person affiliated with @jstreet, an organization that actively lobbies against the government of Israel on Capitol Hill.

3) Mr. Khanna and his entourage entered what was believed to be a closed military zone without permission. The military had no prior knowledge of him going there, due to his refusal to coordinate with them. The vehicle they stopped was unknown to them and therefore provoked suspicion. The moment details of the Congressman's identity were cleared, he was free to go. At no point was the congressman, or any member of his party, threatened by the soldiers, or civilians bearing arms.

4) To add insult to injury - the Congressman used this instance as an opportunity to tout "genocide" and "apartheid" libels to the press, propelling himself to the center of yet another anti-Israel media frenzy.
The facts don't lie - this was a cheap, anticipated provocation, that could, and should have been avoided.

5) Calling me a liar won’t change the facts. I’d be happy to host Congressman Khanna at our embassy for an in-depth conversation on his grievances regarding Israel.

[AG @AGHamilton29]

This isn’t a few people. Ro Khanna has gone around for several years telling everyone whatever he thought they wanted to hear.

His whole political career is built around being an attention-seeking fraud with no actual beliefs.

[The Uri @uricohenisrael]

England fans can wave the England🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 in Miami, but they can’t do that in their home country

This is crazy