Dan

Technical Director in Canada, working mostly in sports. The opinions expressed by me are my own and do not represent the opinion of my employer.

[Dan @tomcat335]

@catsa_gc Why is the process for a bag that needs to be looked at after X-ray different than every other airport? There's no signs but apparently you must stand in line and they don't use the order the bags came out of the X-ray. #Fail

[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

[Dan @tomcat335]

@TorontoPearson you charge $60+ for daily parking but can’t get the lights, parking sensors or automatic doors working. You also block off most of the 3rd and 4th floors. Only valet gets car charging, long term doesn’t. What are we paying for??

[Dan @tomcat335]

@407ETR Why do we pay some of the highest toll prices when you can't even do signage properly? You close the exit and don't bother to use the signs you have to let people know. Now I have to wait until the end of the billing period to even call to get an adjustment. #Fail

[Michael Geist @mgeist]

You have to read Bill C-34 on The Commission to believe it. It sets the rules on age verification, social media bans, and content removals while serving as combined regulator, investigator and advocate. At the start, Chair alone can be the full Commission.
https://t.co/qsyPSDXq9i

[Michael Geist @mgeist]

Start here: you cannot keep under-16s off a platform without verifying everyone's age on it. Identifying who falls below the line means identifying who sits above it. A rule intended for a minority of users becomes an age-verification mandate for the entire population.

[Asaf Elia-Shalev @AsafShaloo]

Temple Israel is releasing photos of the devastation in order "to take back control of our narrative," the congregation said in a statement.
I am posting these photos, which were taken by Emily Elconin, with permission.

[Carly Pildis @CarlyPildis]

Temple Israel shared these photos today. They are terrifying and deeply disturbing.

This was plot to kill babies in strollers and preschoolers at play. This is what antisemitism in America looks like.

[Dan @tomcat335]

@Freire1Pb He's my MPP. No wonder I didn't get an answer about how important transparency is to me (and my vote).

[Rabbi Poupko @RabbiPoupko]

The young man on the left is 19-year-old Shalom Lapid. On the right is Mordechai Lapid, a world famous Jewish refusenik who defeated the Soviet Union and risked his life to leave Russia and come to Israel so he can live as a Jew.

On December 6th 1993 a Palestinian car drove by them and sprayed the family car with bullets. The father Mordechai and his son Shalom died from their wounds, and three other children were injured.

The doctor that arrived on the scene was it close friend of the family; his name was doctor Baruch Goldstein.

After his friend died in his hands, many said Goldstein was deeply traumatized by this event.

Thres months later, on February 25th 1995 Goldstein would carry out the most heinous terrorist attack ever carried out by a Jew. He would shoot Muslim worshipers while they were praying in a mosque in Hebron killing 25 Muslim worshipers and injuring over 100.

Goldstein was very rightfully condemned by every single Jewish organization, rabbi, and the Israeli government.

At no point did ANYONE say that "Goldstein had close family friends who died in his hands after being murdered by Palestinians".

Why? Because there is never an excuse for terrorism.

Seeing so many media outlets whitewash the heinous attack on Temple Israel in Michigan is appalling and a direct continuation of what they have done to legitimize the horrors of October 7th carried out against the Jewish state of Israel.

[Dan @tomcat335]

@realspeckzo I'm hearing this was on an @CruiseNorwegian ship. I hope they comment on what happened and their policy on hate speech and symbols aboard their ships. From what I see on the videos the wrong person was being spoken to.

[Dan @tomcat335]

@cwfreenews @DrCaseyBabb Disagree. They shouldn't have been allowed to return. There's other high schools in Halifax and the victim shouldn't be penalized and forced to either leave school or be in an unsafe environment.

[Orli Degani @orlidegani]

Today we published Ireland’s first-ever report on antisemitic incidents.
I built the reporting mechanism because there wasn’t one.
When we at the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland realised the scale - 143 incidents in 6 months, in a community of ~2,000, and the continued lack of acknowledgment, we had no choice but to document it ourselves.

75% happened in physical settings - in places people deserve to feel safe.
30% began as ordinary interactions until a Jewish/Israeli identity cue was discovered.
36% were verbal abuse and slurs.
25% were emails and messages sent directly to the community. Nearly half of them included violent threats. We received another one just this morning promising us that "Jewish people in Ireland will die".

For over two years we were told:
“There is no antisemitism in Ireland.”
“It’s just criticism of Israeli government policies.”
But when Jewish people are afraid to take public transport, go to the doctor, enter a shop, attend school, go to work, or even feel safe in their own homes - that is not “anti-Israel.”
It is not “political discourse.”
It is antisemitism.

As I told the Social Democrats two years ago: when rhetoric becomes absolute and collective, it does not stay political. It lands on a minority community.

The report is here:
https://t.co/oWNwGIdCjI

[Dan @tomcat335]

@DisneyPlus I like your content but your app is crap (I couldn't use it offline for at least a month) and it recently decided not to show any of my downloaded content even though it was still on the iPad. Support was useless and lied to me. Very disappointing. Fix your app.

[HonestReporting @HonestReporting]

1/
🧵 How terrorists who murder Jews are quietly humanized in media coverage.

Not through praise – but through framing, emphasis, and omission.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

[Dan @tomcat335]

@alexlindsay I can't stand that Apple Music uses the music app on my phone. I have a lot of local music and want to keep it separate from streaming. I like the extra control I can get with playlists built on my computer but couldn't use when I had Apple Music.

[Dan @tomcat335]

Good thing I didn't think about this on Saturday! Holy smokes that's a lot of eyeballs!

[Sportsnet PR @SportsnetPR]

🚨 World Series Game 7 is the most-watched Rogers broadcast ever, with an average audience of 10.9 million viewers.

It also becomes the most-watched English-language broadcast on record in Canada outside of the 2010 Winter Olympics. 👀🇨🇦

Details: https://t.co/5SNslGqqZ2

[Dan @tomcat335]

@DannySpxp

[Dan @tomcat335]

@danielflips @LeftHandStu We used it pretty often. Pre game show, opening the show and coming back from break. We used it a lot more for the DS and CS when the dome was open but still got a lot of action for the WS so far.

[Dan @tomcat335]

@danielflips @LeftHandStu This shot came from the Sportsnet drone