• 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Nah, even though no nation or individual has ever been indicted, let alone convicted, for apartheid crimes, outside of South Africa, I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize. I’m only informed by my own education and experience, which on this were pretty on point, primary sources. I read a nice law review article this morning about the modern South African indictments under modern positive international law, but it focuses on jurisdictional and procedural rather than substantive law, since obviously they were South Africans and thus it wasn’t a new application of the substantive law.

    Maybe you can help by describing the feature or features of “apartheid” under the statutory or customary international law definition of your choice that distinguishes apartheid from mere racial discrimination? What makes apartheid “aggravated” discrimination instead of regular discriminstion?Something that really gets to the meat of whether the international custom against apartheid, which led to the Rome Statute (which says in Article II “as practiced by South Africa”).

    I fundamentally disagree that discrimination based on national origin and immigration status is on the same level as discrimination based on race. Every country discriminates based on national origin and immigration status; while doing so is always suspect, it is often perfectly acceptable and uncontroversial.

    I also fundamentally believe that an evil policy duly enacted into law by a popular majority is less evil than the same policy forced onto the majority without consent. The latter is obviously a crime against humanity. Again, racial discrimination is already against international law.

    So I’m still not ready to feed Israel to Iran and write off the only country in the middle east capable of granting legitimate human rights, and that’s the one that elects its leaders and not the one that hears voices and describes democratic ideals as infidelity to the word of Dog. I am hopeful for the Israeli people that they can and will strive toward democracy, and that is hope for humanity, since caliphates and imamates are not legitimate sources of positive law.

    • OccamsTeapot@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize.

      Good for you dude! It is hard to recognize but it’s better than having the wrong idea about something so important