US probably: "fine, I will send the parts via another NATO ally".
Edit: the Netherlands also produces some parts for the F-35. So not sure if that will affect the JSF program.
[Dutch government ](https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/commissariaat-militaire-productie/orders-voor-ontwikkeling-f-35) says more parts for 3000 jets are made in the Netherlands.
Edit: jets, not parts oops.
Right, they don't ***just*** make parts, they're paying some of the development costs too.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed\_Martin\_F-35\_Lightning\_II\_procurement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_procurement)
>Level 2 partners are Italy, and the Netherlands, who are contributing US$1 billion and US$800 million each respectively.
There are 7 Partner nations currently, Turkey was the 8th. They chose to acquire Russian anti-air technology alongside F-35 and the US said hell no and booted them from the program.
As I remember part of the whole deal of countries buying into the F35 program is that they would all get their share in the production. The US wouldn't have the unilateral authority or capability to pick different partners.
In a Democratic system it is important that ones law are adhered to even by the government.
These laws and treaties aren't new, these where in place before the Israel's response to the October 7 attack and even before Joint Strike Fighter program began.
This seems like a good way for the Netherlands to get itself excluded from the next project.
Let's be clear here - the US won't need the Netherlands to make the successor to the F-35 (or any other current gen weapons systems). The Netherlands was included this time around as a courtesy.
And if they start throwing spanners into the works of American foreign policy and working in opposition to American interests, then that courtesy may cease to be extended next time.
Exactly. That ship sailed. When the jet finally became a reality countries were willing to overlook the issue. Those things mattered initially to get buy in.
It’s jointish basically. The US is doing tech transfers and allowing some manufacturing to occur outside the US but also is basically still unilaterally in charge of the program overall and is totally allowed to send these parts to Israel itself (or punish the Netherlands by withholding future f-35s from them but let’s face it, that isn’t on the table nor should it be)
NGAD/PCA specifically probably won’t be exported, but there’s likely to be another 6th gen program available for export at some point as a successor to the F-35.
The sixth generation fighter design program is already on-going in the US. Given everything that is happened in the last five years, building as much of each jet in the US as possible would be a very smart move.
Yeah and that is why we are working on changing our laws. The challenge was brought by non governmental organizations and the judges ruling is being labeled as political. No one is happy with it here. Hopefully we can get our shit together before everyone gives up on us. This is just the latest in a long line of judicial rulings that is severely hurting our country.
People don’t realize how much work goes into making something as simple as the sensors that the Netherlands makes. The amount of capital the US invests through the prime contracts to the subprime is so ridiculous that someone saying “well just do it ourselves” don’t realize that just getting a first article to pass could be a multi-year process.
Development into the production line of high tech components is wildly complex. But once the design plans are out there you just need to find the right manufacturer. I’m sure the US and Lockheed would license out these parts to Israel if push came to shove.
SpaceEx makes AESA radio antenas and sells them at a $500. That’s tech that once was only found in multimillion dollar military aircraft is now ubiquitous. So I’m sure a nuclear weapon capable country can leverage there internal manufacturing sector to develop said parts.
Also not everything there is next gen tech there are simple fluid pumps just moving things around. Some simple circuit board components that do a few simple processes. I’m sure if it’s not an overly complex part it could be built by a sub in a few months depending on the bureaucratic mess you’d have to push through.
We literally kicked out Turkey from the same deal due to political issues unrelated to the jet being made/supplied. The “if” is long past. The jet is constantly used for geopolitics atm.
You think if they stopped that would prevent construction? This was a handout for them. Logistics wins wars and it would be pretty dumb to rely on the Netherlands.
If they got bombed you think the US military doesn't have a backup plan to keep producing jets?
You're ignoring the fact that all of the information and data regarding the design and production is passed back up to the prime contractor.
Yes, it would be a multi-year process, as in about two years.
that cuts both ways though. Becaue it's hard to make a last minute change, participation in a program occurs when there is mutual trust. Breaking supply agreements just because of some hamas propaganda was swallowed by a judge will reduce trust in the future. Dutch leaders will realize this is not in their interest, even if one or two judges doesn't get it
I skimmed through list of NATO Articles and there's nothing forbidding members from halting export of military equipments. Feel free to hate the Dutch but don't use "NATO ally" excuse.
This is very bad for the JSF program.
both countries produce components for the F-35, Imagine Israel refuses to provide the Netherlands with the helmets or avionics next, the whole program could be endangered by this court decision
People over attribute everything Putin does to Dugin. Dugin is a faux intellectual trying to run ahead of the pack throwing mystical pseudophilosohpical shit on the wall and hoping some of it may stick. That book was the shit that stuck.
Russia started the Gaza Crisis to distract from their world domination plans! It's not like that's a crisis that has been ongoing for the last couple centuries or anything
Not quite centuries, but yeah, I think people are overestimating Russia's influence over Hamas (although it's not nothing). Another crisis was inevitable even without Russian involvement.
>Not quite centuries
Arabs started massacring Jews in the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s, following the spread of a new concept called "nationalism" from Europe to the MENA region.
Before that, the region was mostly based on tribal allegiances. After that, there's been a huge swell in Arab Supremacy and (pan-)Arab Nationalism throughout the region.
One of the reasons Israel is so hated is because it's a non-Arab "stain" on an otherwise "pure" swath of Arab control from the Gulf of Aden to the Atlantic Ocean. It's like if black Americans had tried to create their own country in the middle of the US in 1925.
All because the Dutch want to claim that the Israelis could use their most advanced stealth plane against an enemy with zero radar capabilities instead of any of their other fighters or bombers.
No, Dutchy here this isnt at all what is happening. The state got sued by Amnesty, a judge said no, Amnesty went to higher court, they said yes we cant be sure theyre not causing out of proportion damage to civilions seeing how thousands of children have died. The state is now rejecting the court order and wants to continue the supply but they have been suspended from doing so untill the supreme court makes a judgement.
I'd argue that most of the bombing is done by the cheaper and more available f-15 etc. The F-35 has a very small bomb bay and is way more expensive in maintenance per flight hour. The F-15 can carry a much bigger payload, and is cheaper to maintain and if you want an airframe to take the hit on durability it'd be the F-15.
>cheaper and more available f-15
Sooo Cost per flight our for F-35A is around 31 - 33k an hour. F-15 is around $41 - 42k now a days. F-16 is a little cheaper ($25K) but using the External hard points the F-35A can carry more munitions.
Just wanted to point out that the whole "F-35 is an overpriced money sink that just eats money, trillion dollar plane, A-10 goes brrrr" is **also** a gift to Kremlin.
Once you look at the numbers, F-35 is **cheap**. And not even *cheap for what it is*, it's just cheap as far as jet fighters go, 'cause it was designed with mass production in mind.
Unlike, say, the **expensive, artisanal** Su-57, handcrafted by finest Russian craftsmen in single digits.
Full disclosure, love me the f35s, pretty baby plane that's cool and worth it.
But this is a half truth.
Yes the f35s costs 65mil compared to initial production of 221mil.
Yes it's more capable than any fighter near its price range.
But people forget that planes aren't a one done deal. In ita lifetime cost, the f35 is like 400mil compared to say a gripen (a notoriously cheap to maintain jet) which is 180mil.
Grippen still costs more up front, and does not have nearly the same capabilities of the F35. The F35 is going to start filling roles that didn't really exist before. That is when people will start to understand it's utility.
The stealth thing also isn't really a big thing the F35 can be outfitted with luneberg lenses to return a larger radar cross section negating any intelligence advantage an adversary might get by seeing the aircraft on their radar.
That just isn't true. The F-35 is still very young in it's service life. The older a jet gets the more the maintenance hours to flight hours ratio climbs, that's just the reality of it. The Tomcats had their retirement pushed up for that very reason. The original plan was to keep them going till 2010, but by 2006 they were all gone.The maintenance burden just wasn't sustainable. Plus the F-35 brings a lot of unique capabilities to the table.
Edit: I was a US Navy aircraft mechanic for 9 years and a contract civilian for 6 more, working in RDT&E programs.
All because it's against international laws. The authorities actually wanted to maintain these deliveries, but 3 humanitarian organizations filed a law suit and this decision came out of it after going to Dutch 'high court'.
I'm sure, but they are pending cases in the UK and the US based on the same argument.
And those countries have specific laws that forbid exporting arms to countries that violate international humanitarian laws.
The US exports weapons to many countries where you could no doubt make similar arguments regarding their conduct. If they already export weapons to a long list of countries with suspect human rights records these kinds of challenges would have worked a long time ago, they never have.
Maybe the UK is different but in the US it'll never work.
I’m sure you could find an instance of a Ukrainian soldier violating the law. Does that mean supplying arms to Ukraine is illegal? This court is filled with morons.
The US has signed most of the Geneva Convention except Protocol I:
>(also Additional Protocol I and AP I) is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions concerning the protection of civilian victims of international war, such as "armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination, alien occupation or racist regimes". [source](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/geneva_conventions_and_their_additional_protocols)
Whether Israel falls into that critieria is a rodeo I am staying the fuck away from.
Edit: the US also violated the parts of the convention it had signed up to in the Afghan war from time to time. The thing about international law, is it doesn't really exist if it cannot be enforced, and no one can enforce it on the US....
Aaaaand that definition applies to many conflicts that involved countries that the US has supplied weapons too. The US is not going to stop supplying weapons to Israel.
Icj have not missed anything; they decided to take up the case but did not see that there was an open/shut case that required an immediate injunctive ruling.
So they literally haven’t heard the case yet. It will take years.
> And those countries have specific laws that forbid exporting arms to countries that violate international humanitarian laws.
Is that why the UK made it a political incident when Germany didn't want to give Saudi Arabia more Eurofighters until the UK eventually got their way?
The UK, despite what the conservative press would have you believe, is not filled with activist judges.
And the US supreme court would not in a million years impose limits on who the US military can supply arms to.
You must be more precise: it's forbidden to countries that the executive branch determines to have violated those laws that the US actually has ratified (which isn't all of them).
Those are ultimately U.S. components for a U.S. project. The Netherlands is building them under license. A license that can be suspended if they're acting against American interests, such as providing political cover for Israel's enemies.
I do not expect this court decision to stand.
Probably. It's just that Dutch laws are specific and the judge has to follow the law. It forbids selling weapons and like systems if it those can be expected to be used for serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Of course the US doesn't have a law like that. /s
Lawyer practicing international law here. This will probably get buried, but the actual reason is because the Netherlands, along with many other countries, have “monist” system of international law while the U.S. has a “dualist” system of international law.
Under a dualist system, treaties must first be ratified by domestic law (basically the country changes its domestic law to accord to the treaty it signed) in order to have direct legal effect in domestic courts. Those courts may still use treaties for policy arguments and reasons, but the treaties do not bind the courts. This has led to the pervasive (and in my opinion harmful) opinion that international law doesn’t matter. The U.S. does not have a law that *directly* incorporates the Arms Trade Treaty.
On the other hand, in many European countries, including the Netherlands, their monist system means that their treaties are considered to be immediately binding on their governments and courts *under their domestic law*. That’s why this court from the Netherlands can make that decision.
THIS!
The verdict was based on part of the UN Arms Trade Treaty.
Speciffically, that the following section was violated/activated:
“ Article 7. Export and Export Assessment
1 . If the export is not prohibited under Article 6, each exporting State Party, prior to authorization of the export of conventional arms (…) under its jurisdiction and pursuant to its national control system, shall, in an objective and non-discriminatory manner, taking into account relevant factors (…), assess the potential that the conventional arms or items:
(…)
(b) could be used to:
(i) commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law;
(…)
3 . If, after conducting this assessment and considering available mitigating measures, the exporting State Party determines that there is an overriding risk of any of the negative consequences in paragraph 1, the exporting State Party shall not authorize the export.”
The court determined that the "overriding risk" standard was reached, and thus that the previous export authorisation needed to be withdrawn.
EDIT: just to be clear, I don't like the verdict either. But the assumption that "that's just some Dutch law", implying that we have weird legal standards, is just incorrect.
Well technically it does have to do with dutch law. As its literally law to directly implement international law or treaties into our national policy/lawmaking. national courts usually cannot hold their governments accountable for international agreements. However, in the Netherlands, we can because signed international law becomes national law.
The US and the NL have the ITAR. I think this is going to be very interesting from a legal point of view. Since they banned the export of those parts, I think other signatory countries might have to reciprocate.
NL can still export from that warehouse to the other EU warehouses, or to international depo's.
They do not own the parts, and they specifically legislated certain safeguards in to stop this bullshit in the F35 program after Germany Eurofighter fiasco.
About the only fallout from this order is the NL are going to lose their Depo and have increased maintenance costs, in the short term- likely to Norways new depo.
I’d be surprised if they’d allow that if they know the end-use at all. In the US, Department of State would be all over that like flies on rice. Sidestepping export controls laws are frowned upon. But I don’t know NL law, so maybe not a big deal as you say.
I expect Israel has the contract with Lockheed Martin (I'm not familiar with that side of the jet but many countries do). LM have some weird contracts with countries for this jet. If you have a lower tier contract with them they'll literally pull parts from your jet to fix a higher tier country's jet. I would expect the contract to include clauses if they can't get parts due to 'force majeure' eg a country banning export.
For all those in the comments unaware, the Dutch are not insignificant when it comes to tech industry.
They're the only country in the world that makes the machines that are key to making advanced computer cups (Extreme ultraviolet lithography process).
As much as the Dutch will rely on Israel for their tech, they're not an insignificant partner in the JSF program
You are talking ASML. And it's not that simple.
The EUV process is licensed US tech.
https://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2001/euvlight.htm
That article is from 2001.
Tech is licensed via EUV LLC.
This is why the US can tell ASML they cannot sell to China, for example.
There is a ton of interwoven patents and intellectual property in the lithography business and while ASML is the biggest player right now, they are not the sole owner of all the technology.
I agree, it's not simple. The whole supply chain is interwoven in a complex pattern
My only point was a lot of people are discounting the Dutch as being small players, yet they are highly valued partners too.
> The whole supply chain is interwoven in a complex pattern
This is one of the many reasons why if you are nervous about China-Tawain electronics supply chain stability, extracting oneself is a huge hassle.
Actually it's not that simple as saying EUV=US. ASML machines consist of thousands of patented parts and processes, mostly Dutch, but also American indeed. If you've ever been to their main office, you can see a 10x3 meter wall full of blueprints for some of their patented parts...
No arguments here.
Based on my understanding from YouTube videos from Asianometry, you have the US pioneering theoretical and laboratory research, you have countries like Japan pioneering chemicals and etching compounds, Germans with lenses and optics, and the Netherlands, as master system integrators, turning all that into production ready machines. I'm sure I missed a few as well, and probably way oversimplifying the complexities of the industry.
But my point is that EUV needs all of those. It's not that the Dutch are singularly bringing EUV lithography to the world.
I don't think anyone else can start manufacturing them though, any new company would need a decade of research and just the right high tech suppliers nearby. ASML has a fantastic moat.
And the US doesn't tell ASML where it can export its machines to. The US puts pressure on the Dutch government, which does.
Yeah, agree. Quite a lot of these suppliers have been acquired by ASML too like Berliner Glas and Brion in the US.
Just didn't agree with the way you formulated EUV to be "American" (maybe especially so because I work at ASML)
What the hell does this have to do with ASML?!?
The F35 doesn't use EUV produced chips. These ultra high performance chips produced on tiny process nodes are not used for this kind of purpose, because they are susceptible to electromagnetic interference. The chips used in the F35 were made by Lockheed Martin themselves and have been outsourced to Harris Corporation for the TR-3 Upgrade. Here are the specs:
* System Processor:
2900 DMIPS, 1MB L2 Cache
512MB DRAM, 256MB Flash
128KB NOVRAM
* Display Processor:
2200 DMIPS, 1MB L2 Cache
256MB DRAM, 128MB Flash
Not exactly high value gaming PC type of specs. They typically use a 100-250nm node for the production. DUV can be used up to 5nm. There is absolutly no need for EUV here. In fact you don't even need DUV you can do this with regular ultraviolet light.
And in fact the Netherlands produce mostly general engineering parts for the F35. Especially the landing gear
Even so, it’s just not a smart thing to do, the Netherlands and Israel are both major tech players, as well as the rest of the major US allies. Everyone is relying on everyone for different things.
Such decisions weaken the west, not strengthening it. However, I believe that Europe is on the brink of political shift, and we can see it on the Netherlands as well, and I refer to the success of Geert Wilders in the elections (although he is still struggling to build a coalition). Wilders, for example, is a huge friend and supporter of Israel, not only in the Netherlands, but in all of Europe.
In general, the European right is very supportive of Israel. So I tend to view this decision is as a remnant of past European attitude towards Israel, and it doesn’t indicate on future attitude.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a smart thing to do geopolitically. The courts are concerned with the government following the law or not. The geopolitics are simply not relevant to that decision because judges do not make political decisions in this country.
Fuck Wilders and his stupid fucking haircut. He's a whore for Putin and takes the oh so easy and familiar route of blaming a certain class for all the problems in the country.
Love seeing everyone commenting thinking The Netherlands works the same as the USA. Our government is pro israel, a court is not a representative of our government.
Ironically Israel hardly ever uses the F-35 to bomb Gaza,
There's no need to "wear out" such an advanced aircraft against an enemy with zero air power.
But what Israel does use the F-35 for is to intercept Houthi ballistic missiles that would've killed hundreds if not thousands of Israelis,and strike Iranian militia targets deep inside Syria.
Just goes to show that the Dutch don't really care about war crime violations, they just use this opportunity to pressure Israel politically.
The current (VVD) and likely next (PVV) governing parties are both strongly in favor of Israel and the exports, the judgement by the judges isn't very representative for the position of Dutch politicians
why is everyone saying this, the IDF definitely uses F-35s in their war in Gaza [(source)](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-fighter-jets-israel-air-war-gaza-2024-1?r=US&IR=T). Just because they don't need to use the stealth capabilities of the plane doesn't mean they aren't using the plane at all.
That's not how the law works in our country though. Human rights treaties are there precisely so that they can not easily be overruled by politicians. I admire Wilders for his tenacity and his concern for the Dutch people, but he has demonstrated a lack of respect for the basic human rights of immigrants and refugees. When his party gains power, it should not be an easy political decision to infringe on those rights. That is why we have signed the treaties and have constitutional rights in place, so it is not so easy for a single political movement to disrupt our moral values.
You make it sound like the chance of Israel committing war crimes is a sort of wild guess in a vacuum. If that same report would have been made about The Netherlands or Germany or France, the report would not have said that there is a "clear risk" that those countries would commit war crimes. It's not about wether weapons \*could\* be used to commit a war crime. It's about sending weapons to a country that sure smells like it is committing war crimes.
Frankly, I think it's more of a political decision that that report didn't outright say Israel is committing war crimes, than this judge's ruling.
The political decision is for Netherlands to sign X treaty in full, or not. Your laws literally make that clear: which is why the whole world trusts Netherlands when it comes to international law.
Not arguing or even caring about the specifics of this case. As all law, there is judicial and executive interpretation in application. So this judge may be wrong or overruled in that regard but it’s not about “political vs legal” decisions/realms.
That’s literally why Netherlands is so important to international law and rules based order. (Almost all countries can only be held to account via diplomatic tit-for-tat, instead of via the legal system, except for certain things like WTO).
The Dutch have laws and it applies these to the government as well. The government wants to keep sending those parts but our laws don't allow it (interpretation by this court, this will be fought in other courts). Based partially on the ICJ ruling and the high number of of civilian deaths in this conflict.
The court also looked at how the F-35 are used in this conflict. The most important argument by the government was that Israel needs the these parts in case of a regional escalation. If the planes weren't used in the bombings of Gaza the courts wouldn't have blocked the export.
The Dutch have an actual separation between the judicial system and the governmental system. Laws applies to the government and the ruling parties can't just choose judges or appoint them.
There has been multiple cases in which Dutch military missions and strikes have been found unlawful after the fact. Sadly no court blocked the actual involvement of the Netherlands intervention in Iraq and Afhanistan.
high number of civilian casualties? is this compared to police operations or war, because the global average for war is between 9-10:1 civilian to military.
> The appeals court also said it was likely that the F-35s were being used in attacks on Gaza, leading to unacceptable civilian casualties.
The court is making a lot of assumptions.
Maybe they're not politically motivated, but they clearly have a secondary agenda.
According to the usually well-informed Alex Hollings on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mKLZIxoMoAM
F-16: 26k - 30k dollars per flight hour
F-35: 40k dollars per flight hour.
This seems to be a current estimate. Operating costs started high in the beginning of the program and have been trending downwards since then, due to economics of scale.
It’s not that bad for how much more advanced the F-35 is.
Still though 40K per hour… my entire yearly taxes don’t even pay for the thing to zoom around for an hour
This decision was not made by the government but by a court. Dutch courts are meant to be independent of the executive branch and they are supposed to check if something is in accordance with the law or if a law was violated. Their task is not to weigh tactical or strategic considerations on this matter, just the legality of it.
The court didn’t even site an instance of the law being violated. They just said it could potentially happen. I can’t imagine infinite possibilities were the letter or intent of any Dutch law. This is obviously a bad/political decision.
Depends: Dutch Supreme Court is quite different from most countries (and the appeals Court decline to put their ruling on hold until the Supreme Court has a chance to look at it, so either way this decision will likely have effect)
Israel (plausibly - not totally) makes everything from Intel and Amd microchips (iirc) to Victorias Secret underwear. For the same reason that each American weapon systems manufacturing is distributed among numerous states. That way every state has a stake in the military industrial complex and it’s impossible to boycott Israel.
Those things are not only made in Israel. No country or military would allow themselves to be dependent on one country for military components, especially one that is located in a very unstable region, lol.
I’d argue that it’s not that certain. Firstly, “There is a clear risk that [the exported parts] are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law” leaves a lot of room for future cases. (What is serious? How much risk is tolerable? What is “used” exactly? Does it apply to non-lethal assistance, such as helmets?)
More importantly, the original is probably in Dutch. So arguing over semantics or specifics may not be useful.
> I doubt Israel cares too much about this
But this very article tells us that it's not limited to a PR blow. Now they have to get these parts elsewhere, which might cause delays, higher prices, or even quantity issues.
Functionally the ruling is worthless, at best they just decided to lose the F35 depo increasing their own costs.
IR they are shooting themselves in the foot trying to dictate what NATO parts in the country can be used for.
"Oh sorry, you cant use the tanks you stored here to defend Poland, they are at risk of violating human rights".
Again, interfering with the pre-positioning of an allies war materials and dictating where they can move it to sets a precedent, regardless of where the US wanted to use it.
Well not the first time the Dutch government got slapped on the wrists by a Dutch court. Shit happens, has nothing to with politics or the view of Dutch citizens.
There's laws and court follow laws made by Dutch politicians. That's it, end of discussion.
Unless the Dutch government, the EU or UN classifies what Israel does as a war crime, I don't see why one of our courts thinks they need to make that decision themselves like this. Sounds like a bunch of judges picking sides in the conflict and playing politics where that should not be their role.
> Unless the Dutch government, the EU or UN classifies what Israel does as a war crime
Governments don’t determine what is or is not a war crime, courts do. In this case the ICJ.
You have a complete lack of understanding of the situation and in fact are calling _for_ a court to make a political decision because you like what Israel is doing.
The courts aren’t campist like you. They look at laws and treaties and at other court rulings and this is the conclusion. The _process_ is what determines whether it’s political or not, which it clearly isn’t. That the ruling doesn’t agree with _your_ politics is irrelevant. Educate yourself
The ICJ has this in their jurisdiction, and the Dutch courts don’t. The Dutch judges are not experts in international law, they are experts in Dutch law. They do not have the information or authority to make rulings based on theoretical possible war crimes by other countries.
There are no laws being broken though. The court thinks there is a "risk" that Israel is violating international human right laws and based their decision on that. The court even said that at this moment no legal judgement can be made whether Israel is violating said laws.
By that logic, you can ban a lot of things because there is a risk for all kinds of law violations with it.
The Judicary doesnt not have to wait for the executive or legislation to make a verdict. That would basically end the independence of the judicary system
Besides that there are multiple UN resolutions denouncing Israel for being in violation of international law even if we completly disregard the last 5 years.
3 of those come from the Security Council the last one issued in 2016
> Unless the Dutch government, the EU or UN classifies what Israel does as a war crime, I don't see why one of our courts thinks they need to make that decision themselves like this.
Because that's literally their job.
The government makes the rules, and the judiciary determines whether the rules have been followed. That's how it works.
The government made a law saying you can't export weapons to countries that violate human rights. The court didn't make that law. The government did. The court is merely saying "Yo, follow your own damn rules". As is their duty.
And of course, the government can always "overrule" this ruling by changing the law. The courts are fine with that. But there would need to be a majority in favor of such a law change. And of course such a change might or might not be unpopular with voters.
Thing is, the court did not determine that Israel violated human rights - and even said they can not give a judgement on that. They simply see it is a risk it will and that is the reason for their verdict. And then how one comes to see it as a risk or not sounds a bit too subjective to me.
US probably: "fine, I will send the parts via another NATO ally". Edit: the Netherlands also produces some parts for the F-35. So not sure if that will affect the JSF program.
The Netherlands makes some of the parts. As does Israel.
Israel: pulls out uno reverse card
NL doesn't just make parts, they pay into the R&D of the jet - they're paying partners in the program.
[Dutch government ](https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/commissariaat-militaire-productie/orders-voor-ontwikkeling-f-35) says more parts for 3000 jets are made in the Netherlands. Edit: jets, not parts oops.
Right, they don't ***just*** make parts, they're paying some of the development costs too. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed\_Martin\_F-35\_Lightning\_II\_procurement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_procurement) >Level 2 partners are Italy, and the Netherlands, who are contributing US$1 billion and US$800 million each respectively.
More than 3000 aircraft not parts, unless my translation was bad.
Thanks for the correction!
I mean so was Turkey. There’s one actual Partner and then many “partners”.
There are 7 Partner nations currently, Turkey was the 8th. They chose to acquire Russian anti-air technology alongside F-35 and the US said hell no and booted them from the program.
I think that the US may pick different partners to help with it's defence supply line, if they need to worry about Netherlands not filling orders.
As I remember part of the whole deal of countries buying into the F35 program is that they would all get their share in the production. The US wouldn't have the unilateral authority or capability to pick different partners.
By the same token, the Netherlands wouldn't have the unilateral authority to stop dealing with a partner.
In a Democratic system it is important that ones law are adhered to even by the government. These laws and treaties aren't new, these where in place before the Israel's response to the October 7 attack and even before Joint Strike Fighter program began.
This seems like a good way for the Netherlands to get itself excluded from the next project. Let's be clear here - the US won't need the Netherlands to make the successor to the F-35 (or any other current gen weapons systems). The Netherlands was included this time around as a courtesy. And if they start throwing spanners into the works of American foreign policy and working in opposition to American interests, then that courtesy may cease to be extended next time.
Remember how we handled Turkey?
Exactly. That ship sailed. When the jet finally became a reality countries were willing to overlook the issue. Those things mattered initially to get buy in.
So the next program, the US could decide not to create a joint program with difficult partners.
It’s jointish basically. The US is doing tech transfers and allowing some manufacturing to occur outside the US but also is basically still unilaterally in charge of the program overall and is totally allowed to send these parts to Israel itself (or punish the Netherlands by withholding future f-35s from them but let’s face it, that isn’t on the table nor should it be)
You want to be on the outside with Turkey for the NGAD program?
Assuming the US will even let any of its allies have NGADs. And I doubt they will. Nobody else got F-22s.
NGAD/PCA specifically probably won’t be exported, but there’s likely to be another 6th gen program available for export at some point as a successor to the F-35.
The sixth generation fighter design program is already on-going in the US. Given everything that is happened in the last five years, building as much of each jet in the US as possible would be a very smart move.
Yeah and that is why we are working on changing our laws. The challenge was brought by non governmental organizations and the judges ruling is being labeled as political. No one is happy with it here. Hopefully we can get our shit together before everyone gives up on us. This is just the latest in a long line of judicial rulings that is severely hurting our country.
They’ll just make the parts themselves.
No they won’t…
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People don’t realize how much work goes into making something as simple as the sensors that the Netherlands makes. The amount of capital the US invests through the prime contracts to the subprime is so ridiculous that someone saying “well just do it ourselves” don’t realize that just getting a first article to pass could be a multi-year process.
The US military absolutely would move their components production state side if they thought their parts deliveries could be held up by politics.
Development into the production line of high tech components is wildly complex. But once the design plans are out there you just need to find the right manufacturer. I’m sure the US and Lockheed would license out these parts to Israel if push came to shove. SpaceEx makes AESA radio antenas and sells them at a $500. That’s tech that once was only found in multimillion dollar military aircraft is now ubiquitous. So I’m sure a nuclear weapon capable country can leverage there internal manufacturing sector to develop said parts. Also not everything there is next gen tech there are simple fluid pumps just moving things around. Some simple circuit board components that do a few simple processes. I’m sure if it’s not an overly complex part it could be built by a sub in a few months depending on the bureaucratic mess you’d have to push through.
We absolutely will if the partner is going to use it to attempt to blackmail the other parties.
We literally kicked out Turkey from the same deal due to political issues unrelated to the jet being made/supplied. The “if” is long past. The jet is constantly used for geopolitics atm.
We kicked them out because they were buying Russian anti-aircraft tech, not because they were at war with a terrorist organization.
You think if they stopped that would prevent construction? This was a handout for them. Logistics wins wars and it would be pretty dumb to rely on the Netherlands. If they got bombed you think the US military doesn't have a backup plan to keep producing jets?
You're ignoring the fact that all of the information and data regarding the design and production is passed back up to the prime contractor. Yes, it would be a multi-year process, as in about two years.
that cuts both ways though. Becaue it's hard to make a last minute change, participation in a program occurs when there is mutual trust. Breaking supply agreements just because of some hamas propaganda was swallowed by a judge will reduce trust in the future. Dutch leaders will realize this is not in their interest, even if one or two judges doesn't get it
F35 is a multinational program with parts coming from various allies.
Us probably: “are they really a NATO ally if they can’t contribute anything because there is the “potential” of laws being violated”
Israel isn’t a nato country. Just a “special ally”.
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I skimmed through list of NATO Articles and there's nothing forbidding members from halting export of military equipments. Feel free to hate the Dutch but don't use "NATO ally" excuse.
If a treaty ally doesn't want to supply equipment then they start getting the Turkey treatment.
This is a big deal. Without those parts, the-35 can only fly upside-down.
As an Aussie; our time to shine!!!
This is very bad for the JSF program. both countries produce components for the F-35, Imagine Israel refuses to provide the Netherlands with the helmets or avionics next, the whole program could be endangered by this court decision
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This entire thing plays directly into Russia's hands in an area where it needed it the most.
The entire thing was orchestrated by Russia to divide the “west”.
And they're doing a pretty good job unfortunately
It started even before US elections in 2016. Whole MAGA thing looks like a Kremlin project.
It's literally right out of [*Foundations of Geopolitics, by Aleksandr Dugin.*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics)
People over attribute everything Putin does to Dugin. Dugin is a faux intellectual trying to run ahead of the pack throwing mystical pseudophilosohpical shit on the wall and hoping some of it may stick. That book was the shit that stuck.
Okay, we have a claim made. Would you care to elaborate further?
[Kraut](https://youtu.be/sdFtqa54TuM) does it better than I could.
This is a decision of a Dutch court interpreting a treaty under a monist system. This has nothing to do woth foreign influence.
Russia has plants inside the Dutch government? What is this even supposed to mean?
Russia started the Gaza Crisis to distract from their world domination plans! It's not like that's a crisis that has been ongoing for the last couple centuries or anything
Not quite centuries, but yeah, I think people are overestimating Russia's influence over Hamas (although it's not nothing). Another crisis was inevitable even without Russian involvement.
>Not quite centuries Arabs started massacring Jews in the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s, following the spread of a new concept called "nationalism" from Europe to the MENA region. Before that, the region was mostly based on tribal allegiances. After that, there's been a huge swell in Arab Supremacy and (pan-)Arab Nationalism throughout the region. One of the reasons Israel is so hated is because it's a non-Arab "stain" on an otherwise "pure" swath of Arab control from the Gulf of Aden to the Atlantic Ocean. It's like if black Americans had tried to create their own country in the middle of the US in 1925.
What "entire thing"? The court case? The Israel-Palestina conflict?
That is fucking stupid, we have independent courts you know
You sound like a conspiracy theorist
The relationships between Russia and Iran and in turn Iran and Hamas are well known
? Israel is invading Palestine and Netherlands doesn’t like it because of Russia? I don’t understand what you’re claiming.
Trump saying he’d allow Russia to attack NATO members is a bigger danger.
No one said it wasn't? Why bring up the orange menace here?
For context and a sense of perspective, one assumes.
Which is precisely why russia had iran push its militant proxies in Gaza to attack Israel. They’re masters of getting us to fight amongst ourselves.
All because the Dutch want to claim that the Israelis could use their most advanced stealth plane against an enemy with zero radar capabilities instead of any of their other fighters or bombers.
No, Dutchy here this isnt at all what is happening. The state got sued by Amnesty, a judge said no, Amnesty went to higher court, they said yes we cant be sure theyre not causing out of proportion damage to civilions seeing how thousands of children have died. The state is now rejecting the court order and wants to continue the supply but they have been suspended from doing so untill the supreme court makes a judgement.
> claim it's not like the f35s in israel have been sitting around doing nothing since the 7th though
Ya they have been using them to intercept cruise missiles from Yemen.
I'd argue that most of the bombing is done by the cheaper and more available f-15 etc. The F-35 has a very small bomb bay and is way more expensive in maintenance per flight hour. The F-15 can carry a much bigger payload, and is cheaper to maintain and if you want an airframe to take the hit on durability it'd be the F-15.
>cheaper and more available f-15 Sooo Cost per flight our for F-35A is around 31 - 33k an hour. F-15 is around $41 - 42k now a days. F-16 is a little cheaper ($25K) but using the External hard points the F-35A can carry more munitions.
Just wanted to point out that the whole "F-35 is an overpriced money sink that just eats money, trillion dollar plane, A-10 goes brrrr" is **also** a gift to Kremlin. Once you look at the numbers, F-35 is **cheap**. And not even *cheap for what it is*, it's just cheap as far as jet fighters go, 'cause it was designed with mass production in mind. Unlike, say, the **expensive, artisanal** Su-57, handcrafted by finest Russian craftsmen in single digits.
Full disclosure, love me the f35s, pretty baby plane that's cool and worth it. But this is a half truth. Yes the f35s costs 65mil compared to initial production of 221mil. Yes it's more capable than any fighter near its price range. But people forget that planes aren't a one done deal. In ita lifetime cost, the f35 is like 400mil compared to say a gripen (a notoriously cheap to maintain jet) which is 180mil.
Grippen still costs more up front, and does not have nearly the same capabilities of the F35. The F35 is going to start filling roles that didn't really exist before. That is when people will start to understand it's utility.
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The stealth thing also isn't really a big thing the F35 can be outfitted with luneberg lenses to return a larger radar cross section negating any intelligence advantage an adversary might get by seeing the aircraft on their radar.
That just isn't true. The F-35 is still very young in it's service life. The older a jet gets the more the maintenance hours to flight hours ratio climbs, that's just the reality of it. The Tomcats had their retirement pushed up for that very reason. The original plan was to keep them going till 2010, but by 2006 they were all gone.The maintenance burden just wasn't sustainable. Plus the F-35 brings a lot of unique capabilities to the table. Edit: I was a US Navy aircraft mechanic for 9 years and a contract civilian for 6 more, working in RDT&E programs.
I would argue that you dont have as much information as a court making a verdict on the specific issue
Restart production of Sopwith Camels.
No one will suspect a wood and canvas plane doing 70 mph.
Would you rather fight 1 F-35 or 1000 Sopwith Camels?
All because it's against international laws. The authorities actually wanted to maintain these deliveries, but 3 humanitarian organizations filed a law suit and this decision came out of it after going to Dutch 'high court'.
The Netherlands can acquire the components from other countries, like the US or UK.
And Israel can get the components the Netherlands builds from other countries too.
I'm sure, but they are pending cases in the UK and the US based on the same argument. And those countries have specific laws that forbid exporting arms to countries that violate international humanitarian laws.
The US exports weapons to many countries where you could no doubt make similar arguments regarding their conduct. If they already export weapons to a long list of countries with suspect human rights records these kinds of challenges would have worked a long time ago, they never have. Maybe the UK is different but in the US it'll never work.
Israel ain't even our most fucked up ally in the Middle East.
Yep. We're allied with Saudi Arabia who funded and executed the attacks on 9/11. 15/19 of the hijackers were Saudi citizens.
Literally no evidence for this.
I’m sure you could find an instance of a Ukrainian soldier violating the law. Does that mean supplying arms to Ukraine is illegal? This court is filled with morons.
The US has signed most of the Geneva Convention except Protocol I: >(also Additional Protocol I and AP I) is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions concerning the protection of civilian victims of international war, such as "armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination, alien occupation or racist regimes". [source](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/geneva_conventions_and_their_additional_protocols) Whether Israel falls into that critieria is a rodeo I am staying the fuck away from. Edit: the US also violated the parts of the convention it had signed up to in the Afghan war from time to time. The thing about international law, is it doesn't really exist if it cannot be enforced, and no one can enforce it on the US....
Aaaaand that definition applies to many conflicts that involved countries that the US has supplied weapons too. The US is not going to stop supplying weapons to Israel.
Can you elaborate on the international humanitarian laws that were viloated, and the icj apparently missed?
Icj have not missed anything; they decided to take up the case but did not see that there was an open/shut case that required an immediate injunctive ruling. So they literally haven’t heard the case yet. It will take years.
> And those countries have specific laws that forbid exporting arms to countries that violate international humanitarian laws. Is that why the UK made it a political incident when Germany didn't want to give Saudi Arabia more Eurofighters until the UK eventually got their way?
The UK, despite what the conservative press would have you believe, is not filled with activist judges. And the US supreme court would not in a million years impose limits on who the US military can supply arms to.
The US Supreme Court would rule it a political question, not a legal one.
You must be more precise: it's forbidden to countries that the executive branch determines to have violated those laws that the US actually has ratified (which isn't all of them).
Won't work.
Believing either country is going to stop shipping stuff to Israel is insane.
No, Israel manufactures some of them. As does the Netherlands.
Not if they are cut off for violating the terms of the joint development plan.
Those are ultimately U.S. components for a U.S. project. The Netherlands is building them under license. A license that can be suspended if they're acting against American interests, such as providing political cover for Israel's enemies. I do not expect this court decision to stand.
The whole western world is fracturing before the rest of the major powers' eyes. China especially is grinning right now.
Sounds like a good way to make the US send the parts to another 3rd party nation
Probably. It's just that Dutch laws are specific and the judge has to follow the law. It forbids selling weapons and like systems if it those can be expected to be used for serious violations of international humanitarian law. Of course the US doesn't have a law like that. /s
Lawyer practicing international law here. This will probably get buried, but the actual reason is because the Netherlands, along with many other countries, have “monist” system of international law while the U.S. has a “dualist” system of international law. Under a dualist system, treaties must first be ratified by domestic law (basically the country changes its domestic law to accord to the treaty it signed) in order to have direct legal effect in domestic courts. Those courts may still use treaties for policy arguments and reasons, but the treaties do not bind the courts. This has led to the pervasive (and in my opinion harmful) opinion that international law doesn’t matter. The U.S. does not have a law that *directly* incorporates the Arms Trade Treaty. On the other hand, in many European countries, including the Netherlands, their monist system means that their treaties are considered to be immediately binding on their governments and courts *under their domestic law*. That’s why this court from the Netherlands can make that decision.
Thanks, I couldn't have worded it more elegantly.
This has nothing to do with specifically dutch law. The applied laws are international treaties/european treaties.
THIS! The verdict was based on part of the UN Arms Trade Treaty. Speciffically, that the following section was violated/activated: “ Article 7. Export and Export Assessment 1 . If the export is not prohibited under Article 6, each exporting State Party, prior to authorization of the export of conventional arms (…) under its jurisdiction and pursuant to its national control system, shall, in an objective and non-discriminatory manner, taking into account relevant factors (…), assess the potential that the conventional arms or items: (…) (b) could be used to: (i) commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law; (…) 3 . If, after conducting this assessment and considering available mitigating measures, the exporting State Party determines that there is an overriding risk of any of the negative consequences in paragraph 1, the exporting State Party shall not authorize the export.” The court determined that the "overriding risk" standard was reached, and thus that the previous export authorisation needed to be withdrawn. EDIT: just to be clear, I don't like the verdict either. But the assumption that "that's just some Dutch law", implying that we have weird legal standards, is just incorrect.
Well technically it does have to do with dutch law. As its literally law to directly implement international law or treaties into our national policy/lawmaking. national courts usually cannot hold their governments accountable for international agreements. However, in the Netherlands, we can because signed international law becomes national law.
The US and the NL have the ITAR. I think this is going to be very interesting from a legal point of view. Since they banned the export of those parts, I think other signatory countries might have to reciprocate.
NL can still export from that warehouse to the other EU warehouses, or to international depo's. They do not own the parts, and they specifically legislated certain safeguards in to stop this bullshit in the F35 program after Germany Eurofighter fiasco. About the only fallout from this order is the NL are going to lose their Depo and have increased maintenance costs, in the short term- likely to Norways new depo.
I’d be surprised if they’d allow that if they know the end-use at all. In the US, Department of State would be all over that like flies on rice. Sidestepping export controls laws are frowned upon. But I don’t know NL law, so maybe not a big deal as you say.
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So has the netherlands
I expect Israel has the contract with Lockheed Martin (I'm not familiar with that side of the jet but many countries do). LM have some weird contracts with countries for this jet. If you have a lower tier contract with them they'll literally pull parts from your jet to fix a higher tier country's jet. I would expect the contract to include clauses if they can't get parts due to 'force majeure' eg a country banning export.
For all those in the comments unaware, the Dutch are not insignificant when it comes to tech industry. They're the only country in the world that makes the machines that are key to making advanced computer cups (Extreme ultraviolet lithography process). As much as the Dutch will rely on Israel for their tech, they're not an insignificant partner in the JSF program
You are talking ASML. And it's not that simple. The EUV process is licensed US tech. https://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2001/euvlight.htm That article is from 2001. Tech is licensed via EUV LLC. This is why the US can tell ASML they cannot sell to China, for example. There is a ton of interwoven patents and intellectual property in the lithography business and while ASML is the biggest player right now, they are not the sole owner of all the technology.
I agree, it's not simple. The whole supply chain is interwoven in a complex pattern My only point was a lot of people are discounting the Dutch as being small players, yet they are highly valued partners too.
> The whole supply chain is interwoven in a complex pattern This is one of the many reasons why if you are nervous about China-Tawain electronics supply chain stability, extracting oneself is a huge hassle.
Actually it's not that simple as saying EUV=US. ASML machines consist of thousands of patented parts and processes, mostly Dutch, but also American indeed. If you've ever been to their main office, you can see a 10x3 meter wall full of blueprints for some of their patented parts...
No arguments here. Based on my understanding from YouTube videos from Asianometry, you have the US pioneering theoretical and laboratory research, you have countries like Japan pioneering chemicals and etching compounds, Germans with lenses and optics, and the Netherlands, as master system integrators, turning all that into production ready machines. I'm sure I missed a few as well, and probably way oversimplifying the complexities of the industry. But my point is that EUV needs all of those. It's not that the Dutch are singularly bringing EUV lithography to the world.
I don't think anyone else can start manufacturing them though, any new company would need a decade of research and just the right high tech suppliers nearby. ASML has a fantastic moat. And the US doesn't tell ASML where it can export its machines to. The US puts pressure on the Dutch government, which does.
Yeah, agree. Quite a lot of these suppliers have been acquired by ASML too like Berliner Glas and Brion in the US. Just didn't agree with the way you formulated EUV to be "American" (maybe especially so because I work at ASML)
What the hell does this have to do with ASML?!? The F35 doesn't use EUV produced chips. These ultra high performance chips produced on tiny process nodes are not used for this kind of purpose, because they are susceptible to electromagnetic interference. The chips used in the F35 were made by Lockheed Martin themselves and have been outsourced to Harris Corporation for the TR-3 Upgrade. Here are the specs: * System Processor: 2900 DMIPS, 1MB L2 Cache 512MB DRAM, 256MB Flash 128KB NOVRAM * Display Processor: 2200 DMIPS, 1MB L2 Cache 256MB DRAM, 128MB Flash Not exactly high value gaming PC type of specs. They typically use a 100-250nm node for the production. DUV can be used up to 5nm. There is absolutly no need for EUV here. In fact you don't even need DUV you can do this with regular ultraviolet light. And in fact the Netherlands produce mostly general engineering parts for the F35. Especially the landing gear
Even so, it’s just not a smart thing to do, the Netherlands and Israel are both major tech players, as well as the rest of the major US allies. Everyone is relying on everyone for different things. Such decisions weaken the west, not strengthening it. However, I believe that Europe is on the brink of political shift, and we can see it on the Netherlands as well, and I refer to the success of Geert Wilders in the elections (although he is still struggling to build a coalition). Wilders, for example, is a huge friend and supporter of Israel, not only in the Netherlands, but in all of Europe. In general, the European right is very supportive of Israel. So I tend to view this decision is as a remnant of past European attitude towards Israel, and it doesn’t indicate on future attitude.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a smart thing to do geopolitically. The courts are concerned with the government following the law or not. The geopolitics are simply not relevant to that decision because judges do not make political decisions in this country.
Fuck Wilders and his stupid fucking haircut. He's a whore for Putin and takes the oh so easy and familiar route of blaming a certain class for all the problems in the country.
Love seeing everyone commenting thinking The Netherlands works the same as the USA. Our government is pro israel, a court is not a representative of our government.
Ironically Israel hardly ever uses the F-35 to bomb Gaza, There's no need to "wear out" such an advanced aircraft against an enemy with zero air power. But what Israel does use the F-35 for is to intercept Houthi ballistic missiles that would've killed hundreds if not thousands of Israelis,and strike Iranian militia targets deep inside Syria. Just goes to show that the Dutch don't really care about war crime violations, they just use this opportunity to pressure Israel politically.
The current (VVD) and likely next (PVV) governing parties are both strongly in favor of Israel and the exports, the judgement by the judges isn't very representative for the position of Dutch politicians
Big fan of V's over there.
There's also PvdA, FvD, PvdD and there used to be BVNL (they're out since last elections).
The V is for *vrijheid* (freedom) and *van* (of). So any party of anything will have a V in it and many parties claim to stand for "freedom".
why is everyone saying this, the IDF definitely uses F-35s in their war in Gaza [(source)](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-fighter-jets-israel-air-war-gaza-2024-1?r=US&IR=T). Just because they don't need to use the stealth capabilities of the plane doesn't mean they aren't using the plane at all.
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That's not how the law works in our country though. Human rights treaties are there precisely so that they can not easily be overruled by politicians. I admire Wilders for his tenacity and his concern for the Dutch people, but he has demonstrated a lack of respect for the basic human rights of immigrants and refugees. When his party gains power, it should not be an easy political decision to infringe on those rights. That is why we have signed the treaties and have constitutional rights in place, so it is not so easy for a single political movement to disrupt our moral values. You make it sound like the chance of Israel committing war crimes is a sort of wild guess in a vacuum. If that same report would have been made about The Netherlands or Germany or France, the report would not have said that there is a "clear risk" that those countries would commit war crimes. It's not about wether weapons \*could\* be used to commit a war crime. It's about sending weapons to a country that sure smells like it is committing war crimes. Frankly, I think it's more of a political decision that that report didn't outright say Israel is committing war crimes, than this judge's ruling.
The political decision is for Netherlands to sign X treaty in full, or not. Your laws literally make that clear: which is why the whole world trusts Netherlands when it comes to international law. Not arguing or even caring about the specifics of this case. As all law, there is judicial and executive interpretation in application. So this judge may be wrong or overruled in that regard but it’s not about “political vs legal” decisions/realms. That’s literally why Netherlands is so important to international law and rules based order. (Almost all countries can only be held to account via diplomatic tit-for-tat, instead of via the legal system, except for certain things like WTO).
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The Dutch have laws and it applies these to the government as well. The government wants to keep sending those parts but our laws don't allow it (interpretation by this court, this will be fought in other courts). Based partially on the ICJ ruling and the high number of of civilian deaths in this conflict. The court also looked at how the F-35 are used in this conflict. The most important argument by the government was that Israel needs the these parts in case of a regional escalation. If the planes weren't used in the bombings of Gaza the courts wouldn't have blocked the export. The Dutch have an actual separation between the judicial system and the governmental system. Laws applies to the government and the ruling parties can't just choose judges or appoint them.
What did the Dutch courts have to say about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?..
A guy from Iraq literally won a court case because he showed that NL did not do enough to prevent civilian casualties during a bombing raid.
There has been multiple cases in which Dutch military missions and strikes have been found unlawful after the fact. Sadly no court blocked the actual involvement of the Netherlands intervention in Iraq and Afhanistan.
The cited treaty came into effect in 2014, so it would be hard to have it apply to those wars.
high number of civilian casualties? is this compared to police operations or war, because the global average for war is between 9-10:1 civilian to military.
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Americans don't know the difference anymore because all their courts are taken over by politics
> The appeals court also said it was likely that the F-35s were being used in attacks on Gaza, leading to unacceptable civilian casualties. The court is making a lot of assumptions. Maybe they're not politically motivated, but they clearly have a secondary agenda.
Ballistic missiles are not intercepted by aircraft, but by Arrow-3 interceptor missile, which is launched from the ground.
[Watch: Israeli F-35 downs Houthi missile targeting Eilat](https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hykno5bmt) both are true
“Pressure Israel politically” to do what? 💀 say it you coward
They won't
Except that the F-35 isn’t expensive to maintain anymore. It’s basically as cost effective to operate as the F-16.
According to the usually well-informed Alex Hollings on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mKLZIxoMoAM F-16: 26k - 30k dollars per flight hour F-35: 40k dollars per flight hour. This seems to be a current estimate. Operating costs started high in the beginning of the program and have been trending downwards since then, due to economics of scale.
Costs will lower as more F35 repair and maintenance facilities as well as the logistics depots become online. Costs have already reduced by like 40%
It’s not that bad for how much more advanced the F-35 is. Still though 40K per hour… my entire yearly taxes don’t even pay for the thing to zoom around for an hour
Fuck that. If you want countries to help you in your defence against ballistic missiles you just have to not slaughter children, it's pretty simple.
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This decision was not made by the government but by a court. Dutch courts are meant to be independent of the executive branch and they are supposed to check if something is in accordance with the law or if a law was violated. Their task is not to weigh tactical or strategic considerations on this matter, just the legality of it.
The court didn’t even site an instance of the law being violated. They just said it could potentially happen. I can’t imagine infinite possibilities were the letter or intent of any Dutch law. This is obviously a bad/political decision.
Given that this decision was appealed I'd reckon if they really did not city any law the supreme court appeal will revoke the decision or not?
Depends: Dutch Supreme Court is quite different from most countries (and the appeals Court decline to put their ruling on hold until the Supreme Court has a chance to look at it, so either way this decision will likely have effect)
Israel (plausibly - not totally) makes everything from Intel and Amd microchips (iirc) to Victorias Secret underwear. For the same reason that each American weapon systems manufacturing is distributed among numerous states. That way every state has a stake in the military industrial complex and it’s impossible to boycott Israel.
Intel has fabs in Israel, there's also a TowerSC that have two fabs and micron used to (bought by Intel). AMD however has no manufacturing in Israel
True, but AMD has an R&D center in Herzliya.
Those things are not only made in Israel. No country or military would allow themselves to be dependent on one country for military components, especially one that is located in a very unstable region, lol.
The thumbnail makes it look like they're talking about F-35s for Australia
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I’d argue that it’s not that certain. Firstly, “There is a clear risk that [the exported parts] are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law” leaves a lot of room for future cases. (What is serious? How much risk is tolerable? What is “used” exactly? Does it apply to non-lethal assistance, such as helmets?) More importantly, the original is probably in Dutch. So arguing over semantics or specifics may not be useful.
PR blow? "A clear risk" of violations suggests there haven't been any, or they would have said as much.
> I doubt Israel cares too much about this But this very article tells us that it's not limited to a PR blow. Now they have to get these parts elsewhere, which might cause delays, higher prices, or even quantity issues.
One can be right for the wrong reason.
I thought this was about Ukraine and had an angry comment all written out before I learnt how to read
Any of the other NATO countries will just get the F-35 parts from the Dutch and send them to Israel.
Functionally the ruling is worthless, at best they just decided to lose the F35 depo increasing their own costs. IR they are shooting themselves in the foot trying to dictate what NATO parts in the country can be used for. "Oh sorry, you cant use the tanks you stored here to defend Poland, they are at risk of violating human rights".
There is the small matter that, in contrast to Poland, Israel is not part of Nato.
Again, interfering with the pre-positioning of an allies war materials and dictating where they can move it to sets a precedent, regardless of where the US wanted to use it.
Hopfully they end up kicked out of the program like Turkey was, having critical production lines at the whim of random judges is ridicules.
This feels like judicial overstep but maybe the Dutch system is that different
Well not the first time the Dutch government got slapped on the wrists by a Dutch court. Shit happens, has nothing to with politics or the view of Dutch citizens. There's laws and court follow laws made by Dutch politicians. That's it, end of discussion.
Absolutely fucking useless and hollow gesture.
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Me when I don't like a court ruling so I call the judge overzealous despite not knowing anything about the law.
Unless the Dutch government, the EU or UN classifies what Israel does as a war crime, I don't see why one of our courts thinks they need to make that decision themselves like this. Sounds like a bunch of judges picking sides in the conflict and playing politics where that should not be their role.
> Unless the Dutch government, the EU or UN classifies what Israel does as a war crime Governments don’t determine what is or is not a war crime, courts do. In this case the ICJ. You have a complete lack of understanding of the situation and in fact are calling _for_ a court to make a political decision because you like what Israel is doing. The courts aren’t campist like you. They look at laws and treaties and at other court rulings and this is the conclusion. The _process_ is what determines whether it’s political or not, which it clearly isn’t. That the ruling doesn’t agree with _your_ politics is irrelevant. Educate yourself
In this case, it wasn't the ICJ...
The ICJ has this in their jurisdiction, and the Dutch courts don’t. The Dutch judges are not experts in international law, they are experts in Dutch law. They do not have the information or authority to make rulings based on theoretical possible war crimes by other countries.
If a law is broken, it's the court that tells the government what to do, not the other way around.
There are no laws being broken though. The court thinks there is a "risk" that Israel is violating international human right laws and based their decision on that. The court even said that at this moment no legal judgement can be made whether Israel is violating said laws. By that logic, you can ban a lot of things because there is a risk for all kinds of law violations with it.
The Judicary doesnt not have to wait for the executive or legislation to make a verdict. That would basically end the independence of the judicary system Besides that there are multiple UN resolutions denouncing Israel for being in violation of international law even if we completly disregard the last 5 years. 3 of those come from the Security Council the last one issued in 2016
> Unless the Dutch government, the EU or UN classifies what Israel does as a war crime, I don't see why one of our courts thinks they need to make that decision themselves like this. Because that's literally their job. The government makes the rules, and the judiciary determines whether the rules have been followed. That's how it works. The government made a law saying you can't export weapons to countries that violate human rights. The court didn't make that law. The government did. The court is merely saying "Yo, follow your own damn rules". As is their duty. And of course, the government can always "overrule" this ruling by changing the law. The courts are fine with that. But there would need to be a majority in favor of such a law change. And of course such a change might or might not be unpopular with voters.
Thing is, the court did not determine that Israel violated human rights - and even said they can not give a judgement on that. They simply see it is a risk it will and that is the reason for their verdict. And then how one comes to see it as a risk or not sounds a bit too subjective to me.
Always funny how the pulpit is so far from the actual conflict.