by Joseph Klein
Equating Israel’s self-defense with Hamas’ genocidal savagery.
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International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. He falsely accused them of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza following Hamas’ terrorist attack in Israel on October 7th. The bogus charges include starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, and extermination and/or murder.
In a crass attempt to portray himself as “even-handed,” the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor also announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders for their commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are Yahya Sinwar, Head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (aka Deif), Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, and Ismail Haniyeh, Head of Hamas Political Bureau.
Israel is fighting a war for its survival against Hamas, the terrorist organization that triggered the war in Gaza with its genocidal attack inside Israel that killed the most Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. Nevertheless, Mr. Khan equates the democratically elected leaders of Israel who are trying to defend their people against genocide with the bloodthirsty maniacs who are leading a terrorist organization committed to annihilating Israel because it is a Jewish state.
This represents the perversion of international law at its worst. By his actions in this case, the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC has effectively eliminated the distinction between moral and lawful acts of self-defense on the one hand and immoral and unlawful acts of aggression with the intent to commit genocide on the other. He has eliminated the distinction between good and evil.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu put it, Mr. Khan has created “a twisted and false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas. This is like creating a moral equivalence after September 11th between [former US] President [George] Bush and [slain al-Qaeda leader] Osama Bin Laden, or during World War II between [former US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] FDR and [former German Chancellor Adolf] Hitler.”
To his credit, even President Biden issued a statement denouncing Mr. Khan’s announcement, declaring that “whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.” Unfortunately, however, President Biden’s recent actions distancing his administration from Israel’s government by cutting off the delivery of some weapons to Israel and calling prematurely for an immediate and permanent ceasefire play into the hands of Hamas.
Contrary to the vile propaganda spread by the Palestinians themselves and their supporters in the so-called “international community” and mainstream media, Israel’s military has done more to protect civilians during wartime than any military has done in modern history. It has done so despite Hamas’ deliberate use of civilians as human shields and its use of civilian facilities such as hospitals – both within and underground – as command centers as well as places to hide fighters and store weapons.
Regarding the availability of food and other necessities in Gaza, Israel has opened crossings to allow the entry of convoys with such supplies to the extent that is consistent with its security requirements. The United Nations and other groups responsible for distributing the aid to the Gazan civilians who need it have failed to do so properly. Hamas has stolen some of these supplies for its own use, abandoning Gazan civilians who are desperate for food and water. The terrorists also launched rockets from Rafah, which landed in the vicinity of one of the crossings and killed three Israeli soldiers. In response, Israel temporarily closed that crossing, which it has since reopened despite the risks to its troops.
Hamas is responsible for the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, not Israel. Hamas started the war in the first place. The terrorists broke one humanitarian ceasefire during the war while also blocking agreement on a longer ceasefire. They have deliberately put Gazan civilians in mortal danger by using them as human shields and shooting at civilians trying to evacuate after being given warnings by Israel to leave for their own safety. And Hamas has deliberately abandoned Palestinian civilians to fend for themselves and face starvation while the terrorists steal aid meant for those civilians and launch attacks that interfere with the safe delivery of aid.
Hamas, not Israel, has committed crimes against humanity on the civilian Gazans as well as on civilians in Israel. Israel is using its best efforts to comply with the Geneva Conventions regarding the conduct of war and the protection of civilians. Hamas has deliberately defied the Geneva Conventions.
The ICC Chief Prosecutor is not only ignoring or deliberately distorting the facts. His use of the ICC to engage in lawfare against Israel exceeds his legal authority under the Rome Statute, which governs the ICC. Like the United States, Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute and is therefore not subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction even though Palestine has been admitted as a member state party to the Rome Treaty.
The ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber decision in 2021 that the ICC’s jurisdiction extends to crimes covered by the Rome Statute that have allegedly occurred in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967 was an exercise in circular reasoning. It relied on the Pre-Trial Chamber’s previous decision to treat Palestine as a state for the purposes of ICC investigations, irrespective of whether it meets the more general conditions for statehood under international law. The Pre-Trial Chamber referenced in support of this ruling the Palestinians’ own self-serving declaration of statehood and its decision to accede to the Rome Statute as a member state party.
The problem is that the Rome Statute does not authorize the Pre-Trial Chamber to create its own special definition of what constitutes a “state” specifically for ICC purposes. The Pre-Trial Chamber itself admitted that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the entire international community.
Palestine fails to meet certain basic criteria under international law to qualify as a legitimate state. It lacks effective sovereignty over the territory it claims within defined, undisputed borders. It also lacks a government that has effective governance authority over all Palestinians residing within both the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas have split this authority, unable to overcome their irreconcilable differences.
The Palestinians’ status as a member state party to the Rome Statute may give it bragging rights. And it may give them the limited right to invoke the Rome Statute’s protections in those cases where the ICC has legitimate jurisdiction, as agreed upon by the Rome Statute’s member states. But the Palestinians’ membership as a state party to the Rome Statute does not extend the ICC’s jurisdiction to Israel, which is not a party to the Rome Statute. The ICC lacks the legal authority to issue warrants for the arrest of Israel’s leaders, to prosecute them, or to put them on trial.
There is a fly in the ointment, however. The many parties to the Rome Statute that support the Palestinians against Israel may honor ICC arrest warrants issued against the Israeli prime minister and defense secretary, exposing them to arrest if they step foot on those countries’ soil. The Israeli leaders do not have to worry about the United States, which is not a state party to the Rome Statute. But the Israeli leaders will have to think twice before visiting countries in Europe like France or Germany, for example, which are state parties to the Rome Statute.
The United States has blocked concerted attempts so far by the Palestinians and their supporters to promote the Palestinian entity from an Observer State at the United Nations to a full-fledged member state of the UN. How long the Biden administration will continue resisting pressure from Arab, European, and other countries to stop vetoing such resolutions at the Security Council remains to be seen. But the dam continues to break as Ireland, Spain and Norway have become the latest countries to announce that they will recognize a Palestinian state. All three of these countries are state parties to the Rome Treaty.
Jews have been treated as pariahs in the lands where they have lived for more than two millennia. Blood libel led to massacres and pogroms, culminating in the slaughter of six million Jews during the Holocaust. World leaders turned away or actively contributed to the Jews’ tragic plight.
Jews were defenseless against their anti-Semitic persecutors. But that changed when the Jewish state of Israel became independent in 1948 and developed the means to defend its people seeking to live safely in their ancestral homeland.
Now anti-Semitism is surging to alarming heights all over the world, including in the United States. Sometimes it is cloaked under the guise of anti-Zionism with lies accusing the Jewish state of apartheid, racism, colonialism, and all the other usual pejoratives. Too often the anti-Semitism is all out in the open.
The Jew-haters detest the fact that Jews no longer must live at the whim of bigots who consider them the “other” in countries where Jews constitute a tiny minority. The Jew-haters would like nothing more than another Holocaust and they cheer on the Palestinian terrorists whose aim is to wipe out the Jewish state and kill as many Jews as possible.
Hamas and other Iranian-backed Islamist terrorists do the dirty work while the Palestinian Authority’s fake “diplomats” use the UN and other international forums to isolate, delegitimize, and demonize Israel. Their lawfare at the ICC is part of this cynical plan.
Israel must fight back not only on the battlefield but everywhere it is maligned with anti-Semitic slurs. And Israel’s friends in the United States and around the world must stand with Israel to fight the lies by shouting out the truth from the rooftops as often as possible.
Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer, and the author of Global Deception: The
UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack
Hussein Obama, The United Nations & Radical Islam.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/icc-prosecutor-targets-israeli-leaders-for-arrest/
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