{"id":288732,"date":"2024-06-03T07:20:02","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T07:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=288732"},"modified":"2024-06-05T08:05:41","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T08:05:41","slug":"to-continue-the-gaza-genocide-israel-and-the-us-must-destroy-the-laws-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=288732","title":{"rendered":"To Continue the Gaza Genocide, Israel and the US Must Destroy the Laws of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Cook \u2013 The Unz Review May 31, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The world\u2019s two highest courts have made an implacable enemy of Israel in trying to uphold international law and end Israeli atrocities in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Separate announcements last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) should have forced Israel on to the back foot in Gaza.<\/p>\n

A panel of judges at the ICJ \u2013 sometimes known as the World Court \u2013 demanded<\/a> last Friday that Israel immediately stop its current offensive on Rafah<\/a>, in southern Gaza.<\/p>\n

Instead, Israel responded by intensifying its atrocities.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, it bombed a supposedly \u201csafe zone\u201d<\/a> crowded with refugee families forced to flee from the rest of Gaza, which has been devastated by Israel\u2019s rampage for the past eight months.<\/p>\n

The air strike set fire to an area crammed with tents, killing dozens of Palestinians, many of whom burnt alive. A video<\/a> shows a man holding aloft a baby beheaded by the Israeli blast.<\/p>\n

Hundreds more, many of them women and children, suffered serious injuries, including horrifying burns.<\/p>\n

Israel has destroyed almost all of the medical facilities<\/a> that could treat Rafah\u2019s wounded, as well as denying entry to basic medical supplies such as painkillers that could ease their torment.<\/p>\n

This was precisely the outcome US President Joe Biden warned of months ago when he suggested that an Israeli attack on Rafah would constitute a \u201cred line\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the US red line evaporated<\/a> the moment Israel crossed it. The best Biden\u2019s officials could manage was a mealy-mouthed statement<\/a> calling the images from Rafah \u201cheart-breaking\u201d.<\/p>\n

Such images were soon to be repeated<\/a>, however. Israel attacked the same area again on Tuesday, killing at least 21 Palestinians, mostly women and children, as its tanks entered the centre of Rafah.<\/p>\n

\u2018A mechanism with teeth\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The World Court\u2019s demand that Israel halt its attack on Rafah came in the wake of its decision<\/a> in January to put Israel effectively on trial for genocide, a judicial process that could take years to complete.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the ICJ insisted, Israel had to refrain from any actions that risked a genocide of Palestinians. In last week\u2019s ruling, the court strongly implied that the current attack on Rafah might advance just such an agenda.<\/p>\n

Israel presumably dared to defy the court only because it was sure it had the Biden administration\u2019s backing.<\/p>\n

UN officials, admitting<\/a> that they had run out of negatives to describe the ever-worsening catastrophe in Gaza, called it \u201chell on earth\u201d.<\/p>\n

Days before the ICJ\u2019s ruling, the wheels of its sister court, the ICC, finally began to turn.<\/p>\n

Karim Khan, its chief prosecutor, announced<\/a> last week that he would be seeking arrest warrants for Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders.<\/p>\n

Both Israeli leaders are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attempts to exterminate the population of Gaza through planned starvation.<\/p>\n

Israel has been blocking aid deliveries for many months, creating famine, a situation only exacerbated by its recent seizure of a crossing between Egypt and Rafah through which aid was being delivered.<\/p>\n

The ICC is a potentially more dangerous judicial mechanism for Israel than the ICJ.<\/p>\n

The World Court is likely to take years to reach a judgement on whether Israel has definitively committed a genocide in Gaza \u2013 possibly too late to save much of its population.<\/p>\n

The ICC, on the other hand, could potentially issue arrest warrants within days or weeks.<\/p>\n

And while the World Court has no real enforcement mechanisms, given that the US is certain to veto any UN Security Council resolution seeking to hold Israel to account, an ICC ruling would place an obligation on more than 120 states that have ratified its founding document, the Rome Statute, to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant should either step on their soil.<\/p>\n

That would make Europe and much of the world \u2013 though not the US \u2013 off-limits to both.<\/p>\n

And there is no reason for Israeli officials to assume that the ICC\u2019s investigations will finish with Netanyahu and Gallant. Over time, it could issue warrants for many more Israelis.<\/p>\n

As one Israeli official has noted<\/a>: \u201cThe ICC is a mechanism with teeth\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Antisemitic\u2019 court<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For that reason, Israel responded by going on the warpath, accusing<\/a> the court of being \u201cantisemitic\u201d and threatening to harm its officials.<\/p>\n

Washington appeared ready to add its muscle too.<\/p>\n

Asked at a Senate committee hearing whether he would support a Republican proposal to impose sanctions on the ICC, Antony Blinken, Biden\u2019s secretary of state, replied<\/a>: \u201cWe want to work with you on a bipartisan basis to find an appropriate response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Administration officials, speaking to the Financial Times, suggested<\/a> the measures under consideration \u201cwould target prosecutor Karim Khan and others involved in the investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n

US reprisals, according to the paper, would most likely be modelled on the sanctions imposed in 2020 by Donald Trump, Joe Biden\u2019s predecessor, after the ICC threatened to investigate both Israel and the US over war crimes, in the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan respectively.<\/p>\n

Then, the Trump administration accused<\/a> the ICC of \u201cfinancial corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels\u201d \u2013 allegations it never substantiated.<\/p>\n

Fatou Bensouda<\/a>, the chief prosecutor at the time, was denied entry<\/a> to the US, and Trump officials threatened to confiscate her and the ICC judges\u2019 assets and put them on trial. The administration also vowed to use force to liberate any Americans or Israelis who were arrested.<\/p>\n

Mike Pompeo, the then US secretary of state, averred<\/a> that Washington was \u201cdetermined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in by this corrupt ICC\u201d.<\/p>\n

Covert war on ICC<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In fact, a joint investigation<\/a> by the Israeli website 972 and the British Guardian newspaper revealed this week that Israel \u2013 apparently with US support \u2013 has been running a covert war against the ICC for the best part of a decade.<\/p>\n

Its offensive began after Palestine became a contracting party to the ICC in 2015, and intensified after Bensouda, Khan\u2019s predecessor, started a preliminary investigation into Israeli war crimes \u2013 both Israel\u2019s repeated attacks on Gaza and its building of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their lands.<\/p>\n

Bensouda found herself and her family threatened, and her husband blackmailed. The head of Israel\u2019s Mossad spy agency, Yossi Cohen, became personally involved in the campaign of intimidation. An official briefed on Cohen\u2019s behaviour likened it to \u201cstalking\u201d. The Mossad chief ambushed<\/a> Bensouda on at least one occasion in an attempt to recruit her to Israel\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

Cohen, who is known to be close to Netanyahu, reportedly told<\/a> her: \u201cYou should help us and let us take care of you. You don\u2019t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel has also been running a sophisticated spying operation on the court, hacking its database to read emails and documents. It has tried to recruit ICC staff to spy on the court from within. There are suspicions at the ICC that Israel has been successful.<\/p>\n

Because Israel oversees access to the occupied territories, it has been able to ban ICC officials from investigating its war crimes directly. That has meant, given its control of the telecommunications systems in the territories, that it has been able to monitor all conversations between the ICC and Palestinians reporting atrocities.<\/p>\n

As a result, Israel has sought to close down<\/a> Palestinian legal and human rights groups by designating them as \u201cterrorist organisations\u201d.<\/p>\n

The surveillance of the ICC has continued during Khan\u2019s tenure \u2013 and it is the reason Israel knew the arrest warrants were coming. According to sources that spoke to the Guardian and 972 website, the court came under \u201ctremendous pressure from the United States\u201d not to proceed with the warrants.<\/p>\n

Khan has pointed out that interference in the court\u2019s activities is a criminal offence. More publicly, a group of senior US Republican senators sent a threatening letter<\/a> to Khan: \u201cTarget Israel and we will target you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khan himself has noted<\/a> that he has faced a campaign of intimidation and has warned that, if the interference continues, \u201cmy office will not hesitate to act\u201d.<\/p>\n

The question is how much of this is bravado, and how much is it affecting Khan and the ICC\u2019s judges, making them wary of pursuing their investigation, expediting it or expanding it to more Israeli war crimes suspects.<\/p>\n

Legal noose<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Despite the intimidation, the legal noose is quickly tightening around Israel\u2019s neck. It has become impossible for the world\u2019s highest judicial authorities to ignore Israel\u2019s eight-month slaughter in Gaza and near-complete destruction of its infrastructure, from schools and hospitals to aid compounds and bakeries.<\/p>\n

Many tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been killed, maimed and orphaned in the rampage, and hundreds of thousands more are being gradually starved to death by Israel\u2019s aid blockade.<\/p>\n

The role of the World Court and the War Crimes Court are precisely to halt atrocities and genocides before it is too late.<\/p>\n

There is an obligation on the world\u2019s most powerful states \u2013 especially the world\u2019s superpower-in-chief, the United States, which so often claims the status of \u201cglobal policeman\u201d \u2013 to help enforce such rulings.<\/p>\n

Should Israel continue to ignore the ICJ\u2019s demand that it end its attack on Rafah, as seems certain, the UN Security Council would be expected to pass a resolution to enforce the decision.<\/p>\n

That could range from, at a minimum, an arms embargo and economic sanctions on Israel to imposing no-fly zones over Gaza or even sending in a UN peacekeeping force.<\/p>\n

Washington has shown it can act when it wishes to. Even though the US is one of a minority of states not a party to the Rome Statute, it has vigorously supported the arrest warrant<\/a> issued by the ICC against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in 2023.<\/p>\n

The US and its allies have imposed economic sanctions on Moscow, and supplied Ukraine with endless weapons to fight off the Russian invasion. There is evidence, too, that the US has been waging covert military operations targeting Russia, most likely including blowing up<\/a> the Nordstream pipelines supplying Russian gas to Europe.<\/p>\n

\n

The media\u2019s Nord Stream lies just keep coming.<\/p>\n

Why do billionaires and governments scramble to control the media? Because the power over our minds is the greatest power there is.<\/p>\n

My latest: https:\/\/t.co\/QIUFPKYeZe<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/UdB5DtpxyK<\/a><\/p>\n

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 14, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n