"A Modern 'Dreyfus' Trial" Israel vs the ICC

"[The International Criminal Court] issued warrants of arrest for two individuals, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr. Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest."

"Each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts."

"[There were also] reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bear responsibility for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population."

ICC Pre-Trial Chamber 1

"It's a geopolitical bombshell."

"It's the first time the court has issued arrest warrants against a western country and also the first time that they are issuing arrest warrants when there's no jurisdiction in the case, but they've invented it for themselves."

"Outrageous."

NGO Monitor legal adviser Anne Herzberg

Nir Elias/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

 

The ICC tribunal in The Hague announced its decision to issue warrants for the arrest of Israel's prime minister and its then-minister of defence, citing its finding of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In so doing, it echoes the accusations of Muslim governments as well as the belief of many of Israel's so-called allies, Western democracies. The ruling has brought great joy and celebration to the very terrorist groups that conspired to launch a savage attack on Israeli civilians that resulted in the mass murder of over 1,200 Israelis, the wounding of far greater numbers, the rape of girls and women, sadistic torture and mutilation, and the hostage-taking of 250 children, elderly, women and men.

From its very modern foundation, the Jewish State, like no other on Earth, has been attacked ceaselessly, first by its neighbouring nations, and more latterly by terrorist groups funded, formed and patronized by those neighbours. The relentless attacks culminated in the October 7, 2023 incursion of thousands of Palestinian terrorists, led by Hamas with a deliberate plan to commit unthinkable atrocities. There is no country in this world that would not respond with force and determination to end, once and for all, the unendurable attacks targeting its people.

Yet because the terrorist groups in their psychotic hatred have no compunction in sacrificing their own citizens in what they view as the greater goal of destroying Israel and its people, the construct of a nation in its own defence committing a counter-attack that results in mass collateral damage, despite care taken to avoid victimizing innocent civilians during a theatre of war, elicits condemnation by the international community which has never suffered constant, unstoppable violent threats to their security, holding Israel to an impossible standard no other nation could or would endure.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan whose forceful prosecution of the Jewish State as having overstepped the boundaries permitted it by international consensus in reacting to terrorism directed toward it, with the very same terrorist groups vowing never to stop, to continue assaulting the state and its people with the same intensity and savagery until their goal of  utter destruction has been completed, reached a decision that was predictable, given the animus directed toward Israel. Telling enough that Khan is himself Muslim, and a committed proselytizer for Islam.

 

97 hostages kidnapped in Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack are still being held in Gaza  Reuters

 

Israel, like other countries such as the United States (China and Russia as well; the 3 of 5 members of the UN Security Council that have never signed on to the ICC), nor did India -- sign on to the ICC. The ICC has no jurisdiction in those countries, unless a country that did sign on files against them, as well as the fact that if a country has the means and determination with an independent judiciary to conduct its own investigation and come to a conclusion, that would negate the ICC's move to investigate' a condition that Israel fulfills. In this instance, it was 'Palestine' which is not a state and therefore ineligible, that the ICC cited, giving them the 'authority' to investigate. A complete and utter sham.

The Hague chose to reject Jerusalem's challenges with respect to jurisdiction with the claim that the court exercises its authority based on the Palestinian Authority's membership. A membership in and of itself absurd, absent sovereign country status. Allowing the PA membership in the body represents an absurdity, but one with an illegal, immoral and defined purpose. Israel chose not to be a signatory to the Rome Statute which established the court. Yet "Palestine" was inducted as a signatory though no such state exists under international law.

 

It is not Benjamin Netayahu and Yoav Gallant that have been singled out for international censure; their names merely symbolic to the greater target of satanizing Israel itself, and by extension Jews, wherever they live; in Israel or throughout the diaspora. The situation is a deliberate diminishment of Jews having the right to self-defence, either as a nation, or as a people. This is a malign, institutionalized assault demanding respect for a corrupted UN body that purports to dispense justice. 

Today, on 21 November 2024, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (‘Court’), in its composition for the Situation in the State of Palestine, unanimously issued two decisions rejecting challenges by the State of Israel (‘Israel’) brought under articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute (the ‘Statute’). It also issued warrants of arrest for Mr Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Yoav Gallant. ICC

"Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the International Criminal Court, a biased and discriminatory political body."

"The decision to issue an arrest warrant against the prime minister was made by a corrupt chief prosecutor who is trying to save himself from sexual harassment accusations and biased judges who are motivated by antisemitic hatred of Israel."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office

Keeping Civilians Out of Harm's Way

Bipartisan candlelight vigil with members of Congress to commemorate one month since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel  (Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

"The human tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza is heart-wrenching, especially the suffering we see in and around the Al Shifa Hospital."

"I have been clear that the price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. Even wars have rules."

"[Hamas needs to stop using Palestinians as human shields and release all hostages] immediately and unconditionally."

"[The violence urgently needs to stop] so that Palestinians can get access to life-saving medical services, food, fuel and water, so that all hostages can be released, so that all Canadians and other nationals can leave Gaza."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

"@Justin Trudeau...It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust."

"While Israel ls doing everything to keep civilians out of harm's way, Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm's way. Israel provides civilians in Gaza humanitarian corridors and safe zones, Hamas prevents them from leaving at gunpoint."

"It is Hamas not Israel that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime -- targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attend a ceremony in Paris on November 11, 2018 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War. Photo by Francois Mori/AFP/Getty Images/File

The problem here is that it is the Israeli prime minister who is facing a dilemma; wholly invested in ensuring that Hamas will never again be capable of slaughtering Israelis because they are Jews, while at the same time Israeli forces are responding to the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel, aggressively searching out the terrorist Hamas operatives in their densest most civilian-occupied areas, primarily Gaza City, while care is observed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

Even while the Israel Defense Forces have been dispatched to Gaza to rout out the terrorists, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have never stopped bombarding Israel with rockets, aimed at Israel's civilian population. When Israel warned Gazans to move south in the event of the IDF entering the northern regions of the Strip, Hamas ordered its civilians to remain where they were -- to be defiant -- but the agenda really was to continue their role as sacrificial martyrs to the Hamas death-cult imposed on Israel.

Netanyahu's rebuke of a democratic colleague who has never faced such a dilemma offering suggestions that appear to equate the legitimacy of a military fully involved in securing the safety of civilians while engaged in an existential battle for security for its population -- with the actions of a terrorist group that precipitated the war. Trudeau has shown himself time and again prepared to assume the worst of Israel, taking the word of Hamas, an organization listed on Canada's own terrorist list, over that of the Israeli authorities.

In repeating the Hamas mantra of Israel committing genocide by killing women, children and babies, Trudeau has selected terrorist propaganda over the concerns of a Western liberal democracy doing all it can under the circumstances to ensure that women, children and babies are as safe from harm as can be possible in a war situation where they are abused as human shields. Israel has carefully and selectively entered parts of Gaza's hospitals in its search for Hamas operatives in the knowledge that the terrorists use hospitals as covers.

Hamas command centres are set up in and under hospitals, a reality that both Hamas and the medical staff at Shifa Hospital deny. Urging "maximum restraint" upon Israel expresses a total lack of understanding of the situation and the care taken to exercise just that. War was mounted in the wake of a vicious surprise attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli communities bordering on Gaza, where an estimated 1,200 mostly civilians were subjected to mutilation and murder; women raped, children killed in their homes alongside their parents.

Trudeau's foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, terming the situation unacceptable, mimicked the concerns of her political governing leader: "Civilians must be protected and enough food, fuel and water must get into Gaza so that [the UN's] life-saving work can continue"; an obvious concern to Israel, grappling with the humanitarian crisis that it did not create of its singular volition. And while Trudeau stopped short of calling for a 'ceasefire', his foreign deputy went considerably further.

It was her considered recommendation that Israel sit down with Hamas and Qatar to discuss a cessation of 'hostilities', a return of the hostages and everyone will be reconciled. In the face of the atrocities committed by Hamas, in the reality of Qatar harbouring Hamas leaders, and funding its operations, precisely who is it that this woman is recommending that Israel trust and bargain with?

Hamas terrorists move Israeli hostages down a street in Be’eri, a kibbutz in southern Israel, video posted to X shows

(Photo: Screenshot)