The ridiculous ICC arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu

Political posturing

On/around the day the ICC prosecutor was seeking the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu — for so-called war crimes in Gaza; the UN Security Council had a minute’s silence for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi — the "Butcher of Tehran". The hypocrisy of these global organisations can sometimes be laughable. 

At any rate, the ICC prosecutor’s decision to apply for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu is a political gesture.

Who is going to take Netanyahu to court?

1. The Israelis — like India, Russia, US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China — don’t recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction. They didn’t sign any treaty & don’t recognise its authority.
2. Palestine is not recognised as a sovereign state. And under the ICC, the Palestinians must arrest anyone indicted by the ICC. The Palestinians couldn’t have expected this. Their political ambition, on joining, was not “suing” the Israelis. They never expected the ICC to indict the top leadership of Hamas also. Are the Palestinians ever going to arrest them? Never. 

If the ICC judges were to grant an arrest warrant to a democratically-elected official (a first by the ICC, if not mistaken); it would be implying a moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and Hamas and an inherent “guilt” on the state of Israel as a whole (as implied by the meaning of a “representative democracy” and the “will of the people”).

No warrants issued against anyone for the slaughter of 300,000+ innocent civilians in Syria. Where is the justice there?

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Israelis are defending their nation, there is no equivalence

It is anti-Jewish to compare these Hamas terrorists to the Israeli PM and his defense minister.

The ICC judges must reject this application. Hamas is guilty of the worst and severest of war crimes — while Israel is acting in self-defence. It is Israel which takes precautions to limit the number of civilian casualties. It is Israel that draws distinctions between military and civilian; and Israel which owns up to her mistakes.

The ICC should NOT draw some misplaced equivalence between a democratic-state legitimately defending itself and a genocidal fascist terrorist organisation who perpetrated the awful attacks of Oct 7 (and continue to hold hostages) and committed to the destruction of that democratic state.

We should not forget that it was Hamas that attacked Israel in October. They killed, injured and kidnapped thousands of innocent people.

It is outrageous to suggest that Israel is using starvation against civilians as a means of warfare, or intentionally directing attacks against civilian populations, or committing other crimes against humanity. It is a gross misrepresentation of a justifiable battle against very dangerous terrorists.

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The improper legal basis for the ICC arrest warrant

Former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler gave an interview with The Times of Israel and said:

• “One of Cotler’s key criticisms is that Khan appears to have paid scant regard to a foundational principle of the ICC — that it is a court of last resort, meaning that a state with an independent judiciary that is willing and able to hold senior officials to account for crimes under the ICC’s jurisdiction must be given the opportunity to exercise that authority ...”
• “Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara herself has strongly criticized Khan, accusing him of ignoring Israeli judicial independence and the legal review of potential criminal misconduct currently underway, ignoring the review of petitions against the government’s humanitarian aid policy currently before the High Court of Justice, and failing to give the Israeli legal system sufficient time and opportunity to complete these processes.”
• Israeli officials were preparing to host ICC officials on the very day Khan announced his request for arrest warrants in order to plan an official visit by the prosecutor himself ... During Khan’s visit, he would have met with Israeli officials to better understand the judicial and legal oversight over the conduct of the war against Hamas, including Israeli policy on humanitarian aid to Gaza, a key issue behind his allegations that Israel is intentionally starving Gazans. Moreover, Cotler pointed out, the prosecutor has himself recently embarked on such a cooperative path with Venezuela.
• “I find this asymmetry and false moral equivalence [with the Hamas leaders] incomprehensible,” he continued. “The very issuance of arrest warrants criminalizes Israel and singles its leaders out for opprobrium and indictment in the international arena.