ICC warrants lay groundwork to indict others, including US leaders

Experts say the United States mounted immense pressure, deployed both cajolery and threats, but the judges refused to yield in light of damning evidence of war crimes in Gaza.

ZEYNEP CONKAR
TRT/AA


AFP

The ICC's arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant are the first-ever arrest warrants issued against a serving leader of a state that is closely aligned with Western powers. / Photo: AFP


The International Criminal Court's (ICC) landmark issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has finally set the wheels in motion, laying the groundwork for other Israeli military leaders and politicians responsible for the mass slaughter of Palestinians to be tried for their crimes.


It’s the first-ever arrest warrant issued against a serving leader of a state that is closely aligned with Western powers.


“The evidence of their guilt in war crimes and genocide has always been undeniable. But the evidence was so overwhelming that despite facing immense pressure and threats from the US, these judges made the decision to issue the arrest warrants anyway,” Ashish Prashar, ex-advisor to UK's Middle East peace envoy, tells TRT World.


The ICC warrants reflect the dismantling of the “Western-built wall of impunity” shielding Israel’s leadership, Prashar adds.


Nations bound by the Rome Statute or ICC Act can now prosecute individuals with universal jurisdiction—including political leaders and military personnel—domestically for aiding in genocide or crimes against humanity.


Universal Jurisdiction is a principle in international law that allows a state or international body to prosecute individuals for serious crimes – such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity – regardless of where the crime was committed, the nationality of the accused, or the victims.


“This opens up the door for other nations to act, not just against Israeli officials but also individuals and corporations complicit in these crimes,” Prashar says.


“It’s not just about Netanyahu and Gallant anymore. This could extend to soldiers, officials, and even corporate executives as well as companies who have supplied arms or resources that facilitated war crimes.”


The warrants create a pathway for lawsuits against corporations involved in supplying weapons or equipment in breach of international law, potentially exposing executives to serious legal risks for complicity in genocide or crimes against humanity, according to Prashar.

A fully isolated pariah state


The ICC court trial against Netanyahu and Gallant created a lot of buzz since the start of the proceedings on May 20, battering Israel's international reputation.


Several European countries, including Spain, Ireland, France, and the Netherlands, have indicated to honour the ICC’s decision, signalling a substantial shift in diplomatic dynamics.


For Netanyahu and Gallant, the repercussions are profound. All 124 signatory countries to the Rome Statute are now legally obligated to arrest and transfer them to the ICC if they enter their respective territories. These nations include some of Israel’s closest allies, such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.


While neither Israel nor the US are members of the ICC, the court’s jurisdiction extends to crimes committed on the territory of member states or by nationals of member countries.


Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute in 2015 and in 2021 it was recognised as a state by the ICC, extending the ICC’s jurisdiction to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.


Other European nations off-limits for Israeli leaders include Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Portugal, and Poland, among others.



A new era of accountability

The US, which claims to be the champion of “defending the international rules based order”, rejected the ICC’s landmark decision, dismissing it as a “rushed and troubling” process.
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The US isn’t just protecting Israel by rebuffing the ICC rule, but it’s trying to protect itself because it’s equally complicit in crimes against Palestinians.


Prashar asserts that the US isn’t just protecting Israel by rebuffing the ICC rule, but it’s trying to protect itself because it’s equally complicit in crimes against Palestinians.

“By supplying the weapons and providing political cover for these atrocities, Washington has deeply implicated itself in these crimes. America’s hands are stained with blood—not only for enabling Israel’s actions but for blocking ceasefires that nearly every other nation has demanded,” Prashar says.

According to Article 3 of the 1948 Genocide Convention, the ongoing financial and military support provided by the US to Israel makes it complicit in genocide, thereby exposing it to potential lawsuits at the ICJ.



“So when the US is condemning all this and saying it's outrageous, you have to remember they're protecting themselves as much as they're protecting Israel,” says Prashar.


The ICC’s warrants have also driven a wedge between the US and some of its European allies. With several European nations showing signs to honour the court’s decisions, the ground for virtue signalling by the US and Israel is shrinking.


“From my perspective, one thing is definitely certain. The world just got a lot smaller for Israeli war criminals,” Prashar says.



Zeynep Conkar
Zeynep Conkar is a deputy producer at TRT World.
@zeyneepconkar

Attacks on ancient church part of a deliberate assault on Gaza’s heritage

Nour Khalil Khattab The Electronic Intifada 23 November 2024
Palestinians celebrate Orthodox Easter in Saint Porphyrius church in Gaza CIty in 2022. Israel has bombed the church, one of the oldest in the world, repeatedly since last October. Ashraf AmraAPA images

Over the past year, Israel has repeatedly targeted historical and cultural landmarks in the Gaza Strip in what appears a deliberate attempt at erasing Gaza’s rich heritage.

The Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, named after the first bishop of Gaza who is said to be buried in the courtyard, was bombed soon after the Israeli military attacks began in October 2023.

I visited this church in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood of the old city of Gaza in years past and always marveled at its tall stained-glass windows, which reflected the light in a way that can only be described as inducing a sense of spirituality.

The windows are adorned with religious depictions of saints and scenes from the Bible and with icons illustrating the ancient and modern history of Gaza.

The church dates back to the 5th century and is one of the oldest in the world. It boasts traditional Byzantine architecture consisting of a square structure with a domed roof. At its center is an apse topped by a large dome with a cross.

The church is an integral part of the religious fabric of Gaza. It has served as a center for worship and reflection, a beacon of hope amid so much chaos for the Christian community.

During the current Israeli genocide, hundreds of Palestinians from various faiths have sought refuge within its this stone walls. That has not stopped Israel’s military from attacking the church, however, and the church has sustained heavy damage, including the destruction of many relics and artifacts that date back more than 1,500 years.
Targeting Gaza’s cultural heritage

I believe that the targeting of the church was not accidental. I believe it is part of Israel’s genocidal violence, a deliberate attack on the identity of an entire community.

The Church of Saint Porphyrius has been more than just a place of worship and a house of prayer. It has been a central hub for Gaza’s small Christian community and has borne witness to a rich history of diverse civilizations that have come and gone over the last 16 centuries.

In modern times, the church was a gathering place for people of different faiths, building bridges between Christians and Muslims, and fostering unity among Gaza’s inhabitants. It has hosted local celebrations and events for both religious and social activities.

The destruction of cultural and historical treasures is a profound loss not only to Palestinians in Gaza but to humanity itself. Every missing stone, every lost manuscript, every shattered window is an erasure of a piece of the collective memory of our common humanity. History is being erased from the hearts and souls of people.

The Israeli assaults have not been limited to Christian landmarks, of course. According to local authorities Israel has bombed 79 percent of all mosques in the territory. Museums and cultural centers have also been targeted.

There was al-Bashir Mosque in Deir al-Balah, which stood in the middle of a residential block, and was obliterated in April along with the entire neighborhood, leaving behind numerous dead and injured people.

Al-Qarara Cultural Museum in Khan Younis was destroyed, as was the Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza. The list is long and suggests a deliberate targeting of Gaza’s cultural heritage.

“The crime of targeting and destroying archaeological sites should spur the world and UNESCO into action to preserve this great civilisational and cultural heritage,” Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement after the Great Omari Mosque was nearly completely destroyed in an Israeli air strike on 8 December.

The Omari mosque, 1,400 years old and one of the largest in Gaza City, had historical significance dating back to the early Islamic period. Only its minaret has been left intact.
Preservation

The loss of such irreplaceable treasures – whether ancient artifacts, historical landmarks or cultural centers – represents more than just the destruction of objects. It’s an erosion of humanity’s shared identity, history and values. These treasures tell stories of who we are, where we’ve come from, and the lessons we’ve learned.

The preservation of these symbols is not merely a local responsibility; it is a global duty that demands immediate action before the remnants of our shared history fade beyond recovery.

The ruins of these sacred spaces and the artifacts they housed is more than just a material loss. The items being destroyed are pieces of a shared global heritage, which tells the stories of civilizations, of faith, of the human spirit’s endurance across centuries. When such landmarks are obliterated, a part of the entire human story is silenced forever.

The Church of Saint Porphyrius, along with countless other cultural and religious treasures in Gaza, may stand in ruins today, but they also stand as a testament to the unshakable spirit of a people who refuses to be erased.

It is incumbent upon the international community to acknowledge this cultural vandalism for what it is – an attack on the collective memory of humanity.

Without action, the sands of time will cover the remnants of these monuments, and future generations will be left to wonder what stories were lost, or, worse, remain in unconscious ignorance that they ever existed.

Now more than ever, we must act to preserve the heritage that defines us, before it is wiped from the face of the earth.

Nour Khalil Khattab is a journalist and translator in Gaza.

Book Review: The answer to what comes after Zionism may lie in what came before it

What comes after the supremacism and apartheid of Zionism? Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s substantial new work, The Jewellers of the Ummah: A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World, looks to dormant histories for visions of justice and repair.

By Guy Mannes-Abbott 

 November 24, 2024 
MONDOWEISS

A found colonial photo album. Note that the caption “Jewish types” has been corrected to “Arab types.”

THE JEWELERS OF THE UMMAH
A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World
by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
656 pp. Verso, $44.95

While Benjamin Netanyahu and his ‘Western’ allies flirt with mortifying visions of what might come after their year-long genocidal campaign in Gaza, any such talk is overridden and encompassed by the real questions. What comes after ethnic cleansing, dispossession and displacement, supremacism and apartheid, topped by the mostly widely and minutely witnessed genocide in human history? That is; what comes after the Zionist state of Israel as presently constituted? How do we think it and bring it into being?

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s previous book, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (2019) was both a guide and radical challenge to common if not equitably distributed perils as the post-1492 world breaks down along-with its climatic regime. In this equally substantial new work, The Jewellers of the Ummah subtitled A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World, the author, burgeoning jeweller and Brown University academic offers propositional responses to directly and indirectly related questions of after by looking harder at before to recognise, recover, and reconfigure dormant histories and immanent qualities of justice and repair.

Azoulay explains that the scope and locus of these questions and the before has shifted for her: “For years I felt defined by one imperial project, that of the colonisation of Palestine. But suddenly, my feelings were transposed onto another: the French conquest of Algeria in 1830” (p. 421). The turning point and key to this new work and a parallel sense of potentially rooted self was the discovery of the “Jewish Muslim name” given to Azoulay’s father’s mother Aïcha in 1895, one of many anti-colonial acts discovered and championed here. “Through these letters,” Azoulay writes, “I am trying to reconstruct a genealogy of those refusals” (p. 207).

Ultimately, it is this act of naming and self-naming that enables Azoulay to conclude, in her very particular and expansive sense, that: “Jewish liberation or decolonisation requires the recovery of a Jewish Muslim world” in north Africa and beyond (p. 267). A world ignored, erased and vilified through French and Israeli colonisations but embodied in a ‘before’ not of the conventional historians’ past but the eruptive, resistant realms of human entanglements, interdependencies and collectivities carried by objects crafted, treasured, growing, archived, remembered and re-conjured here in the mode of critical fabulation that Azoulay extends for her purpose.

Azoulay has defined the unlearning of Imperialism through potential histories as “the transformation of violence into shared care for our common world” (2019:57), while insisting that it is “not an attempt to tell the violence alone, but rather an onto-epistemic refusal to recognise as irreversible its outcome and the categories, statuses, and forms under which it materialises” (ibid:286). She approaches the Jewish Muslim common world activated here with painstaking care in the form of sixteen letters to her family; mother, father, great grandmothers and her own children, as well as key intellectual figures; Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Silvia Wynter and Ghassan Kanafani.

Supplementing these ancestral connections and significant cultural figures are letters to a Madam Cohen who “used the museum to address us” with photographs she deposited in Paris in the 1980s (pps. 368 & 400). Azoulay adopts her ambiguous images as a radical conduit to the intermingled milieu of the old city labyrinth of interconnected structures and the “derb lihoud [or] Jewish neighbourhood” in Oran, Algeria (p. 367). Oran was the biggest port in the Mediterranean, birthplace of Hélène Cixous and second city to Algiers, birthplace of Jacques Derrida, who owned his “Judeo-Franco-Maghrebian genealogy” but wrote of “dwelling” in monolingual French (Salmon, 2020:21 & Derrida, 1998:1). Azoulay leans into her Maghreb further by writing to activists, authors and historians in and of Algeria about craft worlds, decolonising practices and their complex kinship.

The first letter in the book, to her father Roger Lucien Azoulay born in Oran in 1923, establishes the confiding tone that grants this conceptual project its affectivity. Azoulay writes to the person she knew and the one/s she didn’t, now armed with more life, context and understanding than was transmitted to her. This is an “impossible story” (Hartman, 2008:10), which generates “ongoing, unfinished and provisional’ outcomes” (ibid:14). The intimacy of the epistolary form is a cunning response to this impossibility; incorporating plaintive appeals, revisiting lived experience, reflecting over experiential time and with the benefit of archival resource. It allows Azoulay to address this, for example; “I want to understand what I failed to understand about you from ‘your pains’ to ‘your world’” (p. 41), and this; “Why couldn’t Algeria have been a source of bliss, rather than something to repress?” (p. 44)

The thing that was most tangibly repressed was that “our ancestors were Arabs, Amazighs [Berber], and Muslims, as well as Jews,” after dwelling in multilingual Algeria for millennia (p. 52). Azoulay has been “trying to glean those belonging rights we lost, which pre-existed the imperial regime rights written in documents” (p. 67). “Abba, craft was who we were in the Maghreb … and I inherited your sensibility, that of a bricoleur” (p. 62). Since the dawn of Islam, “Jews in the Maghreb had been those who dealt with precious metals… jewels… coins… amulets” (p. 302), “in the cities as well as in the country” (p. 251). Jews, she writes, “were trusted with huge quantities of gold” (p. 303), in a “world they shared with others, notably the Muslim ummah” (p. 15). This liberated world of craft guilds is symbolised in the production of gold threads, which required “one Jew and one Muslim” to sit on each side of the same bench (p. 389).

Roger Azoulay severed himself from all of this in his attempt to pass as a Frenchman literally. He was a radio technician, incarcerated by the lingering Vichy regime in Algeria, drafted in to the French army on liberation, fought in Europe and volunteered for a year in the Israeli Army, where he met his wife and stayed, opening a store selling audio gear and records, making and repairing objects, dying there in 2012. Azoulay writes of the dismissive categorisation of him by European Jews in the new “colony” as a north African Jew or mizrahim, of his hatred for Israel and love for Radio Monte Carlo, which she belatedly discovered had broadcast both in French and Arabic, allowing him to “inhabit the Jewish Muslim world that he never had any intention of leaving” (p. 503).

Algeria was colonised by the French in 1830, when 13 synagogues were destroyed in Algiers alone, they offered their subjects citizenship in 1865 and only 2-300 of 40,000 Jews took it up. In 1870 the Crémieux Decree, sixty six words that Azoulay calls a “document of cultural genocide” (p. 282), imposed citizenship on Algerian Jews and severed them from immersive lifeworlds. However, by the time the French had killed “four millions Algerians” (p. 302) and were forced to leave in 1962, “very few Algerian Jews [had] migrated to Palestine, and in 1962, less then 20 percent of the 150,000 Jews who were forced to leave Algeria opted for Israel” (p. 276). Azoulay concludes that “What disappeared was the world of which those who departed were once a part, and what was established with their departure was a world in which their departure was a non-event” (p. 21).

Azoulay’s letter to her mother Zahava Azoulay née Arie negotiates their explosive differences in life with loving care and exactitude. Zahava’s ancestors were Sephardim exiles from 15th century Spain, via Ottoman Bulgaria to Ottoman Jerusalem, bringing associated privileges of wealth and archived memory. Zahava was born in Palestine, becoming Israeli at 17 before embracing Zionism’s racialised hierarchies and exclusions in toto. Azoulay laments her mother’s refusal to transmit the intimacies of her grandmother’s Ladino tongue to her with touching force as she unearths Bulgarian rebels and Marrano traditions. She pleads with her mother and insists that “we are Palestinian Jews, Ima, not Israelis” (p. 543).

The longest letter addresses “my beloved children” over seventy pages of impassioned pleas to follow her in inhabiting “the world of our ancestors that imperialism wants us to believe is impossible to inhabit, and to make it part of my -our- continuous present” (p. 159). She writes about being “initiated into the imperial world” by French and Israeli identities offered by “a world formed against us” and their ancestors; “deprived of their wisdom, cosmology, spirituality, magic and ways of loving and being” (p. 161). Azoulay is at her strongest when she writes; “we also have the right to be with our ancestors and to be Jews of all sorts,” spurning the racism with which mizrahim is laden for a project that “absolved Europe of paying for the crimes committed against the bodies of our ancestors” (p. 166).

Azoulay’s letters to her paternal great grandmothers start with the least documentation but speculative weaving generates situated lifeworlds in which Julie Boumendil is formally classified as a maid, with family transported to Auschwitz, and a son -claimed by a father otherwise married- who later deserts the French Army to Azoulay’s delight. Marianne Cohen is the one that named her daughter Aïcha against her own parents’ embrace of colonial modernisation, a name shared with someone Azoulay’s father described as a third grandmother in what Azoulay identifies as a “polygamous family formation” (p. 444). Instinctively, Azoulay embraces this as “a form of extended family, a tribe, a non-state formation,” an anti-capitalist talisman that “we can … use to resist, together, our individualisation as citizens of empire” (p. 452).

In her letters to Fanon, Arendt and Wynter, Azoulay insistently reconfigures the “before” of her thrown forwards milieux. She challenges the colonial lens through which each approached the Algerian Jewish actualities that Azoulay has rewoven; asking Fanon why her ancestors would want to “pass” for white Europeans as he assumed “without recognising the violence involved in affiliating them with their colonisers” (p. 428). She refuses Arendt’s assumption about “Oriental Jews” who speak Hebrew but “look Arabic” being “closely linked to the mother country through their French brethren … unlike Muslim natives” (pps. 432 & 428). She rebukes Wynter for incorporating “the Jews’ into the Judeo-Christian tradition” (p. 428), an Imperial confection embodied in Zionism’s “answer” to the “Jewish Question” (p. 466).

One part of Azoulay’s “before” relates to the failure of Imperial actors to care for “Jews who survived the Holocaust” and help “rebuild their destroyed communities” (p. 467), but the other parts are about her being able to write to Marianne thus; “I am an Algerian Jew, and I’m proud to be your great-granddaughter, my dear umm Aïcha” (p. 537). This is the precise opposite of a claim to a state in north Africa! It is a call to make afresh worlds of declared interdependence and to re-distribute common cultural and other resources justly. We can do it; Azoulay shows us one way in which it is not only possible but necessary -not least in our urgent responses to ‘Gaza’.

References

Derrida. Jacques, Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1998:1

Hartman. Saidiya, Venus in Two Acts, Small Axe, Number 26 (Volume 12, Number 2), June 2008:10

Salmon. Peter, An Event, Perhaps, Verso, London, 2020:21

Inside Project Esther, the right wing action plan to take down the Palestine movement

The Heritage Foundation's "Project Esther" claims to combat antisemitism but in fact, aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade against all domestic dissent in the U.S.

By Mitchell Plitnick 

 November 22, 2024 
MONDOWEISS

The People’s Red Line march against genocide in Gaza in front of the White House in Washington D.C., on June 8, 2024 (Photo: Aseel Kabariti)

The Heritage Foundation got a lot of publicity during this election cycle for its infamous Project 2025. But that’s not the only project they intend to carry out now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House.

Project Esther is a new proposal from Heritage that claims to lay out a plan to combat antisemitism in the United States. In fact, it aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade to, ultimately, restrict activism against American policy of all sorts, foreign and domestic. .

It’s not a new enterprise, of course. Disingenuous accusations of antisemitism have been weaponized by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel for a century or more but Project Esther means to unify and coordinate the cynical use of the fight against real antisemitism in order to completely destroy the movement for Palestinian rights.

But that is only its initial ambition. As the full plan makes clear, the people who produced this scheme see it as the key to devastating movements against both American imperialism abroad and white supremacy domestically.

What is Project Esther?

The Project Esther document describes its purpose this way: “Named after the historic Jewish heroine who saved the Jews from genocide in ancient Persia, Project Esther provides a blueprint to counter antisemitism in the United States and ensure the security and prosperity of all Americans.”

It should raise concerns right away that the document treats the story of Esther as historical. Most biblical scholars agree that the story is apocryphal, or at best allegorical. Only the most puritanically fundamentalist approach to the Book of Esther would treat it as history.

The key strategy Project Esther proposes is to identify the Palestine solidarity movement as the “Hamas Support Network,” and organizations in the movement as “Hamas Support Organizations.”

This strategy carries two key effects. One is to discredit the Palestine solidarity movement and all the organizations within it by associating it with Hamas, an organization most of the American public identifies as nothing but a terrorist organization, based on decades of misrepresentations of the group and its goals.

The second aim is to attack the ability of organizations to function by casting them as supporters of terrorism, and specifically of an organization that has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. This would make it impossible for those organizations to legally raise money or complete legal business transactions.

Unsurprisingly, the “Hamas Support network” purportedly revolves around American Muslims for Palestine and prominently includes Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Completing the picture are funding organizations such as the Open Society Institute, Tides Foundation, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

This demonization of the movement combines with the conspiratorial thinking that permeates the entire world in 2025 to take aim at many common tactics of activism.

After laying out allegedly “sinister” exploitation of the “open society” the United States ostensibly has, Project Esther makes the mere use of press releases, social media posts, letters to and meetings with elected officials, and other common tools of activism sound illegitimate simply because Palestine solidarity activists are using them. Again, they do this simply by talking about these activities being conducted by “Hamas Supporting Organizations.”

After establishing this, they state, without evidence, “It should be obvious at this point even to the casual observer that there is an active cabal of Jew-haters, Israel-haters, and America-haters in Washington—all apparently aligned with the far left, progressive movement.”

A political witchhunt

Throughout the document, in addition to erasing the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the writers attempt to paint the movement as a threat not only to Israeli apartheid—which, of course, it is—but also to democracy in the United States.

The conspiracy that Project Esther tries to paint also reaches into the United States government. The document names Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Ayana Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Greg Casar, Andre Carson, Hank Johnson, Jan Schakowsky, Mark Pocan, Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders, Chris Van Hollen, and Elizabeth Warren as being part of or supporting the “Hamas Caucus.”

There is a lot to be read into who is on that list and who is not.

Anyone who follows Congress would immediately see that the range of Democrats listed is very wide. It includes some like Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman whose stances on Palestine have featured very prominently in their political images and stances.

But others on the list have been cautious about Palestine, sometimes standing for Palestinian rights, sometimes not, but even when they do, it has been with relatively little fanfare. That would include some like Jayapal and Casar, and even some like AOC and Pressley who have tried, on one hand to appease their left-wing base on Palestine but have generally been more cautious than Tlaib, Bowman, and Bush.

More telling though is the absence of any Republicans. Before Bernie Sanders’ current effort at passing a Joint Resolution of Disapproval on sales of certain arms to Israel, no senator has been more active in slowing, delaying, and questioning aid to Israel than Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

In the House, Rep. Thomas Massie routinely breaks with his party to vote against military aid and other bills related to Israel. Yet neither his name nor Paul’s appear in the Project Esther document.

If, as the authors claim, votes against Israel in Congress are forms of antisemitism, and Project Esther is all about going after antisemitism in the guise of anti-Israel resolutions, where are Massie and Paul in this document?

Their absence clearly reveals the game. The document also attacks outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom Project Esther says “called for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ouster for no apparent reason other than Netanyahu’s being on Israel’s political right.”

Schumer did make such a call and did so because he believed that Netanyahu was leading Israel down a disastrous path with his attempt at a judicial coup that threatened to strip away Israel’s thin veneer of democracy even within its 1948 borders. It wasn’t ideological, or even political; it was Schumer trying to save the apartheid state from itself, as he demonstrated shortly thereafter by attending Netanyahu’s despicable address to Congress.

Project Esther’s selective criticism shows its fundamental aim is certainly not to protect Jewish safety, and is politically broader than just the Palestine solidarity movement it targets.

Return to McCarthyism

Project Esther wants to pull out all the stops in its attempt to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement.

Its initial focus is very squarely on the academy, where the document makes clear it hopes to establish a new standard in universities and lower-level schools that treat critical examination of both Israel and the United States as unacceptable. So most of its first tactics revolve around many of the efforts we’ve already seen in universities, twisting existing anti-discrimination laws to defend Israel, using “naming and shaming” and doxing tactics, lawfare, and, of course, congressional activism.

But Project Esther seeks to expand on this, and it goes to great lengths to try to equate the growing movement in support of Palestinian rights with the rise of pro-Nazi elements in the United States prior to World War II.

They note how, in response to the rise of the pro-Nazi Bund in the U.S., various elements came together to fight them. These included organized crime figures from the so-called “Jewish gangland,” as they note, “Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Abner “Longy” Zwillman, and Meyer “Mickey” Cohen—sometimes at the behest of their rabbis—happily coordinated “less than kosher” activities, pro bono, to disrupt and thwart the Bund.” That partnership with organized crime echoes Donald Trump’s own association with vigilante racist groups like the Proud Boys.

They further cite the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committees (HUAC) as a key element in the fight against both support for Nazism and Communism. “New York Democratic Congressman Samuel Dickstein, a Lithuanian-born Jew, worked with Texas Congressman Martin Dies to establish the House of Representatives’ Special Committee on Un-American Activities, also known as the Dies Committee, charged with uncovering Nazi and Communist activities inside the United States.”

The Dies Committee became HUAC in 1945 when it became a standing House committee, and it went on to commit some of the worst violations against civil rights in the United States of the 20th century.

This is what Project Esther would re-create if given the opportunity. And they are well aware that they have the opportunity right now. Written with Joe Biden still in office, and with too many Democrats doing their part to help create fertile ground for this plot, Project Esther states, “Our hope is that this effort will represent an opportunity for public–private partnership when a willing Administration occupies the White House.” That willing administration will arrive on January 20.

It only starts with Palestine solidarity

Speaking with Zeteo, Professor Joseph Howley of Columbia University, an anti-Zionist Jew, said, “[F]ar-right Zionist hegemonists have wanted for years to make being an anti-Zionist or non-Zionist or Israel-critical Jew illegal. This year they’ve succeeded in getting universities to make it policy …. Now they want to make it federal law.”

Once that is accomplished though, the aim is clearly against all possible dissent.

Jewish Voice for Peace’s executive director Stefanie Fox told Zeteo, ““It has never been clearer that defending Palestinian solidarity organizing is one of the most critical frontlines of democracy defense today… this McCarthyite initiative is led by Christian Nationalists, who directly threaten the safety and freedom of all marginalized people, including BIPOC peoples, religious minorities, queer people and women.”

Fox is right, and it goes even further. Project Esther intends to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step toward crushing dissent of all kinds against white supremacy within the United States and American military and imperial hegemony internationally. There is a very narrow band of people who will be safe from this effort if it’s not stopped.

Key UN committee adopts resolution paving the way for a first-ever treaty on crimes against humanity

FILE - Exterior view of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, on April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

AP
November 23, 202406:04

The International Criminal Court was established to punish major perpetrators of war crimes

ICC has 124 countries that are parties to it

UNITED NATIONS: A key UN General Assembly committee adopted a resolution late Friday paving the way for negotiations on a first-ever treaty on preventing and punishing crimes against humanity after Russia dropped amendments that would have derailed the effort.

The resolution was approved by consensus by the assembly’s legal committee, which includes all 193-member UN nations, after tense last-minute negotiations between its supporters and Russia that dragged through the day.

There was loud applause when the chairman of the committee gaveled the resolution’s approval. It is virtually certain to be adopted when the General Assembly puts it to a final vote on Dec. 4.

“Today’s agreement to start up negotiations on a much-needed international treaty is a historic achievement that was a long time coming,” Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch’s senior legal adviser for advocacy, told The Associated Press.
“It sends a crucial message that impunity for the kinds of crimes inflicted on civilians in Ethiopia, Sudan, Ukraine, southern Israel, Gaza and Myanmar will not go unheeded,” he said.

The resolution calls for a time-bound process with preparatory sessions in 2026 and 2027, and three-week negotiating sessions in 2028 and 2029 to finalize a treaty on crimes against humanity.

Dicker said Russia’s proposed amendments left in question whether treaty negotiations would have been completed.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Maria Zabolotskaya said Russia withdrew the amendments “in a spirit of compromise.” But she said Russia “dissociates itself from consensus.”

“This, of course, does not mean that we are not ready to work on this crucial convention,” Zabolotskaya told the committee.

The International Criminal Court was established to punish major perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and it has 124 countries that are parties to it. The ICC says crimes against humanity are committed as part of a large-scale attack on civilians and it lists 15 forms including murder, rape, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, sexual slavery, torture and deportation.

But the ICC does not have jurisdiction over nearly 70 other countries.
There are global treaties that cover war crimes, genocide and torture — but there has been no specific treaty addressing crimes against humanity. And according to sponsors of the resolution, led by Mexico and Gambia and backed by 96 other countries, a new treaty will fill the gap.

Kelly Adams, legal adviser at the Global Justice Center, also called the resolution “a historic breakthrough” after many delays.

Pointing to “the proliferation of crimes against humanity around the world,” she expressed hope that a treaty will be “strong, progressive and survivor-centric.”
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard expressed disappointment that the timeline had been extended until 2029, but said, “What’s important is that this process will deliver a viable convention.”

“It is long overdue and all the more welcome at a time when too many states are intent on wrecking international law and universal standards,” she said. “It is a clear sign that states are ready to reinforce the international justice framework and clamp down on safe havens from investigation and prosecution for perpetrators of these heinous crimes.”
After the resolution’s adoption, Gambia’s Counselor Amadou Jaiteh, who had introduced it hours earlier, called its approval “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference,” to hope for a world without crimes against humanity, “and a world where voices of victims are heard louder than their perpetrators.”

Israel names Netanyahu ally and (ILLEGAL)  settler as US ambassador

Yechiel Leiter, an ally to Netanyahu and a member of his Likud party, has been named as Israel ambassador to the US.

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
24 November, 2024

Yechiel Leiter's nomination as Israeli ambassador to US, comes weeks after pro-Israel Mike Huckabee's appointment [Getty/file photo]

The Israeli government said Sunday it had approved the nomination of Yechiel Leiter, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the ICC in connection to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, as the country's ambassador to the United States.

The announcement comes after US President-elect Donald Trump named hard-line conservative Mike Huckabee as his choice for US ambassador to Israel under his incoming administration.

"The government has unanimously approved the appointment of Dr Yechiel Leiter as ambassador to the United States," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

A former adviser to Netanyahu, Leiter, 65, is originally from the United States and currently lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory are considered illegal under international law.

Close to the US Republican Party, Leiter used to be one of the leaders of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers in the West Bank in the 1990s.

He is also a member of Netanyahu's Likud party and currently works as a strategic adviser to Israeli think tanks.

His son, Moshe Leiter, was killed in combat in November 2023 in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been waging a deadly military onslaught for over a year, killing more than 44,000 Palestinians.

Yechiel Leiter will take on the ambassador role after Trump's inauguration next year, succeeding Mike Herzog, President Isaac Herzog's brother, who was appointed in 2021.

Leiter has criticised US President Joe Biden, slamming "American pressure" during the war in Gaza in an interview with private Israeli channel Tov in January.

Israel welcomed Huckabee's nomination this month, as he is a stalwart supporter of the country's government.

In 2017, he was present in Maale Adumim for the expansion of one of Israel's largest settlements in the West Bank.

Huckabee has also gone on to deny that the West Bank has ever been occupied, and refers to the territory as Judea and Samaria - a term commonly by used right-wing and far-right Israelis.

At 4 am, Israel struck a Beirut building, killing its residents as they slept. This is the aftermath

A dispatch from the site of the aftermath of Israeli airstrike in central Beirut at 4 am that killed at least 15 people, including children and injured dozens

Hanna Davis
Beirut
23 November, 2024
THE NEW ARAB

A child’s robe found in the rubble of an Israeli airstrike on Basta al-Fawqa [Philippe Pernot]

Beirut was jolted awake last night by deadly Israeli airstrikes, which hit in the heart of the Lebanese capital without warning at around 4 am, levelling an entire apartment block.

The attack was the fourth this week on central Beirut — coming as Israeli airstrikes on the country have markedly intensified since US envoy Amos Achstein ended his visit to the region on Wednesday, with ceasefire efforts stuck at the door of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel now wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza, though not yet in Lebanon.

Around noon on Saturday, rescue workers were still searching for survivors amid a massive pile of rubble, once an eight-story apartment building in the densely-populated Basta neighbourhood.

Dozens of the neighbourhood’s residents and relatives of those killed were gathered at the scene of the strike. Some stood quiet, in shock. Others had tears in their eyes, leaning on those around them for support.

Security was tense, with the press not allowed to go near the demolished building. As a body was brought toward an ambulance on standby, one of the multiple soldiers standing guard demanded cameras be turned off.

Israeli media claimed the Basta strike targeted a high-ranking Hezbollah official, but the group later denied any of its officials were present in the site.

Lebanon’s health ministry has reported that 15 people were killed and 63 injured, including men, women and children. The toll will likely be higher, as search and rescue efforts continue.

There was no evacuation order given prior to the strike, in the early hours of the morning when most of the neighbourhood was asleep.

‘An entire family killed’

On the outskirts of the crowd, a 25-year-old woman cried, comforted by her friend beside her. She was mourning her relatives killed in the attack, including 5-year-old Muhammad Ali, 9-year-old Fatima, and another 13-year-old girl, also named Fatima.



The woman, who requested to remain anonymous, said they had been living in the building with nine others — including their grandparents — for about a month after fleeing their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs, under heavy Israeli bombardment.

“An entire family was killed. It was such a shock,” she told TNA, in tears.

Over 3,650 people have been killed and more than 15,200 wounded by Israeli fire in Lebanon since October 2023, when Hezbollah initiated exchanges of fire with Israel in support of Gaza, as it claims.

Over the past two months, Israel has severely escalated its attacks throughout Lebanon.

Around the corner from the demolished building, Issam Abdullah, 55, was taking a break in a small cafe. Abdullah, a member of Lebanon’s civil defence, had just spent almost eight hours picking through the rubble for human remains.


He told TNA the bodies he removed from the rubble were unidentifiable, many of them in pieces. But he was sure at least two were children, by the size of their tiny, fragmented limbs.

“One wore a small blue bracelet, around her small hand,” he recounted.

Neighbourhood destroyed

Saturday’s strike hit just a building away from the location of another Israeli strike, in early October. Along the street not only homes, but also shops were destroyed, eroding both residents’ livelihoods and sense of security.

Abu Ali Bazaza’s mini-market — which he had been running for 45 years — was turned to rubble on Saturday. The market was on the building’s first floor, where he sold foodstuffs like hummus, sugar, and rice.

Next to his shop he said there was also a one-dollar shop and jewellery store, all now just debris.



“My work is now gone, what will I do?,” Bazaza told TNA, “I’m 67 years old, who would hire me?”

He said the families living in the building often came to his shop, noting that each floor had about two apartments. On the first floor there was a woman and her son and on the second, a man lived with his sister, Bazaza said.

He estimated there were around 25 people living in the building, including multiple displaced families, whom he believes were all killed.

“The house, the car, we can replace them, we can rebuild, but the soul, it cannot come back,” he added.


Nearby, Samih Masri, 31, sat outside his butchery, watching the rescue workers clear the rubble. He had just repaired his shop’s glass windows, which had been shattered by an Israeli strike in early October.

Before Israel’s escalation, his was one of around 20 shops, including hair salons, bakeries, and perfume stores, along the street. Now, most have been shuttered.

After Saturday’s strike Bazaza said he had lost hope too and would also have to close his doors, parting with his business of eight years. “There’s no more work,” he said, sighing.

‘We don’t have anywhere else to go’

Almost all of the buildings around the scene of the strike were damaged. Across the street, a woman swept the broken glass and debris covering her balcony. Below her, on the first floor, Zainab Ramo, 55, had just finished sweeping up the dust from her home and had just begun to cook eggs for herself and husband.

She said they had barely slept after the strike. “Of course, I am scared,” she told TNA, “I thought we would die.”

Both Israeli strikes in the area— in early October and yesterday — hit just meters away from Ramo’s home of 50 years, owned by her grandfather.

She said that her intense and near-constant fear since the strike in early October had given her diabetes and high blood pressure, and she was now on multiple medications. But, “we don’t have anywhere else to go”, she said.

The door to their kitchen had blown off and a piece landed on their daughter’s leg. Luckily, she said that with rest and pain medication, she would be okay.

Ramo’s neighbours were not so lucky. "I used to pass them, and say hello," she said, “I knew the caretaker [of the building], her, her husband, and children all passed away,” she said.

Outside Ramo's building a banner was still hung, in memory of those killed in early October, and a constant reminder of the death and destruction at her doorstep. “There were so many people who died,” she said.

[All photos by Philippe Pernot]

Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims pay high price in war between Israel and Hezbollah

Many Shiite Muslims believe they are being unfairly punished because they share a religious identity with Hezbollah and often live in the same areas

Israel has concentrated its attacks on villages in southern and northeastern Lebanon and neighborhoods south of Beirut, where a large numbers of Shiites who are not Hezbollah members live. (AP)

AP
November 25, 2024

BEIRUT: The Lebanese civilians most devastated by the Israel- Hezbollah war are Shiite Muslims, and many of them believe they are being unfairly punished because they share a religious identity with Hezbollah militants and often live in the same areas.

“This is clear,” said Wael Murtada, a young Shiite man who anxiously watched paramedics search rubble after a recent Israeli airstrike destroyed his uncle’s two-story home and killed 10 people. “Who else is being attacked?”

Israel has concentrated its attacks on villages in southern and northeastern Lebanon and neighborhoods south of Beirut. This is where many Hezbollah militants operate from, and their families live side by side with large numbers of Shiites who aren’t members of the group.

Israel insists its war is with Hezbollah and not the Lebanese people – or the Shiite faith. It says it only targets members of the Iran-backed militant group to try to end their yearlong campaign of firing rockets over the border. But Israel’s stated objectives mean little to people like Murtada as growing numbers of Shiite civilians also die in a war that escalated sharply in recent months.

Shiites don’t just measure the suffering of their community in deaths and injuries. Entire blocks of the coastal city of Tyre have been flattened. Large parts of the historic market in the city of Nabatiyeh, which dates to the Ottoman era, have been destroyed. And in Baalbek, an airstrike damaged the city’s famed Hotel Palmyra, which opened in the late 19th century, and a home that dates to the Ottoman era.

“Lebanese Shias are being collectively punished. Their urban areas are being destroyed, and their cultural monuments and building are being destroyed,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

As Shiites flee their war-torn villages and neighborhoods, the conflict is increasingly following them to other parts of Lebanon, and this is fueling tensions.

Scores of people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Christian, Sunni and Druze areas where displaced Shiites had taken refuge. Many residents in these areas now think twice before providing shelter to displaced people out of fear they may have links to Hezbollah.

“The Israelis are targeting all of Lebanon,” said Wassef Harakeh, a lawyer from Beirut’s southern suburbs who in 2022 ran against Hezbollah in the country’s parliamentary elections and whose office was recently demolished by an Israeli airstrike. He believes part of Israel’s goal is to exacerbate frictions within the small Mediterranean country, which has a long history of sectarian fighting even though diverse groups live together peacefully these days.

Some Shiites say statements from the Israeli military over the years have only reinforced suspicions that their wider community is being targeted as a means to put pressure on Hezbollah.

One commonly cited example is the so-called Dahiyeh doctrine, which was first espoused by Israeli generals during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. It is a reference to the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah is headquartered and where entire residential blocks, bridges and shopping compounds were destroyed in both wars. Israel says Hezbollah hides weapons and fighters in such areas, turning them into legitimate military targets.

A video released by the Israeli military last month has been interpreted by Shiites as further proof that little distinction is being made between Hezbollah fighters and Shiite civilians.

Speaking from a southern Lebanese village he did not name, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari called it “a terror base. This is a Lebanese village, a Shiite village built by Hezbollah.” As he toured a house and showed stocks of hand grenades, rifles, night-vision goggles and other military equipment, Hagari said: “Every house is a terror base.”
Another army spokesperson disputed the notion that Israel tries to blur the line between combatants and civilians. “Our war is with the terror group Hezbollah and not with the Lebanese population, whatever its origin,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. He denied that Israel was intentionally trying to disrupt the social fabric of Lebanon, and pointed to Israel’s evacuation warnings to civilians ahead of airstrikes as a step it takes to mitigate harm.

Many Lebanese, including some Shiites, blame Hezbollah for their suffering, while also decrying Israel’s bombardments. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel last year the day after Hamas attacked Israel and started the war in Gaza; this went against the group’s promises to use its weapons only to defend Lebanon.

Since last October, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry.

 More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes. Shiites, who make up a third of Lebanon’s 5 million people, have borne the brunt of this suffering. Israel says it has killed well over 2,000 Hezbollah members in the past year.

The death and destruction in Lebanon ramped up significantly in mid-September, when Israeli airstrikes began targeting Hezbollah’s leaders, and once again in early October, when Israeli ground troops invaded.

Early in the war, Israeli airstrikes killed about 500 Hezbollah members but caused very little collateral damage. But since late September, airstrikes have destroyed entire buildings and homes, and in some cases killed dozens of civilians when the intended target was one Hezbollah member or official.

On one particularly bloody day, Sept. 23, Israeli airstrikes killed almost 500 people and prompted hundreds of thousands of people – again, mostly Shiites — to flee their homes in panic.

Murtada’s relatives fled from Beirut’s southern suburbs in late September after entire blocks had been wiped out by airstrikes. They moved 22 kilometers (about 14 miles) east of the city, to the predominantly Druze mountain village of Baalchmay to stay in the home of Murtada’s uncle.

Then, on Nov. 12, the home where they sought refuge was destroyed without warning. The airstrike killed nine relatives — three men, three women and three children — and a domestic worker, Murtada said.

The Israeli army said the home was being used by Hezbollah. Murtada, who lost a grandmother and an aunt in the strike, said nobody in the home was connected to the militant group.

Hezbollah has long boasted about its ability to deter Israel, but the latest war has proven otherwise and taken a severe toll on its leadership.

Some Shiites fear the weakening of Hezbollah will lead to the entire community being sidelined politically once the war is over. But others believe it could offer a political opening for more diverse Shiite voices.

Ceasefire negotiations to end the Israel-Hezbollah appear to have gained momentum over the past week. Some critics of Hezbollah say the group could have accepted months ago the conditions currently under consideration.

This would have spared Lebanon “destruction, martyrs and losses worth billions (of dollars),” Lebanese legislator Waddah Sadek, who is Sunni Muslim, wrote on X.

Spying for the Ottomans: 

MEMO in Conversation with Emrah Safa Gurkan

The 16 and 17 centuries saw an eruption in espionage, spying and covert operations, with a growing network of Christian clergymen, traders, slaves, travellers, nobles and others who were also intelligence operatives for Istanbul. We speak to the author of the book 'Spies for the Sultan' to find out more.

MEMO in Conversation With

November 20, 2024 

The Bishop of Heraclea, an Orthodox clergyman, approached the Habsburg royal family with a devious plot, the Austro-Spanish dynasty could form a secret alliance with the Persian Shah to take control of the Ottoman Empire. Together they could back the son of Sultan Suleiman I, Prince Selim, to seize power away from his brother Prince Mustafa. Little did the Habsburgs know, the cleric was also an Ottoman spy and part of a growing network of Christian clergymen, traders, slaves, travellers, nobles and others who were also intelligence operatives for Istanbul. The 16 and 17 centuries saw an eruption in espionage, spying and covert operations. A book recently translated from Turkish into English ‘Spies for the Sultan’ delves into the murky world of surveillance. Joining us for MEMO in Conversation is the book’s author Emrah Safa Gurkan.

Professor Gurkan teaches at the Istanbul 29 Mayis University’s department of political science and international relations. In 2012, he was awarded a doctorate in history from Georgetown University. He was the recipient of the Promising Scientist of the Year award at the 14th Kadir Has Awards in 2018. He received the the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the same institution. He has written a number of articles in English, Turkish, Italian, Spanish and German as well as two scientific monographs, the first of which received the Scientific Monograph of the Year Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA).

Canadian writer donates $25,000 prize to causes in Palestine and Lebanon

Canadian writer Madeleine Thien was awarded a $25,000 (CAD) prize by the Writers' Trust of Canada for her body of writing. To the audience's surprise, she announced she would 'return the prize money to the world', including part to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and part to the Lebanese Red Cross.

November 22, 2024

Israel’s criminal responsibility is shielded by political complicity


Flag with the logo of the of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on March 29, 2022 in Den Haag, Netherlands [Alex Gottschalk/DeFodi Images via Getty Images]


MEMO
by Ramona Wadi
walzerscent
November 24, 2024 

It remains to be seen how world leaders of the 124 states that are party to the Rome Statute will comply with the international arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC’s press release clearly states that both “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.”

World leaders’ responses have varied from outright assertions of complying with the ICC arrest warrants, to calibrated replies and adamant rejection. Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said that the Rome Statute would be implemented if Netanyahu sets foot in the country, as did Switzerland.

“Yes absolutely. We support international courts and we apply their warrants,” Ireland’s Prime Minister Simon Harris told RTE yesterday. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated, “We stand up for international law, and we abide by all the rulings and regulations of the international courts.” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayma Safadi insisted that the ICC warrants should be implemented.

Israel is painting the ICC decision as “the first time the ICC has ever issued arrest warrants against leaders of a democratic country”. However, although Israel describes itself as a democratic country, it is a settler-colonial enterprise founded upon ethnic cleansing and sustained by genocide.

BLOG: USAID’s guise is dismantled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza

“No outrageous anti-Israeli decision will prevent us – and it will not prevent me – from continuing to defend our country in any way,” Netanyahu stated. Gallant called the decision as “a dangerous precedent against the right to self-defence and moral warfare and encourages murderous terrorism,” while describing his role as a ‘”privilege”.

The US, of course, rejected the ICC decision. “Let me be clear once again: whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he would invite Netanyahu to visit. “I will guarantee him that if he comes, the warrant will have no effect in Hungary”. Argentina’s Javier Milei rejected the ICC’s decision, stating that it “ignores Israel’s legitimate right to self-defence”.

Other countries adopted a cautious stance. Germany, for example, stated that it is “now examining what it means for us in terms of its international application”. France’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Christophe Lemoine described the ICC warrants as “legally complex” and said that France’s reaction would align with the principles of international justice. Austria described the arrest warrants as ludicrous but that the country would have to implement the ICC decision. Italy took a similar approach, saying that there is no equivalence between Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas, but that the arrests would happen if either visited Italy.

“Australia respects the independence of the ICC and its important role in upholding international law,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated.

Ahead of the G7 meeting to be held next week in which the ICC arrest warrants are to be discussed, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani declared, “We respect and support the International Criminal Court, but we believe that its role should be legal rather than political.”

The ICC deals with criminal responsibility. However, the rhetoric of several leaders implies that a political stance will be influencing whether or not the ICC arrest warrants will be enforced if Netanyahu or Gallant visit the countries that are party to the Rome Statute. Almost all countries have prioritised their relations with Israel throughout the unfolding genocide in Gaza, and the ICC arrest warrants have only exposed the politics that underpin the overt or tacit support that Israel enjoys globally.

READ: Ex-France ambassador to Israel slams Germany’s refusal to comply with ICC arrest warrants

Countries that have stated they will implement the ICC’s decision could have taken a stance against genocide over a year ago. Yet, they waited until the arrest warrants to say they would comply with international law. What prevented these countries from abiding by international law prior to the ICC’s announcement?

As for the countries that attempted a neutral stance, the political deliberation is clear. Israel has committed genocide live-streamed. The criminal responsibility is clear – not only from the footage but also the constant incitement against Palestinians. Why does the G7 have to deliberate upon what action to take?

There is no unequivocal stance against genocide, but rather countries deciding upon opportune moments. What can be gleaned from most statements, including those that stated they would abide by the ICC’s arrest warrants, is that the purported political neutrality that supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza is still in full swing.

The ICC depends upon individual countries to enforce the arrest warrants. The Czech Republic, for example, described the ICC decision as “unfortunate” and said that the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant “should be substantiated by evidence”. What more evidence could the country possibly require to see the legitimacy in the arrest warrants? Why is genocide in Gaza still largely debatable, to the point that signatories to the Rome Statute are pondering their decision? Who is politicising the arrest warrants – the ICC or world leaders?

The European Commission has warned Orban over his stance, saying that refusing to implement the ICC decision would “breach international obligations”. True, but what of the EU’s obligations under international law. Why doesn’t the EC speak of genocide in Gaza? The reason, of course, is clear. The EC is beholden to Israel’s security narrative. Its stance merely reflects the positioning of one international entity reciprocating the status of another international entity. The politics, however, does not indicate a stance against the crime of genocide but merely compliance with the possibility of the ICC arrest warrants being activated, should Netanyahu visit any EU country that is bound by the Rome Statute.

It is likely that criminal accountability as the ICC seeks to establish will be thwarted by political interpretation of the arrest warrants. However, let us all keep in mind that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is marked by both criminal and political accountability. The ICC arrest warrants have exposed the latter, in light of the genocide, to the point that oblivion is no longer impenetrable.

Pentagon admits rejection of ICC arrest warrants has no legal basis

A Pentagon spokesperson admitted that the US's decision to reject the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Galant are not grounded in law and reiterated that the US doesn't believe the ICC has jurisdiction over Israel and Gaza. Neither the US or Israel are member states of the ICC.

MEMO   November 22, 2024