COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
The International Criminal Court has formally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
No such arrest warrants were issued for President Biden or any of the other Western officials who have been backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities, which is a bit like a judge issuing a warrant for a mass murderer but not for the guy who gave him the gun and stood next to him handing him ammunition and drove the getaway car and lied to the police to cover up the crime.
Nothing will come of this new development because it is completely unenforcible and international law is only as real as the US empire agrees to pretend it is, but it is a significant step in the deterioration of international consensus on Israel as the entire world watches the Zionist regime commit atrocity after atrocity right out in the open.
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The antisemitic decision of the International Criminal Court is a modern Dreyfus trial – and will end the same way.
Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the International Criminal Court, a biased and discriminatory political body.https://t.co/slCeoZ4fbX
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 21, 2024
Predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to this decision by shrieking about antisemitism and calling the ICC’s move “a modern Dreyfus trial”. He is doing this because he does not have anything resembling a real argument in his defense, and neither does anyone else.
We saw this illustrated in a statement from Senator Tom Cotton, who proclaimed that the US would invade The Hague if the ICC tries to enforce its arrest warrants.
“The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic,” Cotton said. “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.”
The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic. Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) November 21, 2024
This is as psychotic a public statement as anything you’ll see from the most far-right extremists in the Knesset. The United States is run by demented zealots with nukes, just like Israel.
Warmongering frenzy
The “Hague Invasion Act”, formally known as the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, is a US federal law passed during the warmongering frenzy of the early Bush administration which authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”
That “or allied personnel” bit is why Cotton is able to cite this law in reference to an arrest warrant for Israelis.
Speaking of Israel and US senators, a bill by Bernie Sanders to block a shipment of tank shells to Israel was just killed in the Senate by a vote of 18 to 79.
Sanders framed the bill as an effort to restrict “the sale of offensive arms to Israel”, making a distinction from “defensive” arms like the Iron Dome, which is absurd and obfuscatory to begin with. All arms to Israel are offensive rather than defensive in nature, in that they are all used to help Israel murder people without experiencing the deterrence they would receive from a retaliatory response.
There is a reason body armour is regulated in a way that is similar to firearms; it’s because someone who wants to commit a violent crime can wear a bulletproof vest while doing so to ensure that they can perpetrate the crime without being stopped by police.
That is exactly how Israel uses its so-called “defensive” weaponry.
And speaking of progressive US lawmakers taking feeble stands on Israel, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire for voting to support House Resolution 1449, a bill which purports to simply denounce antisemitism but in reality promotes the false conflation of antisemitic hate speech with speech that is critical of Israel.
‘Harmful definition’
Progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who voted against the bill, said in a statement that she did so because “the bill endorses the harmful definition of IHRA that dangerously conflates legitimate criticism of Israel to antisemitism and further harms our ability to address antisemitism.”
Everywhere you look it is powerful criminals getting away with far too much while the people who are supposed to be resisting them do far too little.
This happens as Russia hits Ukraine with a new type of hypersonic missile, which Putin went out of his way to mention could easily have been equipped with a nuclear warhead.
This attack was a warning to Ukraine for using long-range missiles supplied by the US and UK to strike targets inside Russia, and occurs as Moscow revises its nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for when nuclear weapons may be used.
This is unsustainable. It cannot continue. One way or the other, all this madness is going to come to an end.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.
