Predictably, Israel and its allies condemned the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Washington Post, 11/21/24). A press release from the court (11/21/24) accused the Israeli leaders of “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024.” These consisted of “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare,” “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts” and “the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”
In addition to the US, Israel’s primary source of military and diplomatic support, Israel also received backing from Hungary and Argentina, two nations run by far-right leaders who seek to undo democratic liberalism (Al Jazeera, 11/21/24).
‘International Kangaroo Court’
New York Post (11/21/24): “This latest effort is simply another part of the international push spearheaded by Jew-hating high officials around the world to delegitimize Israel.”
There were also the expected cries of foul play in right-wing US media. The Wall Street Journal editorial board (11/21/24) said Israel was merely acting in self-defense because “Hamas started the war on October 7 by sending death squads into Israel.”
“The charge of deliberate starvation is absurd,” the Journal snarled, noting that “Israel has facilitated the transfer of more than 57,000 aid trucks”—in other words, about one-fourth of what Gaza’s 2 million people would have needed to meet their basic needs (NPR, 2/21/24).
Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Journal (11/24/24) that he was “putting together a legal dream team” to defend Israel’s leaders, as if to present Netanyahu as a sort of global stage version of O.J. Simpson. If you want to gauge the seriousness of Dershowitz’s announcement, consider that the “dream team” will reportedly include Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced ex-governor of New York (New York Post, 11/25/24).
Fellow Murdoch paper the New York Post (11/21/24) called the ICC charges “false.” “International Kangaroo Court is more like it,” its editorial board mocked, “and one more reminder why the United States should never recognize the ICC.”
“ICC Unleashes Chaos, Antisemitism” read a headline from an op-ed in the Unification Church–owned Washington Times (11/22/24).
‘Authoritarians who kill with impunity’
What is the right venue, according to the Washington Post (11/24/24)? Israel will bring itself to justice if it’s committed any war crimes.
While it’s not surprising to see right-wing outlets waving away the atrocities in Gaza, it is striking to see the Washington Post—a vehicle for the establishment center whose slogan is “democracy dies in darkness”—not only condemning the warrants, but arguing that the court should stick to prosecuting enemy states of the United States.
In a brutally honest way, the paper’s editorial board (11/24/24) declared that Israel must be held apart from other regimes who do terrible things, arguing that rules needn’t apply to the West and its allies, since they have the “means [and] mechanisms to investigate themselves.”
The board complained that the international justice system singled out Israel for “selective prosecution” while ignoring rogue regimes:
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons and waged a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing in his brutal suppression of an uprising that has killed half a million people, many of them civilians. In Myanmar, military dictator Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and his army have been responsible for bombing civilian villages in its war against the long-persecuted Rohingya minority. And in Sudan, a new potential genocide threatens the Darfur region’s Black Masalit people at the hands of Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is known as Hemedti, and his Rapid Support Forces.
This is a gross oversimplification to the point of deception. In each of the cases the Post names, neither perpetrator nor victim are from countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, which means that it is extremely difficult for the ICC to claim jurisdiction over them. (Palestine, in contrast, is a signatory to the treaty that established the ICC, which is why the court has jurisdiction over that case.)
In the case of Sudan, the court did manage to prosecute pro-Sudanese government militia commander Ali Kushayb (ICC, 4/5/22) and indict former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (Guardian, 2/11/20) for atrocities committed in Darfur. This was possible because the ICC may also claim jurisdiction when a case is referred to it by the UN Security Council. (The court’s prosecutor has spoken to the legal complexities of confronting the current crisis—ICC, 8/6/24.)
An innovative legal approach involving cross-border claims from Bangladesh has allowed an ICC investigation of Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingya to proceed, albeit very slowly (CNN, 7/7/23). A similar approach might work with the Syria case (Guardian, 2/16/22), but no member state has referred the case to the court (Atlantic Council, 9/26/24), in contrast to the Israel case.
A more apt comparison would be Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine: Russia, like Israel, is not a party to the ICC, while Ukraine, like Palestine, is. And the ICC has indeed, as the Post quietly acknowledges later in the piece, issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The legal complexities here are manifold, but the Post doesn’t bother to grapple with them, suggesting that it’s the Post more than the ICC that’s guilty of selective prosecution.
The Post went on:
The ICC is putting the elected leaders of a democratic country with its own independent judiciary in the same category as dictators and authoritarians who kill with impunity. Israel went to war in response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, which left 1,200 Israelis dead and another 250 taken hostage, around 100 of whom still remain captive. The ICC’s arrest warrant for one of the authors of that massacre, Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, who was probably killed in an Israeli airstrike months ago, looks more like false equivalence than genuine balance.
In fact, the court had sought a warrant for Hamas leader and October 7 attack planner Yahya Sinwar (CNN, 5/20/24), but the Israeli military killed him before the justice system could catch up with him (AP, 10/18/24). If the court had not prosecuted Hamas officials, then the Post and others would accuse it of singling out Israel. When the court does go after Hamas officials, the Post claims it’s political theater. The court can’t win.
‘Vibrant, independent media’
Israel’s “vibrant, independent media” reports that it is under heavy censorship, with 2,703 articles redacted by the military in 2023, and 613 banned entirely (972, 5/20/24).
The Post then offered some “to be sures.” Yes, “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed and maimed”; yes, Israel “has fallen short” on allowing in humanitarian aid. But it is the next part where one wonders if the Post board has left the earthly realm for another reality, in which Israel will be held accountable by—wait for it—itself:
Israel needs to be held accountable for its military conduct in Gaza. After the conflict’s end—which is long overdue—there will no doubt be Israeli judicial, parliamentary and military commissions of inquiry. Israel’s vibrant, independent media will do its own investigations. Some Israeli reserve soldiers have already been arrested over accusations of abuse against Palestinian detainees. More investigations will follow. The ICC is supposed to become involved when countries have no means or mechanisms to investigate themselves. That is not the case in Israel.
Has the Post been living under a rock? The biggest story in Israel before last year’s Hamas attack that instigated the attack on Gaza was Netanyahu’s attack on the independence of the judiciary (AP, 9/11/23), and Israel’s right-wing government is continuing this effort (Economist, 9/19/24).
As for the so-called free press, the government has moved to boycott the country’s main liberal newspaper, Haaretz (11/24/24), pulling government advertising and advising ministries to end communication with reporters. Israel has also banned Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera (5/6/24), and at least 130 journalists have been killed during Israel’s military campaigns against Gaza and Lebanon (FAIR.org, 5/1/24; Committee to Protect Journalists, 11/25/24). Military censorship of the media has also increased, the Israeli magazine 972 (5/20/24) found.
‘To ensure impunity’
In the tiny fraction of cases where soldiers were indicted for killing Palestinians, AP (12/22/22) reported, “Israel’s military prosecutors acted with leniency toward convicted soldiers…with those sentenced for killing Palestinians serving only short-term military community service.”
Meanwhile, there are isolated examples of the Israeli government prosecuting soldiers, but experts believe that most military crimes have gone and will go unpunished (ProPublica, 5/8/24; Al Jazeera, 7/6/24). “Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the last five years have been indicted in less than 1% of the hundreds of complaints against them,” AP (12/22/22) reported.
When an Israeli court acquitted a border police officer who killed an autistic Palestinian man (BBC, 7/6/23), the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem (6/25/20) said that even the original investigation into the killing was “merely a fig leaf to silence criticism until the public outrage and media attention die down.” It added that, on the whole, “the investigation system works behind the scenes to whitewash the violence and ensure impunity for those responsible.”
Moreover, these investigations are largely of the “bad apple” variety, singling out extreme behavior of lower-ranking members of the military. Does the Post seriously expect Israel to hold accountable those at the top who are prosecuting the war?
Right-wing lawmakers are working to further block investigations, Human Rights Watch (7/31/24) said, a situation that builds an increased sense of impunity, as 972 (8/1/24) noted.
This doesn’t sound like a healthy parliamentary system with democratic guardrails, but a warrior state spiraling into authoritarianism. The Washington Post, too, seems to be moving away from liberalism and a rules-based system, and more toward defending Israel at all costs.
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Great analysis of a propaganda piece by WaPo!
“My country right or wrong” is the MSM’s position on Israel. And when Trump is back in power, there will be no doubt about it, no more waffling from the White House. Wanna bet whether the Trump Organization gets a piece of Gaza to build a resort? The Israelis will be parceling it out within a year if not already.
I can only, again, add, that Germany’s media are – in the vast majority – not better. Some decades later historians will start to ask why on earth a country that did one of the worst crimes in all history, if not the worst, the Nazi atrocities 1933-1945, where 6 millions of Jewish people were killed in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Buchenwald and many other concentration camps – why this had to mean that this country, Germany, had to look away and support war crimes with weapons and propaganda. War crimes right and far right Netanyahu government is committing. How could this happen? How could journalists and artists make people believe these war crimes were “defending democracy” against “barbarism”? But this is what happened in postmodern Germany since October 2023. The Frankfurt book fair was opened by a woman declaring that the word “aber” (but) was not wished for. Meaning: no discussions, no thinking – just follow. A book fair! Intellectuals! You would not believe it. Later musicians asked the same, in a tone as if someone had offended them. (By the way, this is what follows from “woke” – all use and abuse “feeling insecure” for their own, at times horrible ideas.)
I already mentioned the fake Left “TAZ” from Berlin. These days a queer author wrote an article, where she first stated that BLM had applauded as Hamas killed 1200 people in Israel and took around 250 hostages. This, indeed, was appalling by BLM if it happened (I had not heard about it).
But then the article goes on in making believe that “the black community” was not entirely for the rights of the people of Gaza to live in peace. Some had left pro Palestine student groups because they felt insecure in a white majority or something. (Would that mean the students were not for the rights of the people of Gaza? This TAZ article does not tell you.)
TAZ, like other media, are not even as honest as “WaPo” is at times. From sentence 1 of this article of a queer in TAZ every reader knows that this is a horribly biased article. Like nearly all written in Germany now. An article against the people of Gaza. As a queer lawyer this lady then tells you that the ICC has no power to act, and the article ends with a moving story where a wonderful shop keeper showed the then 6 year old after giving her some sweets or something where tiny Israel was on the map.
Yes, this is moving. This man loved Israel, and this is wonderful. But now imagine you would write about Putin’s war crimes with patchwork “journalism”, telling people somehow you loved to find what others don’t tell, and you’d love to “deconstruct” etc etc. And after telling folks that some black people left an anti-Putin group because of some machos or bullies – you end it with a moving story where a Russian woman gave you sweets when you were 6 and showed you her home on a map….
And this all, while a horrible, brutal war, called by some genocide, where Israel doesn’t even allow food and water into Gaza as much as it was urgently needed – is going on…
Yet THIS is the way TAZ writes about war crimes. Patchwork put together, no clarity at all in the article, yet all postmodern readers know that “the Arabs are bad”. #
This is anti-journalism, and it is here to spread misinformation. It belittles war crimes. And in a way that you can “oil yourself out”. You don’t openly state what you are clearly saying, and you can always say: “I did not say that”. In fact this is postmodernism gone yellow press.
Compared to this I even salute the honest remarks in WaPo where they – wrongly – state “that rules needn’t apply to the West and its allies, since they have the “means [and] mechanisms to investigate themselves.”
Nobody in those many media and cultural scenes of Germany, and in our post-structuralist universities, nobody who took part in this can ever – without a huge “I am sorry…” be taken serious in the future if it comes to wars, peace, and how a better world should look like. This is what follows if rules only apply for our “enemies”. And this all happened, and was done by intellectuals who think they were so “diverse” and multi-cultural and wonderful.
Unfortunately, you’re absolutely right in your devastating assessment, especially in the case of my once very beloved “taz”. There is a giant gap between much-needed structural-based analysis and the current, as you say, post-modern, kind of anti-journalism that most of all is characterized by a want of narrative and, as a psychiatrist I’m sure of it, reduction of complexity stemming from a need to mitigate the unbridgeable cognitive dissonances of the inherent contradictions of late-capitalism – which themselves are near-to.never addressed as such.
One really can see clearly the bankruptcy of world-explaining left theories after the fall of the Soviet Union and the void these leave, filled by ever-growing absurdities and a logic that becomes mad in its own echo chambers, whereas an extensive and explaining new theory is needed with an urgency as maybe never before …