During the siege of Sarajevo, the Danish army NCOs who controlled UN relief flights had a sign behind their check-in desk that read: “Do not confuse your rank with our authority”. For politicians ranting against the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for the Gaza conflict, I suggest one that says: “Do not confuse your self-image with the moral high ground.”
The 12,000 flight Sarajevo airlift was the largest in history.
The Danes dubbed it “Maybe Airlines”, as in: “Maybe there’ll be flights today. Maybe you can get on one. Maybe not.”
Maybe it would help to note the haunting, grim parallels between Sarajevo and Gaza.
Over the course of four years, an estimated 11,540 people, including at least 500 children, were killed in Sarajevo. Schools, hospitals and homes targeted, nearly every building in the city damaged, nowhere was truly safe
In seven months,
Oxfam estimates 70 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or
destroyed. An estimated 34,000 Gazans have been killed, 70 percent of
them women and children.
The
timing of the ICC action against Binyamin Netanyahu, his defence
minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed al-Masri
and Ismael Haniyeh can be argued. But the duality of charging both
Hamas and Israeli leaders underscores the principle that crimes by one
side do not justify those committed by the other.
Neither Israel nor the U.S. are signatory to the Rome Statute that binds nations to recognise the ICC’s authority.
Among other who are not are China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, which goes some way to attesting the admonition about being judged by the company you keep.
KNEE JERKS
Predictably, the immediate Israeli, U.S. and Hamas reactions over the arrest warrants were the “round up the usual suspects” variety.
Netanyahu called the ICC’s plan a “travesty of justice”. President Joe Biden labelled it “outrageous”.
The Israeli Knesset was united in damning the move as “scandalous … an indelible historic crime and a clear _expression_ of antisemitism.”
In fairness, that’s understandable. However, when you call your army “the most moral in the world”,
being held to account for widespread and deliberate hampering of aid
deliveries to civilians in dire need and attacking medical facilities
isn’t anti-Semitism. It’s an insistence on adherence to the
internationally-accepted rules of war that self-image demands.
Hamas’ full-throated denouncement of what it termed “the
attempt to equate the victim with the executioner by issuing arrest
warrants against a number of Palestinian resistance leaders” would be laughable were it not hypocrisy of apocalyptic proportion.
For a
leadership that believes committing atrocities in the name of
eliminating Israel (which even they are fully aware is not going to
happen), and know from bitter experience they would provoke
Biblical-scale retribution, the ICC warrant isn’t an “equating” , it’s the least that can be expected, and arguably, deserved.
Twelve
Republican senators, who unquestioningly support a presidential
candidate who disputes the authority of the judicial system , an integral element in the constitution they are sworn to uphold, threatened to “target” the ICC prosecutor and his staff with “severe sanctions” and travel bans.
RAISON D’ETRE
The ICC is
the only permanent international court with the power to prosecute
individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. It may
not be to everyone’s taste, and is far from perfect, but it surely does
a better job of serving the overall good than those who denigrate and
dislike it out of fear of falling under its gaze, only to shout is
praises when it suits them.
Last year, President Biden hailed an ICC arrest warrant for Russian President Vladmir Putin for war rimes in Ukraine as “justified”, adding that it made “a very strong point.”
Apparently the memo from that never reached Secretary of State Antony
Blinken, whose reaction to the Hamas-Israel warrants was that “the ICC has no jurisdiction.” He failed to elaborate, or suggest who else might.
The
roots of humanitarian law applied to the rules of war extend back to
historic concepts of justice that include Babylon’s Hammurabic Code and
the Code of Justinian from the Byzantine Empire.
Notably, they also incorporate the “Lieber Code”, devised during the American civil war for the prosecution of war crimes and prisoner of war exchanges.
In his famous treatise “On War”, Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, postulated: “War
is a mere continuation of policy by other means. We see, therefore,
that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political
instrument…
It is also an unequivocal admission that diplomacy has failed, and politics have become venal.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotele encapsulated all that in one sentence: “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”
And if you still think the ICC has neither role nor moral authority in the Gaza war, watch the video in this link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/opinion/gaza-hospital-collapse.html?te=1&nl=opinion-today&emc=edit_ty_20240521
There’s no “maybe” about the need for the ICC.
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