My TakeIsrael and the US have made the ICC irrelevant

On the official website of the International Criminal Court (ICC), it proudly proclaims: “Trying individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression.” Further down, it claims that “the Court is participating in a global fight to end impunity, and through international criminal justice, the Court aims to hold those responsible accountable for their crimes and to help prevent these crimes from happening again”. Justice is universal and all must be held to the same standards and accountability. Well, dream on! Until quite recently, 2022 to be precise, almost everyone who was detained, tried, convicted or charged with a warrant for their arrest, had been tinpot dictators and warlords, from Africa. The prosecutions of Serb leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic involved the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice, as official bodies of the United Nations distinct from the ICC. Since last year, a couple more, all Russians, have joined the ICC wanted list for their alleged roles while serving in the government of the Moscow-backed self-declared republic of South Ossetia, stemming from the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. And then, of course, the Russian strongman himself, Vladimir Putin, and some hapless Moscow politician called Maria Lvova-Belova, were put on the same wanted list in March, for relocating about 6,000 children, out of war zones in Ukraine, to Russia. Some children have since been returned, alive, to Ukraine. That is roughly the same number of children the Israeli army has killed since the start of its war on Gaza in early October. Arab and Muslim leaders slam Israel, demand swift end to ‘barbaric’ war But, since Israel has scrupulously followed international law, the laws of war, the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians – with the utmost regards for civilian welfare – there can be no comparison. The total death toll in Gaza has exceeded 15,000. Roughly one out of 150 Gazans has been killed in little under two months. Thank God for Israel’s compassion and humanity for Palestinians, otherwise, total deaths would have been much higher. Surely there is no comparison with Russia; nothing to hear, nothing to see here. There is nothing to concern the wary heads of ICC prosecutors and investigators, despite an appeal by Palestinian human rights groups for the court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior leaders for genocide, incitement to genocide, and the crime of apartheid. There is no business for the ICC. The facts clearly show that, don’t they? Roughly 10,000 women and children have been reported killed in Gaza. That exceeds the number of total civilians killed during the first full year of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to Iraq Body Count, an independent British research group. The death toll of women and children also doubles those killed in Ukraine, according to United Nations figures, after almost two years of fighting. The US claims about 12,400 civilians were killed in Afghanistan during almost 20 years of war, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. In 2017, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced she was referring a multi-year investigation into possible war crimes committed by US troops to a pre-trial court. Washington promptly put Bensouda, and some of her senior staff and family members on its international sanctions list. As hostages return to Israel, details of captivity in Gaza emerge She was subsequently taken off the list after she was replaced, and the new prosecutor made it clear he was putting the US case on the back burner, presumably for good. Israel also tries its best to protect journalists and medical staff working in Gaza. Belal Jadallah, the godfather of Palestinian journalism, was recently killed in his car by an Israeli tank shell. He was chairman of the Gaza Press House, which trained generations of young journalists. Apparently, not all young Palestinians pick up the gun; some prefer the pen, or word-processing. I regret I had never heard of Jadallah until after his death. But then, that’s one good thing about war: you get to know the heroes – some of them anyway – from the villains. Jadallah was among at least 53 journalists and media staff killed since the start of Israeli military operations, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has described the toll as “the deadliest for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992”. That’s saying something. Keep in mind the world has had some pretty horrendous conflicts and wars since 1992. More than 200 healthcare workers have been killed so far, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. But since the ministry has been infiltrated by the terrorist group Hamas, the number must be propaganda, so don’t trust it. But even if those numbers were accurate, Israel cannot be blamed because the deaths could not be avoided as they were an unfortunate side effect of war. Move on, nothing to see here. Since the start of the Gaza war, the US has been rushing heavy weapons and financial aid to Israel. Unlike the Ukraine war where Washington and its allies, especially Germany, have happily itemised every last tank, missile and bullet for public news consumption, the US has been super-secret about the weapons transferred to Israel, without which the Gaza war could not be sustained. Sense of shame or the Americans just don’t want Hamas to know, unlike letting the Russians know? According to a Bloomberg expose, some of the US weapons included 2,000 Hellfire missiles for Apache attack helicopters, and an array of mortars and ammo, including 36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition, 1,800 of M141 bunker-buster munitions and 3,500 night-vision devices. US special forces are on the ground to advise on urban warfare. We know because US President Joe Biden personally thanked some of those soldiers, presumably before they were sent off to Israel. Speaking of weapons, human rights groups have long criticised the US for dropping heavy 500-pound (227kg) bombs in urban areas such as Mosul in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria. Israel has dropped 2,000-pound (907kg) bombs on Gaza, a tiny strip of land full of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the world. Needless to say, they were all US-made. Last month, Biden announced the US was committing “an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defence” of US$14.3 billion. But that wasn’t enough. “We’re surging additional military assistance,” he added endearingly. Domestically, in the US, if you supply someone with a murder weapon, you are not only liable to be charged as accessory to murder, but committing the murder itself. China to play peacekeeper in post-war Gaza, but US holds key to truce: analysts Just saying. American culpability in genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity? No way! If Israel is not guilty, then how can anyone – such as Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, and the most senior members of Congress who supported the weapon and financial transfers – be accused of such heinous crimes for supporting Israel’s war machine? Besides death and taxes, we also know for certain that the ICC will never, ever, go after US and Israeli leaders, who by definition cannot commit those heinous crimes. Only Chinese communists can commit genocide by NOT starving and bombing an ethnic minority to smithereens – and NOT forcing them to dig mass graves – so rehabilitation will be impossible. Clearly, the ICC has no business with Israel and the US; it only goes after dodgy individuals with black skins from Africa and, more recently, people with Russian names. Now I am not saying those people don’t deserve to be put in the dock; most of them probably do. But the ICC is obviously not that court. And putting those African criminals, whether actual or alleged, will not end the many conflicts across the continent so long as Western governments and firms continue to exploit their resources and play “the great game” in their countries. Worse, the ICC enables Western governments, led by the US, to sit in judgment on the rest of the world, from a supposedly high moral position, while making themselves immune from its judgment. Since the ICC has never managed to fulfil its “noble” claims of universal justice and accountability, which have been pretty much geographically confined, its very existence and functions are way past their use-by date.

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}The International Criminal Court has no real function now other than being a tool of the West

The International Criminal Court has no real function now other than being a tool of the West