Oh boy, I can’t wait to see the reactions of politicians of the “free world” that prevented anyone to say anything against Israel for years on the pretext of antisemitism.
Especially that useless POS of Emanuel Macron, our infamous president.
The CNN headline is a bit misleading. It's not the International Criminal Court as a whole that is seeking these arrest warrants but the ICC's chief prosecutor Karim Khan. The judges have yet to decide on these warrants.
[Side note: This is the same kind of lazy journalism that uses terms like EU chief or EU leader interchangeably for the President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen) and the President of the European Council (Charles Michel). If this was limited to a short headline, I could excuse it, but CNN continues with the same wording in the first sentence of the article: "The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for ..." which is absolutely unnecessary, even if CNN clarifies things later.]
It's part of the process. Now the request is before judges who will decide whether or not to issue the arrest warrants. For reference, when an ICC prosecutor asked for an arrest warrant for Vladmir Putin, it took a couple months for the judges to decide and then issue the warrant.
I know nothing about the process. How can a decision take months? What else are they doing? Are there counter arguments or something happening in the meantime?
I think that's a distinction without a difference. How would the ICC seek an arrest warrant if not by having the chief prosecutor submit one? If the court had approved it, the title would be "arrest warrant issued by ICC".
Karim Khan said that he believes Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yehia Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
The prosecutor must request the warrants from a pre-trial panel of three judges, who take on average two months to consider the evidence and determine if the proceedings can move forward.
Israel is not a member of the court, and even if the arrest warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution. But Khan’s announcement deepens Israel’s isolation as it presses ahead with its war, and the threat of arrest could make it difficult for the Israeli leaders to travel abroad.
Both Sinwar and Deif are believed to be hiding in Gaza as Israel tries to hunt them down. But Haniyeh, the supreme leader of the Islamic militant group, is based in Qatar and frequently travels across the region.
Yes, Putin has avoided those destinations so far. He even got warned by South Africa that they’d have to arrest him if he were to travel to a meeting there.
And if Netenyahu even lets Israel have elections. Before 10/7 he was already in the process of getting kicked out of office, the only reason he's still in power is 10/7.
Technically any member state, but they wouldn't refuse him if a non member state arrested him too. And I say technically because there's a few member states that support him and would likely not arrest him.
Biden can't save him, because we wouldn't agree to the Rome act because we thought that somehow meant we couldn't be charged at the Hauge for our war crimes. That's not true tho, we don't have to agree to it.
Israel and the United States are not members of the ICC. However, the ICC claims to have jurisdiction over Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank after Palestinian leaders formally agreed to be bound by the court’s founding principles in 2015.
I mean… yes you do, since that’s a little bit how international law works? Countries who do not sign and ratify the Rome statute and then remain in there aren’t governed by the ICC in the same way.
You will see in the excerpt you quoted, the reason the ICC believes it has jurisdiction is because of events taking place in Palestine, which has taken part in the Rome Statute previously.
And the United States has a law that says it will militarily invade The Hague if any US service member is arrested and held by the court. It came about along with all the other legislative bullshit in the years after 9/11/01. The US had previously been a founding member of the ICC, but withdrew for reasons of sovereignty.
By your logic the nazis shouldn't have been tried at the Hauge...
Is that what youre intentionally saying? Or did you not think it through?
Like even this bit:
And the United States has a law that says it will militarily invade The Hague if any US service member is arrested and held by the court. It came about along with all the other legislative bullshit in the years after 9/11/01. The US had previously been a founding member of the ICC, but withdrew for reasons of sovereignty.
If no US service member could be tried at the Hauge because the US didn't sign the Rome agreement...
First: it’s not my logic. It’s how this part of international law works. The International Criminal Court wasn’t created until 1998, and the statute that governs it only officially came into power in 2002. Not all countries have signed, and some (including the US) have withdrawn from it. This means that technically the ICC doesn’t have any jurisdiction over things that happen within its territory.
The US codified it into a domestic law because it doesn’t believe its should be beholden to any law higher than its domestic ones, and the United States often does shady things in countries where the ICC does have jurisdiction, making it a risk that US citizens (and leaders) can be arrested for crimes that occur there. So the US Congress wrote domestic policy stating that it reserved the right to invade if its citizens were held for trial.
And Bibi didn’t join the US military. But the US has shown it’s willing to support his administration through an awful lot of shit, and the US doesn’t have any ambiguity about how it regards the ICC.
Finally, are you referring to the Nuremberg trials? Nazis weren’t tried in The Hague court we are discussing, and I’m not sure any nazi trials happened there at all.
Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes. This is literally just how the International Criminal Court works.
Yes, the origin of one of the international courts in The Hague, specifically the one that prosecutes individuals, the International Criminal Court, comes from the Nuremberg Trials. I never disputed that lineage. Those nazi trials happened in Nuremberg, not The Hague, and before the ICC existed.
the origin of one of the international courts in The Hague, specifically the one that prosecutes individuals, the International Criminal Court, comes from the Nuremberg Trials.
The ICC was created in 2002, just FYI. So long after the Nuremberg Trials. And the ICJ predates Nuremberg via its predecessor entities.
International law gets weird. Tradition is absolutely a legitimate way for something to get recognized. That works because of Sovereignty and the intense political nature of anything between countries. So basically, if someone got an Israeli to the Hague, then the Netherlands could point at the decades of precedent for the moral high ground in refusing to release them. Whether that works depends on politics and what people think. So just because we didn't sign the paper does not mean we can resist it forever. If the world wants to head in that direction, the best we can do is dig our feet in and make it take longer.
And no sane US president would use the Hague Invasion Act. It's an open question if the military would even follow the order. that would require invading a NATO ally with strong defense systems tied into their neighbors. It would be a great way to obliterate our world standing in one fell swoop.
Putting out arrest warrants on both of them is so smart. It's a way to avoid people claiming they are taking sides or playing favorites or aiding terrorists or being in favor of genocide or whatever. Both leaders are culpable because both the IDF and Hamas have committed atrocities.
We'll see in time. Also not sure much will be done if they are. Remember the warrant for Putin was placed March of 2023. The impact on Russia so far seems about summed up to be "Putin can't attend a D-Day remembrance, and he probably shouldn't go see the Olympics, which he wouldn't"
On the other hand, Israel is not Russia. Netanyahu's vacation options effectively just dwindled to Israel and the US, with no layovers. The Hamas guys are already living as fugitives so not much changes there.
Putting out arrest warrants on both of them is so smart. It’s a way to avoid people claiming they are taking sides or playing favorites or aiding terrorists or being in favor of genocide or whatever.
It would be absurd and unjust to issue a warrant for only one of them. This was the right thing to do.
I agree, and I found it interesting that Israeli leaders were not accused of genocide or anything to do with their bombing campaign. Instead, it was the specific war crime of causing starvation due to their interference with humanitarian aid and food delivery. Kind of provides additional context for the US decision to build a floating pier off the Gaza coast.
It's much easier to say that an intentional blockade of food is leading to starvation, and that is a clear war crime. Very simple argument, easier to prove.
Talking about a bombing campaign is more difficult when soldiers are mixed in with the civilians. We may be able to point at the situation and say "that's clearly fucked up", but courts don't work that way. They have to acknowledge that in a war, the army is allowed to destroy the combatants of the enemy. A certain amount of collateral damage in the form of innocent lives lost is allowed by international law. This makes it all much murkier and more difficult to prove what is or is not a genuine war crime. They can't wing it, or guess, or go by what it "looks like", they have to prove it, which again, is difficult.
Starvation and depriving food aid though, very easy to prove.
That is Genocide, the UN tries not to use the general term whenever possible, and instead use the specific method of genocide. That way it's a lot harder to No True Scotsman the issue. but If I remember correctly they also charged Extinction and Murder. Then in the supporting documents they talk about systematic bombing and creation of a famine.
No, genocide is an Article 6 charge. The ICC is perfectly willing to use that term, and in fact has explicitly charged Omar al Bashir with genocide under Article 6.
In contrast, Netanyahu and Hamas leaders are accused under Articles 7 and 8. These articles respectively cover "Crimes against humanity" and "War crimes", but they do not include genocide.
Both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders are accused of "crimes against humanity of murder and extermination" under Article 7.
Netanyahu is also accused of "intentionally using starvation of civilians" under Article 8, whereas Hamas leaders are also accused of "rape and other forms of sexual violence" under Article 8.
There are currently no charges based on the Israeli bombing campaign, but the ICC says this is "actively being investigated."
