The ICC request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others is only the beginning. Around the world evidence is being gathered and cases are being prepared, including against British, American and EU politicians and officials for complicity in genocide and other crimes against humanity. This week the ICC received a request from jurists and human rights groups to investigate EU chief Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in genocide.
Tayab Ali, a human rights lawyer and director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians told journalist Owen Jones that a tremendous amount of preparation is underway out of sight of the public. “I’ve spent a significant amount of time this year travelling the world meeting with heads of state, meeting with foreign ministers, meeting with justice ministers, and I’ll tell you: the appetite, particularly in the global south, to prosecute people complicit in war crimes, is high.” South Africa has been a leader in this regard.
The reality is Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden are guilty of far worse crimes than Osama Bin Laden, Ismail Haniyeh, Marwan Barghouti or Nelson Mandela. I don’t condone Bin Laden or minimise what he did; a good friend of mine John Lozowski was killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11. He didn’t deserve to die. The current US President and the PM of Israel, however, just happen to have murdered far more innocent men, women and children – and, unlike Bin Laden and the others, are clearly guilty of the crime of crimes: genocide. The game changer, however, is the looming presence of the combined legal and moral authority of the ICC and ICJ. Bearing down like angels of justice, they will pursue Israel, and, ultimately even top US officials, to the ends of the earth. In the case of the ICC, no signatory nation to the Rome Statute can provide a safe haven once the arrest warrants go out.
Which is why the ICC seeking Netanyahu’s arrest has triggered something approaching a nervous breakdown, a shattering of the psyche for the Western elites. Impunity is in the job description.
Hellbound and Down 