Friday, 22 November 2024

Israel Facing Pariah Status

Many words about Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant being issued arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, most to be fair are happy that the pair have been finally bought to justice for what they have been doing in Gaza but much less attempting to defend what they have been doing because bombing refugee camps, schools and hospitals is a bit of a red line for many with morals.   
With Netanyahu now facing imminent arrest should he set foot in any of the 124 nations signed up to the highest court in the World, including Britain and most of the EU who have both said they will follow the law, so the places him and his former Defence Minister can go is a fast dwindling patch of the Planet.
Israeli ministers and their allies raged against the ICC, accusing it of bias and that predictable shout of antisemitism but the ICC has answered that if Israel had agreed to something called 'complementarity', which is to satisfy the Court that any crimes will be properly investigated and pursued, then they would not have got involved.
Netanyahu has refused the establishment of a state commission into the Hamas attacks last October, fearing he would be held culpable for leaving Israel exposed which opened the door for the ICC to investigate themselves and find enough evidence to issue the arrest warrants.
In the ICC’s judgement, at the heart of its case against Israel relates to: 'Intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity',  making the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza the focus of the charge sheet.
Even America, Israel's funder and prime backer, have tried to persuade the country’s leadership that they should be providing Gaza’s civilians with the food and medicine they needed but undoubtedly they will still attempt to try and intimidate the court to drop the case and it should not be expected that we see Netanyahu or Gallant in the Hague anytime soon but the charges of genocide against him will not just melt away.
It will though accelerate Israel’s path to international pariahdom and make many nations wary of being associated with a leader who is on a par with other war criminals in the ICC eyes such as Vladmir Putin, Colonel Gaddafi, Radovan Karadžić , Saddam Hussein and the entire Khmer Rouge regime.

No comments: