The previously requested arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and the leader of Hamas have now been formally issued by the International Criminal Court. These were requested by the Chief Prosecutor back in May:
Good. Do war crimes, find out.
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Apologies for the quite possibly silly question but why exactly is the US so blindly pro-Israel? BBC News is reporting Biden says the ICC warrant for Netanyahu is âoutrageousâ.
Surely the logical line to take is âHamas is a terror group and bad people. Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians in the name of self defence, the leadership are also bad peopleâ.
Rather than the worn out line of âIsrael has a right to defend itself (regardless of civilian casualties and inducing a famine)â.
Not just the US, we are too in a lot of ways.
Fundamentally, itâs a very strategic location to have an ally. And keeping that ally militarily strong is a good thing from the POV of the US Gov. Israelâs location makes it a good staging ground to access Iran/Iraq/Syria/Afghanistan etc.
The US is blindly pro-Israel because itâs a strong asset.
Doesnât make it right though.
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Strategic location and the only democracy in the region.
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Internal Politics, the pro-Israel lobby is powerful in American politics.
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Financial, Israel spends a lot of money in the US, especially in defence industryâs.
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Self interest, US Presidents arenât fond of the idea of the ICC judging any US citizen especially not a head of State, opposing them on things like this helps to undermine the institution in case they ever put out a warrant for a US Citizen.
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Thatâs a drastic oversimplification at best, anti-Semitic disinformation at worst.
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Can we not fall into the trap of automatically labelling any criticism of Israel as anti-semitic?
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What is antisemitism?
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Oh, no, I expect every nation to not act like Israel is right now with regards to civilians.
Thatâs a lazy definition designed to delegitimise any criticism of Israel.
If thatâs the case, then we could equally describe a lot of criticism of many Islamic countries as islamophobic too.
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Does that include us in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc?
Yes, of course it does. Killing civilians is bad, havenât you heard?
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Another oversimplification. Killing civilians is bad, yes, but not always illegal and certainly not avoidable.
Far from âindiscriminately killing civiliansâ, the IDF is following the same if not stricter restrictions than we did in those areas. Discriminating military targets can be difficult in complex environments, but civilians are being killed because Hamas and Hezbollah are deliberately putting them in harmâs way: in the hope that some sap blames Israel.
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Thatâs your opinion.
The International Criminal Court presently is minded to disagree. Iâm more inclined to agree with them, and if Netanyahu is so confident of his position, he should have a trial.
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Iâm happy to contribute a thought on this, even though Iâm identifiable.
My last full time role was as a cultural advisor / outreach officer for defence and I had fairly close contact with this stuff with an eye on both people and also cultural property protection.
Iâll cut through the chaff by going for a really clear example. There are more, but we donât need to go further.
In the early days, Israeli government spokespeople were openly talking about eradicating the population, constantly. That is not proportionate as a response to the attack that took place.
It also isnât acceptable to paint a whole population as the enemy. We pick our leadership based on who a very small cohort of the population vote for, and it results in vitriolic hatred between camps at times. It would be very unwise to demonise an entire population under any circumstances.
In the early days, Kier Starmer was also pressed on whether blocking food, water, and electricity to the civilian population was acceptable. It isnât. Itâs a very clear war crime.
You can be entirely on the Israeli governmentâs side in general terms if you want, but you cannot argue they havenât deliberately committed war crimes because theyâve declared their intent and then followed through.
If Russia did any of these things, theyâd be roundly condemned.
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Israel is also the only democratic elected government in the area with the others being dictatorships or theocracies or corrupt âdemocracyâ which are effect oligarchies.
Israel tended to be more influenced by the US & UK with the others being influenced by Russia & communist aligned states.
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Part of the tensions is that this is what Hamas, Hezbollah & countries such as Iran have advocated for the state of Israel - that it should be exterminated. They have frequently stated this position for a number of decades and have even attempted to do so.
People & countries are shaped by their experiences- Israel has been consistently under attack & hurt several times.
The rape & murder of the hostages in October last year (some of whom were at a peace festival advocating for peaceful relations) caused so much anger & horror that the red mist descended.
More should have been done then supporting Israelâs right to self defence but cautioning against let anger & hurt cloud judgement resulting in a âwhat have I done momentâ
Hamas/hezbollah/iran/russia & to an extent Israel have been in the too difficult box for a while to challenge - this is whatâs causing the conflict as itâs now needs to be resolved.
I do wonder if the hamas attack was encouraged to distract people from Ukraine/russia which I think Israel actually offered to mediate.
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Cheychna - they did, they were, nothing else happened, Russia continued & the area was ethnically cleansed.
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We agree this is wrong, therefore Israeli government leaders should be held to account. The standards you walk by are the standards you accept.
What better deterrent than to see leaders tried for their war crimes.
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I have no doubt.
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That they are removed from office by their own nations & tried there?
Israel isnât a member of the ICC nor is the US or Russia.
Laws require people to accept them as binding & that there is an enforcement mechanism that can be used.
International laws very often arenât easily enforced & democracies should have the checks & balances to prevent things getting to that stage anyway.
In short international law is only really enforced after the fact & when it suits the interests of nations & itâs more treaties than a codified legal code.
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