Israel is committing War Crimes
War crimes, dear people, war crimes. A bit of a long post, please forgive me.
By Michael Sfard* • Translated by Sol Salbe
The impact of the decision of the ICC panel to accede to the prosecutor’s request and issue arrest warrants against the prime minister and former defence minister has three components: it is a defining moment in Israel’s relations with international law; It is a moment that is meant to generate (but will not spawn) soul-searching in Israeli society, a community and a state that was born against the background of crimes committed against it and whose leaders are now accused of committing similar crimes against others. And it is very possible that it is also a critical moment in the short life of the court.
The details of the judges’ decision to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Galant are not public. The reason for this is that the suspects are not in custody and, as in any investigative process in any legal system in the world, the evidence is not disclosed before being interrogated (or put on trial). The concern is that the publication of a decision detailing the evidence and testimonies in the case could allow the suspects to engage in obstruction of justice (remember the British Guardian’s exposure of Yossi Cohen and the previous prosecutor of the court? The court has good reason to be suspicious of that.) Therefore, what we got today is a summary of the judges’ conclusions, not the entire decision. And the conclusions are horrifying. Trigger Warning: Atrocities.
There is prima facie evidence, the learned judges determined, that we starved the Gaza population as a method of warfare, that is, we deprived the millions living in the Gaza Strip of food, water, electricity, and necessary medical equipment (starving a people in international law is not only a denial of food, but a denial of anything needed for survival); that by depriving people of food and medicine we have caused the widespread and systematic death of many civilians (the crime is called “murder as a crime against humanity”) [my translation may not convey the exact legal term-tr] ; that in at least two cases, Gallant and Netanyahu were responsible for an attack that was deliberately aimed at civilian targets; And that we have caused thousands of Gazans terrible suffering which was not necessary from the point of view of the fighting. The judges point to an example of this suffering in that we prevented the entry of basic medical equipment, and thus many of the wounded were forced to undergo surgeries without anaesthesia.
This is not new, and neither is it really surprising to those who have opened their eyes and ears over the past year and glanced at reports in Haaretz, in a Local Call [AKA Sikha Mekomit] and in the international media.
Will it move Israelis? Probably not. But what is so terrible here is that the arrest warrants won’t move most Israelis, and not because they don’t believe that’s what we’ve done. It’s terrible because so many of them just don’t care. Because the wild incitement to genocide, expulsion, and the erasure of Gaza passed without any caring, considerate responses and took hold of our hearts. Because the dehumanisation of the Gazans has really succeeded in turning the people there into human dust in the eyes of many Israelis. We have become a nation in which many people cheer crimes of this nature and demand more.
Now, 124 countries, including all the countries of Western Europe, virtually all the countries of South America, Canada, Australia and others, are supposed to extradite Netanyahu and Galant to The Hague if either of them reaches their territory. If these countries fulfill their commitment as members of the court, the stench of our prime minister’s proverbial leprosy will cling to the entire Israeli government establishment, as well as to all of us, Israelis. The arrest warrants paint the State of Israel in the dark colours of a perpetrator of atrocities of the kind that humanity pledged, on top of the ruins of World War II, that will not happen again, and certainly will not go unpunished. This labelling will greatly aid and intensify the struggles being waged in many countries around the world, even before the arrest warrants were issued, to end relations with Israel, to sever cultural relations, trade relations, and especially the arms trade.
However, the arrest warrants are also, incomparably, the biggest test, that the court would have to endure since its inception. Hitherto, the court had dealt virtually exclusively with leaders of militias or African countries, prompting the accusation more than once of being “big heroes over the feeble”. The only exception being the extraordinary arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin but that is also in fact an arrest warrant against an enemy of the Western world. So for the first time the court has targeted a Western ally. What do you mean an ally? Israel is the best friend of the biggest bully in the world. With the United States on its side and when Trump is about to enter the White House, the court has made a move that threatens its very existence — no less. Sanctions against its judges and the prosecution team are not the greatest danger to its existence, but rather diplomatic moves that the Trumpist United States may initiate in order to isolate the court, deprive it of finances, and persuade countries to cancel their membership in it, or at least commit not to extradite US allies.
Therefore, it is worth looking in the coming hours and days, mainly at European countries. They are the political force that protects the court and are also its main funders. Will Germany blink first?
And we haven’t said anything about the Israeli legal system yet. The arrest warrants, which join the orders issued by the International Court of Justice in the genocide case initiated by South Africa, and the advisory opinion of the same court, which determined that the Occupation is illegal, are all colossal expressions of distrust by the international legal system in the Israeli legal system.
And there is a good reason for this distrust. For years, human rights organizsations have been crying out that the Israeli law enforcement system grants immunity to anyone who harms Palestinians, including soldiers and settlers.
Israel claims to be the representative of the Jewish people. Today, its deeds tarnish the history of one of the nations that was the biggest victim of heinous crimes, with the mark of Cain of its persecutors.
Michael Sfard (Hebrew: מיכאל ספרד; born 1972) is an Israeli lawyer and political activist specializing in international human rights law and the laws of war. He has served as counsel in various cases on these topics in Israel. Sfard has represented a variety of Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organizations, movements and activists at the Israeli Supreme Court.
