Imperialism
Israel
Palestine
Fig. 1. The ruins of a terminal at the Gaza airport. Image by Said Khatib (Agence France-Presse) on September 9, 2018, via the Times of Israel,[1] fair use.
Israel has reached a dead end:
The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Monday.
Khan said the ICC is also seeking warrants for Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders — Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades and better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader.[2]
The [International Criminal Court] is the only permanent international court that wields power to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Its announcement Monday was historic: Although Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, upon which the court was founded, the arrest warrants nonetheless shroud the country’s senior leaders with deep stigmatization.
Figures with outstanding ICC arrest warrants include Russian President Vladimir Putin, for the crime of unlawful deportation and population transfer from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, and the deposed president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and genocide.
A panel of ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application Monday for new arrest warrants.[3]
It’s the end of the road for Joe Biden as well. He can use the full power of his administration and probably the U.S. Congress to deny what, as Mohamad Bazzi notes, is apparent to the whole world.[4] But because it is apparent to the whole world, the whole world knows what Biden is doing when he denies it.
Funny, I only see him in a suit and tie or, perhaps, a polo shirt. I wonder what that’s like down in the cesspool. (Honey! I can’t get the smell of shit out of this tie!)
On a related note, most of the updates to recent blog posts also appear here. That didn’t happen today (May 20, 2024), so for more, see the updates, most recently today, to my recent blog post, “On Joe Biden versus Binyamin Netanyahu, watch much more what they do, much less what they say.”
Mohamad Bazzi, “Biden wants progressives to believe he’s reining in Israel. He isn’t,” Guardian, May 20, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/20/biden-weapons-israel-gaza-war
Ron Kampeas, “ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 20, 2024, https://www.jta.org/2024/05/20/israel/international-criminal-court-prosecutor-seeks-arrest-warrants-for-benjamin-netanyahu-and-hamas-leaders
Ivana Kottasová and Madalena Araujo, “ICC seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes over October 7 attack and Gaza war,” Cable News Network, May 20, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/middleeast/icc-israel-hamas-arrest-warrant-war-crimes-intl/index.html
Louisa Loveluck, “ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Israel’s Netanyahu and Hamas’s Sinwar,” Washington Post, May 20, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/20/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/
Ishaan Tharoor, “Israel ‘is stuck inside Gaza’ as Palestinian suffering deepens,” Washington Post, May 20, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2024/05/20/israel-gaza-suffering-netanyahu-palestinian/
- [1]Times of Israel, “20 years after its opening, destroyed Gaza airport embodies grounded peace hopes,” September 12, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/20-years-after-its-opening-destroyed-gaza-airport-embodies-grounded-peace-hopes/↩
- [2]Ivana Kottasová and Madalena Araujo, “ICC seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes over October 7 attack and Gaza war,” Cable News Network, May 20, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/middleeast/icc-israel-hamas-arrest-warrant-war-crimes-intl/index.html↩
- [3]Louisa Loveluck, “ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Israel’s Netanyahu and Hamas’s Sinwar,” Washington Post, May 20, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/20/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/↩
- [4]Mohamad Bazzi, “Biden wants progressives to believe he’s reining in Israel. He isn’t,” Guardian, May 20, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/20/biden-weapons-israel-gaza-war↩