Israeli leaders have been nervously fussing over the possibility that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issues arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials of the Jewish state. The United States has rushed to defend its key Middle Eastern ally: let the ICC do whatever and wherever it wants, but hands off from Israel!
The formal reasons for the investigation are inexplicably clear to everyone. This is unprecedented brutality of the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza as it has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, as well as Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid for the besieged local residents. The world regards this as genocide.
Prime Minister Netanyahu asked US President Biden to help prevent the International Criminal Court from issuing arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials over the war in Gaza, America’s Axios portal reported. "Israeli officials have grown increasingly worried over the last two weeks that the ICC is preparing to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi," Axios writes.
US officials say they have no explicit information on whether the ICC intends to issue arrest warrants (against Netanyahu and others), but suggest there is pressure on the part of NGOs and several ICC member-states to require arrest. An unnamed White House official declined to comment on the details of Netanyahu's telephone conversation with Biden, but told Axios: "As we have publicly said many times, the ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation and we do not support its investigation." In a word, the United States has stood up in defense of Netanyahu, demonstrating utter indifference to the fate of Palestinians dying under IDF’s barbaric shelling.
Amid his complete impunity, Netanyahu posted the following on his well-known social media account: “Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense… While the ICC will not affect Israel’s actions, it would set a dangerous precedent that threatens the soldiers and officials of all democracies fighting savage terrorism and wanton aggression." Sakes alive! Let the whole world watch Israel and learn how to kill civilians, declaring them terrorists.
Given the Western structures’ (particularly ICC’s) subordination to Washington, one may safely assume that after the United States has voiced its stance on the issue, chances are slim for really issuing arrest warrants фпфштые Netanyahu and his subordinates over their atrocities in Gaza. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) has made it clear that the United States does enjoy the power to persuade its partners to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the very treaty that entered into force in 2002 and established the ICC. Once gone, what is an ICC not recognized by the entire West?
In this context, it would be a good idea to recall the seemingly weird selectivity of ICC’s interest. Western countries always manage to somehow avoid its trials, with those to blame being states of the Global South alone. In 2019, the ICC abandoned its investigation into American war crimes in Afghanistan, after the United States pressed it to. In 2021, the court stopped inquiring war crimes by British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving the UK to deal with that on its own. There was surely no one held accountable. Apart from Iraq and Afghanistan, Western countries have shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Libya, Syria, Yemen, not to mention Yugoslavia. But not a single ICC prosecutor does remember this. One could ask the ICC about its intent to investigate the Nord Stream blasts and prospects for finding the culprit. But these are mere rhetorical questions.
At the same time, on a tip-off by Western “police batons,” the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Absurd accusations have been brought against the head of the Russian state for the “illegal deportation of children from Ukraine’s occupied territories to Russia.” The one to catch hell along with Putin was Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. And yet, everyone knows that Russia is literally saving Ukrainian kids from Western traffickers and perverts of all shades.
The United States and the entire collective West have accused Russia of the whole bag of tricks as regards Ukraine, staging provocation shows like the one in Bucha. Still, the ICC does not see any shelling of civilians in Donetsk or Belgorod. And the IDF shoots up entire neighborhoods, killing children and women in Gaza, right in front of television cameras. And all of this is called a “legitimate fight against terrorism.”
The entire fuss around potential arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his IDF henchmen is apparently going to slowly subside. And the United States has once again demonstrated its use of double standards and absolute defiance of international law, which they have brought to heel and exploited at its sole discretion. The ICC’s behavior towards Israel has once again illustrated the all-round collapse of the hitherto monocentric system of global affairs, and erasure of all the borders, norms or “red lines”. This is a spectacular example of the long-felt need to build a new architecture of international relations, based on new rules of a multipolar world and new global institutions free from American dictate.
