SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
karim khan
'Not for Long,' Says Israeli Defense Minister After Hezbollah Names New Leader
"The road to your arrest and The Hague won't be long either, you genocidal war criminal," one observer retorted.
Oct 29, 2024
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday on social media that Hezbollah's pick of Naim Qassem to lead the Lebanon-based political and paramilitary group would be "temporary"—a remark seen by many as an assassination threat.
Hezbollah tapped Qassem, its longtime deputy chief, to lead the group following Israel's assassination of former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last month.
"Temporary appointment. Not for long," Gallant said on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, in response to Hezbollah's move.
The state of Israel's official Arabic X account said Qassem's "tenure in this position may be the shortest in the history of this terrorist organization if he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors."
"There is no solution in Lebanon except to dismantle this organization as a military force," the account added.
Since earlier this month, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion accompanied by a massive ongoing bombing campaign against Lebanon, nearly 2,800 Lebanese have been killed and more than 12,700 others injured, the country's Ministry of Health said Tuesday. The ministry added that 82 Lebanese have been killed and another 180 injured over the past 24 hours alone.
Since shortly after October 7, 2023—when Hamas led the deadliest single attack on Israel in its history—Hezbollah has been launching rockets and other projectiles at Lebanon's southern neighbor, killing and wounding scores of Israelis.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands is currently
weighing whether to approve Prosecutor Karim Khan's application for warrants to arrest Gallant—who responded to the Hamas-led attack by ordering a "complete siege" of Gaza that has been blamed for the starvation and sickening of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Khan also sought ICC arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, at least two of whom have been assassinated by Israel.
Over 388 days, Israeli forces have killed at least 43,020 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. At least 101,100 others have been wounded. More than 10,000 Palestinians are also missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of Gaza. Almost everyone in the embattled Gaza Strip has been forcibly displaced, often multiple times.
Responding to Gallant's threat, Somali-Australian journalist Najat Abdi said on X that "the road to your arrest and The Hague won't be long either, you genocidal war criminal."
Gallant's remarks came amid reports that Israeli and Hezbollah negotiators are "in the advanced stages" of hammering out cease-fire agreement that would lead to Israeli troops withdrawing from Lebanon, where they have been suffering high casualties at the hands of Hezbollah fighters.
One important unanswered question is whether Hezbollah will accept a deal to end hostilities with Israel without a cease-fire in Gaza.
Keep ReadingShow Less
ICC Will Withdraw War Crimes Charges If Sinwar Confirmed Dead. Also: Netanyahu Still Alive
"The ICC's credibility is hanging by a thread," warned one former United Nations official in response to the court's delay in deciding whether to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
Oct 17, 2024
The office of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan said Thursday that it is "aware of the reports" that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was assassinated by Israeli forces in Gaza, adding that it would withdraw its request for an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the October 7, 2023 attack and imprisonment of hostages if Sinwar's death is confirmed.
"In line with standard practice, the office will take relevant action if sufficient information is received confirming his death," Khan's division said of Sinwar, according toThe Associated Press.
Israeli authorities said DNA, fingerprints, and dental records confirm Sinwar's death.
The announcement left some international critics frustrated at the ICC's delay in issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, more than a year after Israel began its bombardment of Gaza.
In May, Khan announced that he had formally applied for warrants to arrest Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their role "in the crimes of causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict."
Khan also said he was seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders: Sinwar, former political leader Ismail Haniyeh, and al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged war crimes including extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape, torture, and other violations of international law.
Haniyeh was assassinated in late July by Israeli operatives in Tehran, Iran. Israel claims to have also killed Al-Masri, although this has not been confirmed.
In a Thursday evening address, Netanyahu asserted that "Hamas will no longer rule Gaza. This is the beginning of the day after Hamas."
"This is an opportunity for you, the residents of Gaza, to finally break free from its tyranny," he added in an appeal to Palestinians in the embattled strip—more than 150,000 of whom have been killed or wounded in a war for which Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Netanyahu's government allowed Hamas—which Israel propped up for years in a bid to counterbalance the power of the Palestinian National Authority—to receive billions of dollars in cash payments via Qatar.
U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sinwar's reported assassination that "this is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world."
Biden claimed U.S. involvement in efforts to find and kill Sinwar.
"Shortly after the October 7 massacres, I directed special operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza," the president said. "With our intelligence help, the [Israel Defense Forces] relentlessly pursued Hamas' leaders, flushing them out of their hiding places and forcing them onto the run."
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, said during a Thursday press conference that "any terrorist who kills Americans, threatens the American people, or threatens our troops or our interests, know this: We will always bring you to justice."
"Israel has a right to defend itself, and the threat Hamas poses to Israel must be eliminated," Harris added. "Today, there is clear progress toward that goal. Hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated."
With the ICC accused of moving too slowly in pursuit of arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, Khan has urgedthe court to "urgently render its decisions" on his May applications.
Khan had some reason to tread carefully, as Israel waged a nearly decadelong intimidation campaign against former ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in response to her pursuit of justice for Israeli war criminals.
U.S. lawmakers have also threatened to sanction ICC officials who seek to hold Israeli leaders accountable for violations of international law, and in June dozens of House Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in passing H.R. 8282, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which would sanction ICC personnel involved in efforts to bring Israeli leaders to justice.
In an opinion piece published earlier this week by Al Jazeera, former United Nations official Moncef Khane wrote that "the ICC's credibility is hanging by a thread."
"It took Khan no less than seven months to recommend to the court's pre-trial chamber the issuance of warrants of arrest for Netanyahu and Gallant, notwithstanding a rather formidable amount of evidence of their personal responsibility in the war crimes perpetrated in Gaza," he noted.
"Now that he has done his duty, it is for the three sitting judges of the pre-trial chamber to decide whether to issue the warrants or not," Khane added. "The glaring and extraordinary amount of evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and crime of aggression is such that were they to abscond from their responsibility, they would ring the death knell of the ICC."
Keep ReadingShow Less
War Criminal Netanyahu Deflects With False Charges of Antisemitism
Proclaiming Israel and its conduct above reproach by framing all criticism as antisemitism is mutually harmful to Jews and Palestinians.
Oct 02, 2024
Remember the summer of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. That night in August when white nationalists marched through the campus of the University of Virginia in a rally dubbed Unite the Right carrying torches, with some carrying flags with the Nazi black swastika and some chanting the Nazi slogan “Blood and soil” and, also, “Jews will not replace us.” Manifest antisemitism at its core.
Remember also in October 2018 the mass murder at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh of 11 Jewish worshippers by a lone gunman filled with hatred toward Jews. That was also antisemitism at its core.
Remember also in October 2018 the mass murder at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh of 11 Jewish worshippers by a lone gunman filled with hatred toward Jews. That was also antisemitism at its core.
And centuries before there was when King Edward I ordered the expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290. Then there was the plague in the 14th century, the Black Death, propelling the story that Jews were the culprit by poisoning wells; a story some argue led to the “Medieval Holocaust.” These events are among others through history of Jews being persecuted.
Then there is May of this year when chief prosecutor Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza war. Charges Netanyahu in absolute fashion, and erroneously, characterized as antisemitic in his video statement responding to Khan’s announcement, saying:
Israel is waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust... Mr. Khan takes his place among the great antisemites in modern times. He now stands alongside those infamous German judges who donned their robes and upheld laws that denied the Jewish people their most basic rights and enabled the Nazis to perpetrate the worst crime in history.
Quite an accusation in Prime Minister Netanyahu comparing Mr. Khan to enablers of the Holocaust. Quite an accusation given Netanyahu failed to mention Khan was also seeking the arrest of the three principal leaders of Hamas for war crimes and crimes against humanity primarily in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
In interviews in September with BBC’s Nick Robinson and then with Newsweek, prosecutor Karim Khan discussed his actions as a necessary equal application of international law. In his interview with Newsweek, Khan said:
Throughout history, we see that international law has been applied in a haphazard manner. It has not been applied evenly. And we’re seeing simply now vividly the unequal application of the law, particularly because of where we are. The world is connected…that it must be that all life matters equally. And there are certain situations that have developed in which it seems to be that powerful people think it’s a law-free zone, and we have to show that law applies everywhere. It’s not something that you can take it or leave it. It’s not an à la carte menu. You have to accept law in its totality if we’re not going to have a Wild West developing or widening in which you can grab what you want and do what you want to anybody that’s less powerful than you.
Then Mr. Khan added:
And whether they’re the families in the kibbutzim that are mourning the people killed from the seventh of October, or that are so horrendously being kept today… or it’s Palestinians in the West Bank or in Gaza, they have the right, not as a charity, not as a favor to them, but they have a right to be seen by the law.
Now juxtaposition the perspective of equality articulated by Khan in his interview with Newsweek with how Prime Minister Netanyahu ended his speech on September 27 before the United Nations General Assembly. After framing Iran the pivotal enemy in the Middle East, Netanyahu concluded by portraying the U.N. itself as a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” For starters, he said this:
The singling out of the one and only Jewish state continues to be a moral stain on the United Nations. It has made this once-respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere. But for the Palestinians, this U.N. house of darkness is home court. They know that in this swamp of antisemitic bile, there’s an automatic majority willing to demonize the Jewish state for anything. In this anti-Israel flat-Earth society, any false charge, any outlandish allegation can muster a majority.
Then Netanyahu added:
And given the antisemitism at the U.N., it should surprise no one that the prosecutor at the ICC, one of the U.N.’s affiliated organs, is considering issuing arrest warrants against me and Israel’s defense minister, the democratically elected leaders of the democratic state of Israel.
The ICC prosecutor’s rush to judgment… is hard to explain by anything other than pure antisemitism.
Netanyahu’s persistent charge of antisemitism leveled against anyone who criticizes Israel leads to this conclusion: Accusations of antisemitism are just another weapon in Netanyahu’s, if not Israel’s, arsenal.
Netanyahu’s weaponization of accusations of antisemitism is a dangerous double-edged sword. It could weaken the legitimacy of efforts to eliminate demonstrable antisemitism and the bigoted and often violent hatred toward Jewish people. On the other hand, Netanyahu’s weaponization also may legitimate hatred toward Palestinians and toward those, even in the Jewish community, who support equality and self-determination for Palestinians. The latter is Netanyahu’s explicit purpose in his rhetoric; that is, portraying anyone who supports Palestinian equality as antisemitic.
Netanyahu’s weaponization of charges of antisemitism has no relationship to the working definition of antisemitism developed by member states in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the United States and Israel among them. This is the definition used by the U.S. State Department.
The IHRA delineated examples of behavior and activities considered antisemitic encompassed in its definition. Targeting Israel only because it represents a Jewish collectively was one. But as IHRA also states, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
ICC’s chief prosecutor Khan in his aforementioned interviews plainly states seeking the arrest of both Israel and Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity represents equity in application of international law.
Then also, remember the international criticism of apartheid in South Africa. Such rings similar to criticisms of the Middle East version of apartheid in Israel. Similar criticism; not antisemitic.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular