Karim Khan said that he believes Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yehia Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
The prosecutor must request the warrants from a pre-trial panel of three judges, who take on average two months to consider the evidence and determine if the proceedings can move forward.
Israel is not a member of the court, and even if the arrest warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution. But Khan’s announcement deepens Israel’s isolation as it presses ahead with its war, and the threat of arrest could make it difficult for the Israeli leaders to travel abroad.
Both Sinwar and Deif are believed to be hiding in Gaza as Israel tries to hunt them down. But Haniyeh, the supreme leader of the Islamic militant group, is based in Qatar and frequently travels across the region.
Putting out arrest warrants on both of them is so smart. It’s a way to avoid people claiming they are taking sides or playing favorites or aiding terrorists or being in favor of genocide or whatever. Both leaders are culpable because both the IDF and Hamas have committed atrocities.
I agree, and I found it interesting that Israeli leaders were not accused of genocide or anything to do with their bombing campaign. Instead, it was the specific war crime of causing starvation due to their interference with humanitarian aid and food delivery. Kind of provides additional context for the US decision to build a floating pier off the Gaza coast.
That is Genocide, the UN tries not to use the general term whenever possible, and instead use the specific method of genocide. That way it’s a lot harder to No True Scotsman the issue. but If I remember correctly they also charged Extinction and Murder. Then in the supporting documents they talk about systematic bombing and creation of a famine.
No, genocide is an Article 6 charge. The ICC is perfectly willing to use that term, and in fact has explicitly charged Omar al Bashir with genocide under Article 6.
In contrast, Netanyahu and Hamas leaders are accused under Articles 7 and 8. These articles respectively cover “Crimes against humanity” and “War crimes”, but they do not include genocide.
Both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders are accused of “crimes against humanity of murder and extermination” under Article 7.
Netanyahu is also accused of “intentionally using starvation of civilians” under Article 8, whereas Hamas leaders are also accused of “rape and other forms of sexual violence” under Article 8.
There are currently no charges based on the Israeli bombing campaign, but the ICC says this is “actively being investigated.”
It’s much easier to say that an intentional blockade of food is leading to starvation, and that is a clear war crime. Very simple argument, easier to prove.
Talking about a bombing campaign is more difficult when soldiers are mixed in with the civilians. We may be able to point at the situation and say “that’s clearly fucked up”, but courts don’t work that way. They have to acknowledge that in a war, the army is allowed to destroy the combatants of the enemy. A certain amount of collateral damage in the form of innocent lives lost is allowed by international law. This makes it all much murkier and more difficult to prove what is or is not a genuine war crime. They can’t wing it, or guess, or go by what it “looks like”, they have to prove it, which again, is difficult.
Starvation and depriving food aid though, very easy to prove.
We’ll see in time. Also not sure much will be done if they are. Remember the warrant for Putin was placed March of 2023. The impact on Russia so far seems about summed up to be “Putin can’t attend a D-Day remembrance, and he probably shouldn’t go see the Olympics, which he wouldn’t”
On the other hand, Israel is not Russia. Netanyahu’s vacation options effectively just dwindled to Israel and the US, with no layovers. The Hamas guys are already living as fugitives so not much changes there.
Putting out arrest warrants on both of them is so smart. It’s a way to avoid people claiming they are taking sides or playing favorites or aiding terrorists or being in favor of genocide or whatever.
It would be absurd and unjust to issue a warrant for only one of them. This was the right thing to do.
People’s take on this stuff always seems so naive to me. All war ever can be viewed as an attempt to arrest the leader of another group for “crimes”. When you get arrested… that means you lost the war. Winning a war means you didn’t get arrested.
The ICC is such a silly stupid waste of human attention. It’s like an idea that children came up with after watching Star Trek. It has no utility whatsoever for our species. We fight, we have winners and losers. If you start a fight with somebody stronger than you, you are gonna have a bad time. If you start a fight with someone weaker than you, others will think you are dishonorable. That doesn’t mean you get arrested.
This interpretation is a vague apologia for war crimes. This line of thinking means the Nuremberg Trials were a complete waste of time and the Nazis should not be held accountable.
ICC signatories have to arrest anyone with a warrant against them if they visit that country. That severely limits the number of state visits Netanyahu and others with warrants against them can make. That’s not a minor thing. Big deals are made during state visits.
Anybody who tries to arrest him will be at war with Israel and probably the US and probably a lot of other nations. They will break their treaty with ICC before they start that war and everyone fucking knows it. Why do we pretend?
Yeah you have no idea what the ICC is or what it does, nor what this warrant implies. You really believe that the ICC has done nothing? You should do some reading.
This warrant won’t go away and the countries that this guy can still visit with this warrant will b extremely limited. This also puts much more pressure on Israel as he is now officially lumped in with other convicted war criminals. This is a good thing ™
Yeah, for some reason too many people are having difficulty understanding that in this case, yes, the both side argument works quite well. Both Hamas and the Israeli government are horrible with the citizens on both side suffering
Definitely agree. Although I will add that Israel has likely played a large part in radicalizing many members of Hamas and their actions in Palestine have dwarfed the initial Hamas attack, no atrocity should go unpunished.
It’s worth clarifying that the Palestinian civilians are not Hamas though. It’s also misleading to say they elected them democratically, as the median Palestinian was a literal infant when the last election happened, and nearly half weren’t even born.
FFS so Netanyahu was extremely close to being pushed out of power and this dumbass pulls this stunt (just to get publicity) which only makes it easy for Netanyahu to make the case that “it’s us against the world”. He’s also seeking to prosecute Gallant, the guy that would most likely make the push to remove Netanyahu. So he’s pushing Gallant back towards falling back in line with Natanyahu.
Does this idiot want Netanyahu to stay in power? He’s basically throwing a lifeline to Bibi while throwing away the credibility of the ICC. Never attribute to malice and all that, so likely just a moron.
Fuck, I was starting to have some hope the Netanyahu could be gone in the next few weeks and this guy is pulling out all the stops to keep him in power. All to get his face on TV.
What the fuck kind of argument is this? Courts aren’t supposed to play politics, they are supposed to enforce the law. And if you want to do that in a genocide case you have to prove intent. Gallant made several public statements that can interpreted in that way.
The position of support for creating a famine (or not giving a shit to stop it) seems to have wider support than just Bibi. This guy’s move puts in focus that creating a famine is a war crime, and he’s forcing the Israelis players to face that and state their support or lack thereof clearly. Getting rid of Bibi alone might not increase the aid in Gaza. If the other party leaders aren’t willing to throw Bibi and Gallant under the bus for this and/or shift gears on aid, then perhaps the Israeli political class is too far gone and the world should increase the pressure till someone gets it and starts telling the Israeli public that what’s happening is wrong and is extremely counterproductive for Israel as whole.
Also, some polling shows Bibi’s coalition being neck and neck with the alternative so the narrative that Bibi is certain to be ejected by Israel’s democracy isn’t so solid.
Israel asked for help from Arab countries in providing support in dealing with the humanitarian crisis. They laughed in the Israelis faces.
The problem is too many people are willing to let the Palestinians die in order to win some propaganda war against Israel. I don’t feel like anyone really cares about Palestinians. They’d rather Palestinians die so they can have proof Israel is evil.
Joe Biden has built a pier to provide aid. This is more than anyone else has done to prevent famine. But the propaganda says he’s “Genocide Joe”.
I’ve seen stickers around the town where I live calling him “Jihad Joe” for helping the Palestinians. He gets hate coming and going, meanwhile thousands of tons of aid are reaching the people of Gaza because of him.
I’ve always said the Pro-Palestine crowd and the MAGAs are basically the same people. Gotta ignore anything that doesn’t conform to whichever narrative they’ve gotten sucked into.
“You have to finish up your war. You have to finish it up. You’ve got to get it done,” he said in an interview with Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. “We’ve got to get to peace. You can’t have this going on, and I will say Israel has to be very careful because you are losing a lot of the world. You are losing a lot of support.”
I’ve always said the Pro-Palestine crowd and the MAGAs are basically the same people.
Why because you are an ideologically bankrupt centrist that finds it convenient to equate protestors desperately trying to stop a genocide with MAGA heads… who tried to violently overthrow the US government because it wasn’t hateful enough for them?
You aren’t welcome in the progressive coalition if you desire to ignore reality in favor of a “both sides” narrative to the degree you are doing. We are talking about a genocide here and you are saying the people trying to stop it are crazy, violent hateful extremists who are obsessed with hurting trans people for no reason, fucking over women and taking power away from everybody but white men.
The pier is having trouble getting aid past the Israeli offensive, but over 1000 tons have already been airdropped, and once logistics are worked out for the pier it’s expected to deliver 500 tons of aid per day.
Can we talk about a story that’s fallen through the cracks here? CNN claiming this as an exclusive is madness. Who do these people think they are? And should the ICC issue arrest warrants about it? 😉
They changed it to that considerably less bonkers headline. Perhaps because they became of aware of their legal exposure under international laws against poor taste…? 🧐
“Let me be clear,” the president said in the statement, “whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”
Yeah, Trump certainly helped stabilize the area by moving the Embassy. And that mid-east peace plan his SIL got paid $2 billion for was worth every cent.
I finally “learned” the rules of cricket, and now understand why Americans created baseball. A game takes a fucking week‽‽ We don’t have time for that shit!
iirc Hitler had it banned from Germany after learning the week long match against England ended with no result lmao.
Anyways that’s the test cricket format. The typical game is ODI which lasts about 7 hours, and the world cup happening this June is T20I which lasts 2.5 hours and is the most exciting to watch.
Slobodan Milošević was put to trial under a parallel organization, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The ICC didn’t exist yet when the ICTY was founded.
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