Israel, the ICC and a Judge Without Judgment - by Fiamma Nirenstein

All this, regrettably during these times of the Coronavirus, in which Israel valiantly fights for its own life and that of its neighbors, even those of Hamas (by the way, Mrs. Bensouda could perhaps recognize the following: there are two Palestinian States, one in Ramallah and one in Gaza).

Fiamma Nirenstein..
FiammaNirenstein.com..
03 May '20..
Link: http://www.fiammanirenstein.com/articoli.asp?Categoria=5&Id=4560

It is deeply distressing that in the midst of the global Coronavirus crisis there are those in the Western media who have insinuated that the Jews, or rather, Israel, have spread of the virus. More painful, however, is that Mrs Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), marches ahead with charges against Israel for war crimes. In order to do so she had to establish that "Palestine" is a state. She did so, so she can, according to the ICC’s unusual and amazing rules, espouse her anti-Israel animus. She embraced a stance contested by dozens of experts and institutions, including the German government.

The ICC prosecutor’s history is very political. The United States has revoked her entry visa due to her positions of continuing prejudice against Israel and the United States. Those who support the Palestinian position are the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Palestine was accepted into the ICC Assembly of State Parties in 2015, and Bensouda claims she didn’t receive any formal objections. The truth, however, is that Canada filed a formal objection and the Netherlands, Germany, and England had all given speeches against Palestine joining.

The ICC statute limits its jurisdiction to the member states. Today, there is no Palestinian state, the decision was made as a political means of advancing Palestinian demands and various anti-Israeli groups, as well as undermines and pre-determines any negotiation between the parties.

As the ICC moves to destroy the very international law it was created to uphold - by Evelyn Gordon

All law is based on two fundamental principles: that compliance is possible without leaving yourself or your country vulnerable to destruction; and that compliance protects you from legal trouble. If those two criteria aren’t met, nobody would have any reason to obey the law. The ICC’s decision to prosecute Israel eviscerates both those principles. And as such, it’s liable to destroy the very international law it was created to uphold.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
18 March '20..

March 16 was the deadline for filing briefs on whether the International Criminal Court should recognize Palestine as a state. But important though that question is, the ICC prosecutor’s decision to open a criminal investigation against Israel poses a much bigger problem: Contrary to the court’s stated mission of trying to reduce the harm caused by war, it may well result in even higher casualties and more extensive property damage.

Like all Western countries, Israel makes great efforts to uphold customary laws of war, including by trying to minimize civilian casualties. As a group of high-ranking Western military experts wrote in a report on the Hamas-Israel war of 2014, Israel “met and in some respects exceeded the highest standards we set for our own nations’ militaries.” In fact, Israel has historically caused fewer civilian casualties and less property damage than other Western armies.

Many Israelis actually resent this, arguing that the restrictions imposed on the army’s use of force put Israel’s own soldiers and civilians at greater risk. And the Israel Defense Forces’ vehement denials can’t necessarily be taken at face value since it would hardly admit to putting Israelis at risk. Yet even assuming these denials are truthful, the fact that many Israelis believe otherwise means that the army is under constant pressure to be less stringent about using force.

Until now, however, it has had a strong counter-argument: These restrictions aren’t so onerous as to make effective military action impossible, and obeying them keeps our soldiers and politicians out of international legal trouble. Consequently, it’s worth the effort.

But now, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has declared that all the IDF’s efforts were worthless:

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Well, the Palestinian Authority ignored J Street’s advice - by Stephen M. Flatow

The subject may come back to bite the organization with finger-pointing by the International Criminal Court regarding the presence of Jews in Jerusalem.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
03 January '19..

A few years ago, when Palestinian Arab leaders were threatening to enlist the International Criminal Court (ICC) in their war against Israel, J Street expressed “understanding” at “the Palestinians’ frustration.”

But now that the ICC is taking action that could lead to J Street’s leaders being branded “war criminals,” the J Streeters have fallen silent. What an agonizing moment this must be for the Jewish far-left!

This ugly mess began several years ago, when the Palestinian Authority began joining various international organizations and signing international treaties in order to use them against Israel. In January 2015, the P.A. signed the Rome Statute, which created the ICC.

Here’s what J Street said a few years ago: “With regard to the International Criminal Court (ICC), while we understand Palestinians’ frustration at the ongoing occupation and the lack of a path to ending it, we regard attempts to bring cases before the ICC to be unhelpful. Such action stands to set off a spiral of counterproductive actions and leave the Palestinian people no closer to freedom and self-determination.”

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Notice how J Street refused to characterize the P.A. using the ICC against Israel as immoral or wrong. In fact, J Street did not even acknowledge that such hostile actions by the P.A. are a blatant violation of the Oslo Accords. No, J Street’s only concern was that such P.A. action would lead to “counterproductive actions” by Israel.

It seems that J Street has no problem with the principle of the P.A. and its allies waging international legal warfare against Israel. It’s just concerned that the tactic might not succeed in bludgeoning Israel into making more concessions to the Arabs.

Well, the P.A. ignored J Street’s advice.

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There is no alternative but for Israel to take on the ICC head-on - by Eldad Beck

Executive Director of UN Watch Hillel Neuer talks to Israel Hayom about the challenges facing Israel in the international arena, where facts and common sense are ignored in favor of pro-Palestinian politics.

Hillel Neuer

Eldad Beck..
Israel Hayom..
27 December '19..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/12/27/they-say-every-jewish-settler-is-a-war-criminal/

It's doubtful there is anyone who can better describe the hypocrisy of international institutions when it comes to Israel better than Hillel Neuer. The 49-year-old Jewish legal scholar, born in Canada, has been on the frontline against the UN for more than a decade as executive director of the nonprofit watchdog group UN Watch in Geneva. He established a coalition of civil organizations that are working to promote human rights in the darkest dictatorships in the world, whose governments hold key positions in the UN.

A week ago, the hypocrisy of the international system reached a new height with the announcement that Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda had decided there were sufficient grounds to open an investigation against Israel for alleged "war crimes."

Neuer says that there is no alternative but for Israel to take on the ICC head-on. He thinks that ICC judges cannot adopt a position that contradicts that of the UN, which has recognized the "state of Palestine," and will therefore decide on an official investigation against Israel that centers on the accusation of war crimes and is expected to address Israeli settlements over the Green Line – which is why Israel declined to join the ICC in the first place.

"Over a course of a few years, the prosecutor was conducting a preliminary investigation, in which the court started to probe accusations that Israel was committing war crimes," Neuer said. "Now the main question is whether the judges will decide that the ICC has the authority to launch a full-scale investigation. Israel's position is that the Palestinian Authority is not a state, and therefore cannot be a plaintiff in the court or give it judicial prerogative. According to Israel, the PA does not meet the criteria of international law to be considered a state and therefore has no control over territory. So there is a basic debate here about the kind of judicial authority the court has," he says.

There have already been two attempts to try Israel, or rather senior Israeli officials, in The Hague. In 2012, the court rejected a suit against Israel for alleged war crimes supposedly committed during Operation Cast Lead, on the basis that "Palestine" was not a state and therefore it had no authority to discuss petitions on the issue. Since then, Israel's enemies have been working to create a situation that would allow Israel to be attacked in The Hague: at the end of 2012, the UN General Assembly recognized "Palestine" as an observer nation. Given that, despite an outcry from Israel, the PA was able to join the ICC in April 2015, and then rushed to file a suit against Israel.

A few weeks ago, the ICC rejected a petition from the Comoro Islands to discuss alleged Israeli war crimes committed during the raid on the Mavi Marmara vessel in May 2010. Turkey, which has committed plenty of war crimes itself, is not a member of the ICC and couldn't sue Israel itself, but the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took care that the flotilla of which the Mavi Marmara was part sailed under the flag of another Muslim state, which was a member of the ICC and could therefore sue Israel. But the attempt failed.

Positions that became law

Neuer explains that this week's decision by the ICC presents a more complicated challenge for Israel.

"On one hand, we have the military conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, especially the recent clashes in the Gaza Strip and the accusations about war crimes being committed there. In this matter, Israel can say that it has a trusted military justice system that can and is authorized to handle these accusations itself, as other democracies do. The court can only take action as a last resort in instances where there is no credible justice system that can handle accusations of war crimes. It's clear that Israel is a democracy that is willing to put its highest-ranking officials on trials when necessary, and there are very few countries in the world that do that. So Israel can easily claim that the ICC has no authority to handle these issues," he says.

When it comes to the settlements, the picture is different.

"It was decided when the founding charter of the ICC was written, under pressure from Arab and Muslim states, that the transfer of a population to occupied areas would be considered a war crime," Neuer says.

"For Israel, building settlements is not, of course, a war crime. If a Jew builds a house in the Old City of Jerusalem, that is a Jew who is returning to the homeland of his forefathers in accordance with the principles of the Balfour Declaration."

"On the other hand, the UN now sees any Jew living beyond the Green Line, even in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, as committing a war crime. There is no differentiation between Gush Etzion, Psagot, or Hebron. According to the UN, the settlements are a war crime. Israel and its courts do not see them as a war crime. Therefore, it will be difficult for Israel to argue that its legal system can investigate this matter. Here, the ICC can say, 'If you don't intend to investigate, we will.'"

In effect, the ICC judges are being asked to make a political ruling about the status of Judea and Samaria, and east Jerusalem.

"They will say they are dealing with a legal issue, but of course, if we look at the wider picture, what is happening is that since 1967 the international community has found different ways of criminalizing Israel. It didn't happen in a single day. Gradually, a [legal] infrastructure arose that decided that Jews living in their ancestral homeland are war criminals according to law. This process occurred through UN resolutions and declarations of policy from the European Union, like the recent decision about labeling settlement goods.

"These positions turned into tools that are presented as international law, particularly UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of December 2016, which declared that the settlements were illegal. [Then-US President] Obama not only did not prevent it from passing, he encouraged it to be adopted. Its goal was to say that any Jew living over the Green Line is an occupier, even in east Jerusalem. So according to the UN and the ICC, Israel is in violation of international law."

The ICC: Just another way for the Palestinians to avoid peace - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The pending ICC prosecution of Israel is a travesty of justice. But the motive for this farce is that it provides an alternative to talks and an end to the war on Zionism.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
26 December '19..

The announcement by Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, that she is prepared to begin an investigation into Israeli “war crimes” was a significant victory for those who have sought to use the court to help delegitimize the Jewish state. Bensouda has asked the tribunal in The Hague for authorization to probe the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces during the 2014 Gaza War, as well as throughout Hamas’s efforts to breach the border fence as part of its “March of Return” Friday-afternoon campaign during the last two years.

What’s more, Bensouda is also seeking authorization to treat Jews living in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem as a war crime.

That the prosecutor also said that she was interested in investigating Hamas’s activities is being treated by some critics of Israel as evidence of her impartiality. But the brief that she seeks shows that her goal is to attack Israel, rather than to defend justice.

The focus of anger over Bensouda’s decision, however, should not be limited to the ICC. As outrageous as her stand may be, the reason this is happening is not just because a Gambian lawyer whose résumé includes a stint as the chief legal adviser to a brutal dictator decided to target the Jewish state. Rather, it’s just the latest evidence that the Palestinian Authority, which originated the complaint, would rather seek to wage legal war against Israel than to negotiate with it, and possibly end their century-long war on Zionism and the Jews.

(Continue to Full Column)

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Reality: There are no judges in The Hague - by Prof. Avi Bell

As long as Israel continues to treat the ICC as an entity operating with good intentions, rather than under a biased political and diplomatic agenda, it will continue to lose its fights.

 ..

Prof. Avi Bell
Israel Hayom..
24 December '19..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/there-are-no-judges-in-the-hague/

Israel's strategy for dealing with the International Criminal Court has collapsed.

Fatou Bensouda, the ICC's chief prosecutor, has already adopted doubtful legal arguments made by the Palestinians that: The PLO comprises a state; all parts of Israel that were under illegal occupation by Jordan and Egypt from 1948-1967 – including the Old City of Jerusalem – belong to the state of Palestine; Jewish settlements are an international crime; and IDF soldiers are war criminals. Therefore, we already know what the results of the "investigation" will be and what "evidence" will be collected.

Meanwhile, the many crimes by the Palestinians, from torture and anti-Jewish apartheid policy to acts of terrorism and killing and the intent to commit genocide are not considered enough of a basis for the ICC prosecution to launch an investigation.

The restriction that Bensouda attached to her decision to proceed with an investigation into alleged Israeli "war crimes" only makes the situation worse. When she announced the investigation, she asked three judges to confirm that a state of Palestine existed that was sovereign over all parts of the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria as well as east Jerusalem. A year and a half ago, those same judges ruled that the prosecution needed to move ahead with another anti-Israel case, claims by Turkish allies on the Comoro Islands that the Shayetet commandos and the military command that oversaw them in the raid on the Mavi Marmara vessel in 2010 committed war crimes. We know what the ruling will be, and the ICC will become the first international tribunal to rule that the "state of Palestine" is sovereign over all disputed areas of Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria.

Legal Blindness, the International Criminal Court and Israel - by Daniel Pomerantz

Applying a unique law to Jews that is not applied to any other people or religion, is both illegal and racist.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
23 December '19..

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is supposed to prosecute perpetrators of the worst types of crimes, like genocide, mass deportation, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

At the request of the Palestinian Authority, the ICC’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced last week that she is prepared to open a formal inquiry into whether Israel has committed war crimes: by building residential communities, which are often called “settlements.” She’s also investigating alleged IDF crimes during the 2014 Gaza war and last year’s riots along the Israel-Gaza border. She is currently waiting for a final confirmation from the International Criminal Court’s judges that she has jurisdiction to investigate. But this week’s news focused primarily on the legality of settlements.

Much of the world calls the area in question the “West Bank,” a name applied by Jordan during its 19-year occupation from 1948 until 1967, and still used by much of the international community today. Previously the area was called, “Judea and Samaria,” after its ancient Jewish inhabitants. For now, I will refer to the area simply as the “disputed territories,” as they are the subject of a very real and ongoing, dispute.

This is not a question of whether Jewish settlements in the disputed territories are right or wrong, which is a topic of debate even among Israelis. Nor is it a question of whether Jews or Palestinians have historic, legal or emotional connections to this land. The question is whether building Jewish communities in the disputed territories is an illegal war crime.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) Takes Anti-Israel Bias to New Heights - by Evelyn Gordon

...Thus, in the interests of pursuing their anti-Israel vendetta, the pretrial judges have forced the court to squander years on a triviality, even as mass murderers around the globe go unpunished. They have thereby betrayed both the court’s stated mission and a fundamental principle of justice: that the magnitude of the ostensible crime should matter more than how much the judges dislike the perpetrator.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
29 November '18..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/icc-takes-anti-israel-bias-to-new-heights/

The International Criminal Court’s blatant anti-Israel bias is no secret. Just two months ago, I wrote about its decision to launch an unprecedented fishing expedition against Israel. Nevertheless, its latest decision raises bias to an art form—the art in question being farce. It also completely destroys any pretensions the court has left of serving its original purpose: Ensuring that the world’s worst crimes don’t go unpunished.

On November 15, the pretrial chamber of judges ordered the court’s prosecutor—for the second time—to reconsider her refusal to investigate Israel’s 2010 raid on a flotilla to Gaza. Demanding one reconsideration is rare. Demanding two is unheard of. No such option even exists in the ICC’s rulebook.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda appealed this ruling last week. But regardless of what the Appeals Chamber decides, it’s already too late to salvage the pretense that the court is an unbiased judicial institution and not a cesspool of anti-Israel prejudice.

To understand why, a review of the case is in order. In May 2010, a flotilla tried to break Israel’s legal blockade of Gaza. Israel intercepted most of the ships peacefully. But on one, according to the same UN inquiry that upheld the blockade’s legality, passengers attacked the soldiers with “fists, knives, chains, wooden clubs, iron rods, and slingshots,” seriously wounding nine. To protect themselves, the soldiers opened fire, killing ten people.

Comoros, whose flag that ship flew, filed a complaint against Israel over the incident in May 2013. In November 2014, Bensouda dismissed it. Despite concluding (wrongly) that the soldiers used excessive force, she said the fact that they opened fire only after being attacked and the low number of deaths made the incident insufficiently grave to warrant attention from a court created to prosecute major atrocities. But in July 2015, the pretrial chamber ordered her to reconsider—the first time it had ever overturned a prosecutor’s decision.

I dissected the judges’ egregious errors of both fact and law at the time, including their failure even to mention the passengers’ attack on the soldiers, which was central to Bensouda’s decision, and their astounding argument that the gravity of the case should be determined not by what happened, but by how much international “attention and concern” it attracted. Bensouda evidently found their ruling equally unpersuasive, since she appealed it. But after losing that appeal, she duly reconsidered.

War crimes, incendiary neighbors - by Arnold Roth

...Hard not to notice the tone of pride and enthusiasm as certain media outlets report on the incendiary attacks by Gazan Palestinian Arabs...Almost as if burning down the neighhbours' crops - or setting mountains of rubber tires ablaze and generating carcinogenic smoke and fumes - will get the attackers a better life.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
08 May '18..

People who have suffered the usually-minor indignity of having passers-by or neighbors flick a still-lit cigarette into their homes or gardens will have an advantage in relating to the latest technological 'breakthrough' to emerge from Gaza.

As Ynet reported on Monday evening ["Incendiary balloons from Gaza cause damage to Israeli fields", May 07, 2018]

Several incendiary balloons flown from the Gaza Strip on Monday afternoon caused fires in seven different locations on the Israeli side of the border. No one was hurt, but great damage was caused... The incendiary balloons, like incendiary kites, are affixed with an already-lit Molotov cocktail [fire bomb]... The westerly winds push the balloons, which are filled with helium gas, towards Israel. After a short while in the air, the fire from the Molotov cocktail causes the balloon to explode in midair, with the incendiary contraption dropping to the ground. The IDF has been working on a solution to thwart these contraptions by intercepting them using drones before they can land in Israel and cause damage.

At this point, we know of one such incendiary device igniting wheat fields on the land of Kibbutz Mefalsim in the Shaar HaNegev Regional Council. Another landed in the Eshkol region's Be'eri Forest, setting off a blaze. With spring turning to summer and harvest time, the economic losses are significant to the agricultural communities attacked by the Palestinian Arabs.

(Continue to Full Post)

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Israel’s constitutional identity crisis - by Caroline Glick

...Opponents of the bill argue that the law undermines the power of the Supreme Court and endangers Israel’s international standing. Proponents of the bill argue that Israel needs to ensure the primacy of the Knesset. They further argue that there is no point in bowing to the will of an international community that is constitutionally incapable of ever standing with Israel. In case you were wondering, proponents of the bill have it right.

Caroline Glick..
Carolineglick.com..
02 December '16..
Link: http://carolineglick.com/israels-constitutional-identity-crisis/..

Israel’s coalition crisis over the settlement’s regulation bill is not a normal power struggle between overweening politicians. It is not popularity contest between Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and his Kulanu Party and Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his Bayit Yehudi Party.

It is also not about contenders to the helm challenging Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s political primacy.

The settlement regulations bill proposes to extend the authority of the Military Government in Judea and Samaria to seize privately owned lands. That authority is now limited to seizure for military purposes. The bill would allow the Military Government to seize lands for the purpose of private construction as well.

The political fight over the bill is not merely a fight over the community of Amona, which will be destroyed by order of the High Court if the law isn’t passed before December 25.

The fight over the law is a fight about the character of Israel.

Opponents of the bill argue that the law undermines the power of the Supreme Court and endangers Israel’s international standing. Proponents of the bill argue that Israel needs to ensure the primacy of the Knesset. They further argue that there is no point in bowing to the will of an international community that is constitutionally incapable of ever standing with Israel.

In case you were wondering, proponents of the bill have it right.

The settlement regulation bill is not a radical bill. It is a liberal reform of a legal regime that harms the civil rights of both Palestinians and Israelis.

Palestinians today are denied their full property rights. Shortly after its establishment in 2004, the Palestinian Authority made selling land to Jews and Christians a capital offense. Dozens of Palestinians have been murdered over the past two decades in extrajudicial executions by both Palestinian security forces and by terrorist militias working hand in glove with Palestinian security forces for the “crime” of selling their land to Jews.

Earlier this year, the Israeli group Ad Kan documented employees of the European financed far left groups Ta’ayush and B’tselem conspiring to hand over to Palestinian forces a Palestinian land owner who expressed interest in selling his lands to Jews. During surreptitiously recorded exchanges, they acknowledged that PA would likely execute him.

The settlement regulation bill empowers the military commander to seize privately owned lands and compensate the owners. In other words, it provides a means for willing Palestinian sellers to sell their property to willing Jewish purchasers without risking the lives of the owners.

As I noted in a column on the subject of the bill last week, the legal opinion published by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit opposing the settlement regulation bill included four arguments. Prof. Avi Bell from Bar Ilan University School of Law rebutted all of Mandelblit’s claims in an article published two weeks ago in Yisrael Hayom.

As Bell showed, Mandelblit’s claim that the proposed law breaches international law is both irrelevant – since Knesset laws supersede international law, and at best arguable.

The International Court of Justice sham was exposed again - by Ariel Bolstein

....The ICC has fallen victim to the same plague that killed off international initiatives like the U.N., UNESCO and the International Court of Justice. All of these were introduced by decent people, noble souls who really and truly wanted to bring about tikkun olam and comprehensive peace. They started off as the initiatives of pure idealists, and were instantly hijacked by those with dark ulterior motives. The decision-making process in all of these forums is driven solely by political interests, and if some moral resolution nevertheless manages to pass -- as in the resolution calling for the arrest of Al-Bashir -- the anti-democratic majority will do everything it can to ensure it remains a dead letter. Israel was wise to not follow the way of fools and become a part of this process.

Ariel Bolstein..
Israel Hayom..
09 November '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17599

More than a few good souls hung their hopes on the International Criminal Court in The Hague, when it was established in 2002. There were even those dreamers who claimed that finally the appropriate forum for judging crimes against humanity and war criminals had been found, and that they would no longer be able to find refuge in their countries and escape the long arm of the law. Israel and the U.S., who recognized early on that the new platform would be used by an array of shadowy regimes, eventually becoming a weapon for the worst of criminals, faced criticism. And here we are. Only a few years have passed, and it is already clear that the Israelis and the Americans were right.

The current crisis began with the recent withdrawal of some African countries from the court. Other countries are expected to follow their lead, and none are hiding their reasons behind the move: an unwillingness to extradite Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, one of the worst tyrants of our time, and general anger over the court "hounding" Africans. If we translate this from the language of political correctness, we will get the real picture -- the principle of justice is the last thing that interests the absolute majority of the court's member nations. A huge portion of those members are far from democratic, and they have no interest in promoting human rights or punishing those who intrude on these rights.

(+Video) Help Stop Palestinian Television's Incitement to Murder!

There is precedent for a complaint such as this: The Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal ruled that incitement to murder and genocide is a war crime. Our goal is to recruit thousands of individuals from around the world to join in complaint against the heads of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation...Join thousands of others and demand the prosecution of Palestinian broadcasters for war crimes in the Hague.

Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center..
IsraelLawCenter.org..
02 March '16..

Shurat HaDin is going on the offense against those inciting to murder Jews. The extremist broadcasts on Palestinian Television have broken records in recent months. In the present wave of terror, many terrorists have been spurred into action after seeing provocative programs that call explicitly to kill Israelis.

Shurat HaDin has initiated a worldwide campaign to prosecute the heads of Palestinian Television for incitement. There is precedent for a complaint such as this: The Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal ruled that incitement to murder and genocide is a war crime. Our goal is to recruit thousands of individuals from around the world to join in complaint against the heads of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation. We are preparing to submit the complaint in the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

To join the complaint and demand the prosecution of the heads of Palestinian Television for war crimes go HERE.

Stop Palestinian Television's Incitement to Murder!


Join thousands of others and demand the prosecution of Palestinian broadcasters for war crimes in the Hague.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Showing How to Gut the Principles of Law in One Easy Verdict

...In my earlier post, I compared the majority ruling to something out of Alice in Wonderland. And in fact, the three elements cited above are precisely the elements that make the Queen of Hearts’ courtroom so arbitrary: The law is irrelevant; judgment depends solely on the whim of the rulers; and the same person is prosecutor, judge and jury. But the Queen of Hearts is actually preferable, because at least she’s honest about the arbitrary nature of her decisions: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” The ICC maintains an expensive taxpayer-funded legal bureaucracy in an effort to disguise it.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
20 July '15..

Any legal case has two main components – the facts and the law. In my last post, I analyzed the International Criminal Court’s disregard of salient facts in its ruling on Thursday overturning the chief prosecutor’s decision not to investigate Israel’s botched raid on a 2010 flotilla to Gaza. But the ruling was equally contemptuous of several fundamental legal principles.

The first of these is that judicial decisions should be dictated by law, not politics. The majority judges threw this principle out the window when they asserted that whether the alleged crime was sufficiently grave to merit ICC attention should depend not on what actually happened, but on the amount of “attention and concern that these events attracted” from the international community, as reflected in “several fact-finding efforts on behalf of States and the United Nations.” In other words, the ICC’s choice of cases will depend not on their objective legal merits, but on how many resolutions the dictators who dominate the U.N. Human Rights Council decide to devote to it.

As legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich aptly noted, the ICC is thereby “saying ‘drop dead’ to victims U.N. not interested in,” which is a travesty in and of itself: It means the court will spend its scarce resources investigating 10 people killed while attacking soldiers intercepting a blockade-busting flotilla, but ignore – to cite just one example – the tens of thousands of Syrian civilians killed by their own government’s barrel bombs.

No less appalling, however, is that this is a standard of justice used only in the most benighted regimes: Prosecutions will be based on neither facts nor law, but solely on whether they serve the interests of the politicians in power.

The second fundamental legal principle the decision guts is that the same person shouldn’t be prosecutor, judge and jury. Since a prosecutor is obviously invested in his own case, he cannot be an impartial judge.

The Collapse of the International Criminal Court

...With this ruling, the ICC has degraded itself to the condition of the UN Human Rights Council and other UN bodies. It has thrown law out the window to lend itself to politics and the pursuit of Israel. It has sent a message to the PLO that the door is open to go after Israeli officials. And it has put paid to the idea that a neutral and respected court of international criminal law can be created.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
17 July '15..

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was an experiment. From the beginning its potential success was threatened, as all United Nations-linked bodies are, by the danger of falling into UN Human Rights Council-like obsessions with Israel. Such actions would delegitimize the new ICC, certainly for Americans and anyone else taking a fair look at its activities.

The Court’s first prosecutor, the Argentine jurist Luis Moreno Ocampo, was well aware of this danger. He resisted it, whatever his personal views, in the interest of building the credibility of the institution. Same for his successor, the second and current prosecutor, the Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda. When various groups tried to get the ICC to take on the case of the Mavi Marmara (the Turkish vessel that tried to break the Israeli sea blockade of Gaza in 2010, with a resulting battle where 9 were killed), she looked into it and said no.

Such a decision by the Prosecutor has never been overridden in the ICC’s history–until now. And of course in a case involving Israel. In a 2-1 ruling the “Pre-Trial Chamber” set aside her decision and said the Prosecutor has to move forward with the case.

But what if she found no reason to do so, and no evidence suggesting crimes the ICC should prosecute? No matter; when Israel is concerned, new rules will be made up. Avi Bell, professor at Bar Ilan University’s Faculty of Law and the University of San Diego Law School, put it this way in The Times of Israel: under the new ruling,

The International Criminal Court Channels the Queen of Hearts on Israel

...In the Queen of Hearts’ courtroom, the rule is “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” The ICC judges, in contrast, are perfectly willing to let the verdict precede the sentence; they merely insist that said verdict exclude any evidence which might contradict their preconceived conclusions.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
17 July '15..

If the International Criminal Court ever had any pretensions of being a serious legal institution, they were effectively demolished by yesterday’s ruling overturning Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s decision not to investigate Israel’s botched raid on a 2010 flotilla to Gaza. Reading the ruling feels like falling down the rabbit hole straight into the Queen of Hearts’ courtroom, for many reasons. But here’s the one I found most astonishing: In a 27-page document devoted almost entirely to discussing whether the alleged Israeli crimes were grave enough to merit the court’s attention, not once did the majority judges mention one the most salient facts of the case: that flotilla passengers had attacked the Israeli soldiers with “fists, knives, chains, wooden clubs, iron rods, and slingshots with metal and glass projectiles,” causing nine soldiers serious injuries.

That fact appeared only in Judge Peter Kovacs’ dissent. Anyone reading the majority decision would conclude that the soldiers opened fire no reason whatsoever.

This is not a minor detail; it was central to Bensouda’s decision to close the case. She noted that the soldiers opened fire, ultimately killing 10 passengers, aboard only one of the flotilla’s seven ships – the one where passengers attacked them. That strongly indicates there was no deliberate plan to kill civilians; rather, the soldiers intended to peacefully intercept all the vessels, and the killings were the unpremeditated result of a chaotic combat situation that unexpectedly developed aboard one ship. Or in her words, “none of the information available suggests […] the intended object of the attack was the civilian passengers on board these vessels.”

The majority judges, however, dismiss that conclusion, asserting that the lack of casualties aboard the other ships doesn’t preclude the possibility that soldiers intended from the outset to kill the Mavi Marmara’s passengers. They then offer a string of wild suppositions to explain why soldiers might have wanted to perpetrate a massacre aboard that ship but not the others. Perhaps, they suggest gravely, it’s because the Mavi Marmara carried the most passengers. Or, perhaps because it carried no humanitarian aid. In any event, the soldiers clearly used more violence against the Mavi Marmara than against other ships that also refused their orders to halt, so “It is reasonable to consider these circumstances as possibly explaining that the Mavi Marmara was treated by the IDF differently from the other vessels of the flotilla from the outset.”

They'll do anything except make peace

The latest pathetic, and tragically boring, effort by the Palestinians to abuse the International Criminal Court against Israel just shows how doggedly opposed they are to real peace. Only Western bigots and enemies of peace could support it

The Commentator..
24 June '15..

If, by now, after all these years, you really wanted to do it -- and some surely will -- you could easily make a point by point refutation of the latest forlorn effort by the Palestinian leadership to divert all attention from their unending efforts to avoid making peace with the State of Israel.

If you can suppress the yawns, it's all about "Palestine's" foray into the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague over alleged Israeli violations of international law, ranging from "colonisation" on the West Bank to "war crimes" in Gaza and elsewhere.

They're due to, "hand over a file running to hundreds of pages" to the ICC on Thursday, as the Guardian glowingly reports it.

With Barack Obama in the White House, they're probably hoping it might create something more than a headache for the world's one and only Jewish state. But even if they do, what would this nonsense ultimately mean for Israel, international diplomacy, and the geo-politics of the Middle East?

No-one who backs decency for Israel should ever get complacent, but Obama will be gone by January 2017 and if he ended up in any way shape or form supporting the Palestinians on this lunacy, it would be knocked straight out of the sky by the next administration as soon as it took office.

The real issue to bear in mind here is that this ruse is just the latest in a pattern of conduct going back to the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

(Read Full Post)

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Imagine. The UN and EU Think Oslo Accords Bind One Party Only – Israel

...All of the above leads to one obvious question: If the UN and EU are going to deem Israeli-Palestinian agreements binding on Israel in every particular but not binding on the Palestinians at all, why on earth would Israel ever sign another?

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
19 January '15..

Between Friday’s announcement that the International Criminal Court has opened a “preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine” and Sunday’s airstrike that killed six Hezbollah operatives and an Iranian general, a seemingly minor Israel-related item at the United Nations Security Council last Thursday has been largely ignored. But it shouldn’t be, because it goes to the heart of what’s wrong with the world’s handling of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: According to both the UN and the European Union, signed Israeli-Palestinian agreements are binding on one party only – Israel.

At Thursday’s Security Council briefing, Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen slammed Israel for freezing tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority, declaring that this was “contrary to Israel’s obligations under the Paris Protocol of the Oslo Accords.” The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, made an identical claim 10 days earlier.

Though the claim is probably false, let’s assume for a moment that it’s true. The fact remains that Israel’s alleged violation of its “obligations under … the Oslo Accords” was in response to far greater violations of the Palestinians’ obligations under those same accords. Yet far from meriting any equivalent condemnation by the UN or the EU, the Palestinian violations were actively supported by both parties.

According to Article 31(7) of the 1995 Oslo II agreement (formally titled the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” This isn’t some trivial technicality; it constitutes the very heart of the Oslo Accords: that Israel and the Palestinians will resolve their differences through negotiations, not unilaterally.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians have grossly and repeatedly violated this clause, including by obtaining UN recognition as a nonmember observer state in 2012, applying to the Security Council for full UN membership last month and joining the ICC as a state party earlier this month. All these moves are aiming at unilaterally changing the status of the West Bank and Gaza from territories whose future will be determined through negotiations to territories belonging to a Palestinian state. Yet no UN or EU official has ever criticized these moves for violating Palestinian obligations under the Oslo Accords, and in fact, both the UN and the EU actively supported them.

The ICC Gambit: Palestinians Should Also Be Wary of But ....

...False prosecutions brought against it in the ICC may well tie up Israel. But the same can just as easily be said about the Palestinians. Though they may have an international community that has proved tolerant of anti-Semitism on their side, the Palestinians need to understand that they are at least as vulnerable as the Israelis if not more so. The world’s hypocrisy when it comes to attacks on Jews has convinced them that they have nothing to lose. By putting their own actions under a legal microscope, there’s little chance that the PA will come out of this unscathed, let alone victorious.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
08 January '15..

In the wake of their failed attempt to get the United Nations Security Council to vote to recognize their independence without first making peace with Israel, the Palestinian Authority has begun the process of joining the International Criminal Court, where they will, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, become full members on April 1. Their goal is to use this platform to harass Israel and to launch war-crimes trials against the Jewish state. This is widely seen as a credible threat against the Israelis who have been unfairly assailed for their conduct when fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza. But the PA shouldn’t be so eager to head to court. The efforts of Shurat HaDin—Israel Law Center to charge Palestinian leaders with war crimes could turn the tables on them in a way that may cause them to regret their decision.

Though the U.S. has rightly argued that as a non-state, the PA cannot actually be part of the ICC, the UN has gone along with this farce. This will allow the Palestinians to begin making mischief for the Israelis by filing suits that will publicize a raft of specious charges all aimed at branding it as an “apartheid state” run by war criminals. This gambit not only helps the Palestinians avoid peace talks where they might be forced to either make peace with Israel or admit that they will never do so. It also aids their ongoing efforts to delegitimize Israeli self-defense against terrorist attacks like Hamas’s use of tunnels for cross-border kidnapping/murder raids and the launching of thousands of rockets at Israeli cities.

But the PA has opened up a Pandora’s box that they may not be able to close before it damages their own cause.

The ICC Wars, Human Rights and European Money

...For Israelis, the lawfare and demonization strategy, and trap set in the ICC many years ago, the Durban strategy and the central role of powerful NGOs such HRW, Amnesty, al Haq, and dozens more, and their alliance with the UN Human Rights frameworks, were largely ignored for many years. Even now, following the Palestinian move to activate the ICC “war crimes” weapon, the official Israeli responses as well as media discussions continue to focus on the immediate and narrow issues of ICC procedure and international law. The wider factors that propel this form of warfare are still largely hidden, and the confrontation with Europe’s government funders is limited to political initiatives that miss the mark and do not go very far.

Gerald M. Steinberg..
Times of Israel..
05 January '15..

The Palestinian campaign to “bring Israel to the dock” at the International Criminal Court (ICC) did not suddenly arise out of “frustration” at the failure of the peace talks, the setback at the UN Security Council, or other recent events.

Rather, the strategy was explicitly adopted during the negotiations of the Rome Statute that led to the establishment of the ICC, and has been moving steadily since then. In 1997, towards the end of this process, the members of the Arab League pushed through language inventing a new war crime to ostensibly cover Israeli settlements. The purpose was clearly to prepare the grounds for exploiting the ICC for “lawfare” to target Israel.

Since then, this legal war has proceeded step by step, led by a powerful army of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), largely funded by European governments under the façade of human rights and international law. While the exact amounts and NGO allocation processes in the European Union under frameworks such as the EU Instrument Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) are top-secret and exempted from Freedom of Information laws, the annual total for anti-Israel campaigning related to this warfare is estimated at approximately 100 million euros.

After the ICC was established, the next conquest took place in September 2001, when, using European and Canadian money, more than 1500 highly politicized NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, in partnership with radical Palestinian groups such as Al Haq, shaped the agenda of the infamous UN Durban Conference. The NGO Forum adopted a plan of action to promote “the complete international isolation of Israel’ through allegations of war crimes, genocide, human rights violations etc. The main vehicles include the ICC and courts in Western countries that included provisions for universal jurisdiction of war criminals.

The NGO network worked continuously to implement this strategy. The leaders include Palestinian groups such as Al Haq and the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, as well as a network of Israel-based and Europe-funded NGOs such as B’tselem, Yesh Din, Adalah, and many more, and radical NGOs based in Western Europe. These NGOs have bombarded the ICC prosecutor, the media, diplomats and policy makers with press releases, glossy “reports”, and legal memoranda repeating allegations of Israeli war crimes and violations of international law. While the leadership of the Palestinian Authority built the formal foundation for using the ICC weapon against Israel, the NGO network provided the political support.

For example, as a leader in anti-Israel lawfare, Al Haq receives undisclosed sums from its main backers in the Netherlands government (via a virulently anti-Israel church group known as ICCO); from pro-Palestinian government funded frameworks in Germany; €110,000 annually from Norway, €600,000 from the Birzeit Rights Secretariat (Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden), and other sources.

With this war chest, Shawan Jabarin, the leader of Al Haq is able to market this ICC-based “war crimes” campaign around the world, and to journalists in particular. Jabarin, who is alleged to have ties to the Popular Front terror group (PFLP), provides advanced preparation for the Palestinian Authority’s assaults through the ICC. For example, In October 2013, Al-Haq, and the Gaza-based PCHR, which is also primarily funded by European governments, met the ICC prosecutor to present a legal opinion, again accusing Israel of “widespread and systematic commission of international crimes and violations of international law.” In the wake of the official Palestinian ICC move, Al Haq’s press statements on Israeli war crimes are quoted widely in mainstream media, where Jabarin is identified as a “human rights expert”.

A Moral Inversion of Staggering Dimensions: The PA and the ICC

...But beyond all that, this latest move by the PA is an example of the persistent unwillingness to address the pathologies that grip Palestinian society. These pathologies are the core reason for the tensions and conflict with Israel–and rather than dealing with them, the leadership of the Palestinians is, if anything, falling even deeper into denial.

Peter Wehner..
Commentary Magazine..
03 January '15..

As readers of this website know, the Palestinians announced earlier this week that they are joining the International Criminal Court to pursue war-crimes charges against the Jewish state of Israel.

This action was so reckless that even the Obama State Department, in the person of spokesman Jeff Rathke, said the U.S. was “deeply troubled” by the Palestinians’ “escalatory step.” He said it was “entirely counterproductive and does nothing to further the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a sovereign and independent state.” Coming from the most anti-Israel administration in history–worse, even, than the Carter administration–this is quite telling.

As one would expect, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the move by the PA was forceful and appropriate. “We expect the International Criminal Court to completely reject the hypocritical act by the Palestinian Authority, because the Palestinian Authority is not a state. It is an entity in an alliance with a terrorist organization, Hamas, that commits war crimes,” he said. Israel, Netanyahu pointed out, is by contrast a “law abiding state with a moral army that upholds international law.”

The idea of the Palestinian Authority taking Israel to court over war crimes is among the most grotesque and absurd developments imaginable, a moral inversion of staggering dimensions. The PA and Hamas, for example, intentionally target civilians–including using Palestinians as human shields–whereas Israel takes extraordinary steps to protect them.