Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, has requested the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant for war crimes, equating their actions with those of Hamas leaders. This move has garnered support from several European nations, although Italy’s government remains silent. President Biden has contradicted his previous criticisms and defended Israel despite the high civilian death toll. Media figures and former diplomats in the West are criticized for defending Netanyahu and contributing to impunity, while the US is blamed for enabling Israel’s actions and global instability.
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by Elena Basile
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has requested the arrest of Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Gallant for war crimes. The same charges have been directed at the three Hamas leaders: Sinwar, Al-Masri, and Hanyeh. Finally, a step has been taken against the odious double standards prevailing in the political-media space. The war crimes committed by Hamas on October 7 against Jewish youth have been rightly equated with the war crimes committed in Gaza by the Israeli government.
Many European countries such as France, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, and Norway have seized the opportunity to distance themselves from Netanyahu and support the work of the international tribunal, to which our best diplomats contributed significantly during its creation in 2002. Unfortunately, Giorgia Meloni‘s right-wing government, like Hungary, has once again tarnished the country’s image and has not respected our Constitution, which protects human rights. The government remains silent and complicit with Israel’s government, its massacres in Gaza, and the occupation of the West Bank. Biden, increasingly wavering, has retracted his slight criticisms of Netanyahu and expressed outrage against the prosecutor for accusing the only democracy in the Middle East, which has killed at least 35,000 civilians in seven months of bombing a defenseless population.
Esteemed editorialists of major newspapers and former ambassadors have come to Israel’s aid, expressing surprise at the comparison between a democratically elected government and Hamas. Indeed, the comparison is unfavorable to Israel. A state bears greater responsibilities in observing international law, human rights, and democracy than a terrorist organization. It must be reiterated, as unfortunately such observations are not found in Italian media, that Hamas, as an organization fighting for the liberation of an occupied people, has the protection of UN law if it uses armed violence against the Israeli army. However, it is obviously condemnable if it uses terrorist methods against civilians. The occupying power, in its cyclical punitive expeditions against the Palestinians in Gaza, which have now reached unprecedented barbarism, is not justified by any UN regulation for its evident crimes against humanity.
Therefore, I would say that the responsibilities of the State of Israel are particularly severe. It pains me to read Paolo Mieli in Corriere della Sera attempting to defend a war criminal, Netanyahu, as if the closure of crossings to allow humanitarian aid to the starving civilian population in Gaza, the destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques, the killing of journalists and aid workers, the massacre of 35,000 civilians, most of them women and children, could be considered collateral damage of a balanced war between two armies, where Israel exercises its right to defend itself from attacks by another state or a terrorist organization. Institutional and political complicity, and even less cultural and media complicity, with the State of Israel, which practices widespread illegality, does not apply UN resolutions, insults Guterres through its ambassadors, and tears up the UN charter, cannot be accepted.
Former ambassadors are also quick to spread the American narrative with slightly subtler arguments. They say that the action of the International Criminal Court, though morally valid, would distance us from peace. Indeed, Biden would have been forced by the request for Netanyahu’s arrest warrant to forget his criticisms and his policy aimed at tempering the brutality of the Tel Aviv army and the action in Rafah. He would have been forced to rally around the outraged premier. Poor us. The West creates the world and then tells us we must realistically deal with the world as it created it.
The USA has enormously contributed to the democratic backsliding of Israel by ensuring its impunity. It has helped the rise and growth of Netanyahu, a war criminal, and has determined the new belligerent and threatening posture of Russia. The West is trying to end globalization by dividing the world into armed blocks against each other. Some analysts would have us believe that this is the reality we must face, as if we were dealing with natural disasters and not international games supported by Washington.
The ICC’s arrest warrant request for Netanyahu could contribute to the fall of his criminal government and a policy change, if today’s West were not sick.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, May 26, 2024
