The establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002 was welcomed as one of the most important developments in international co-operation since the end of World War II.
As a senior UN official during this period, I was a co-author of a key report complementing the ICC and played a broader role in advocating its establishment. I was drafted in to help sell the ICC to the Japanese Parliament as one of my last acts before leaving the UN.
But, like former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, I have come to question my involvement and advocacy, particularly in light of ICC prosecutor Karim Khan’s outrageous decision to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, plus three Hamas leaders. This is a grotesque inversion of international criminal justice. The UN charter was never meant to be a tyrant’s charter of impunity or a constitutional instrument for self-protection, but I never expected the ICC would be weaponised against democracies defending themselves against terrorists.
There is no moral equivalence between the head of an elected government and the commander of a terrorist organisation who planned and ordered the October 7th massacre, which Hamas has boasted it will repeat so Israel will “taste new ways of death”.
There is no parallel between terrorists who target civilians to kill, maim, rape and abduct and a professional and disciplined military. It is clear Israel and Hamas cannot coexist peacefully. There was a ceasefire in place before Hamas attacked. Another ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power in Gaza with the capacity to regenerate terrorist battalions would deliver a great victory to the terrorists of October 7th. Hamas could end the civilian carnage immediately by releasing all remaining hostages, giving up arms and surrendering.
The allegation that Israel is deliberately starving civilians as a method of warfare is baseless. Israel has overseen the delivery of half a million tonnes of relief supplies to civilians in nearly 30,000 aid trucks. In contrast, Hamas steals and profiteers much of the aid.
The ICC is mandated to step in only when national authorities fail to hold alleged perpetrators of war crimes to account. Israel is exceptionally punctilious, more than Australians and the U.S., in investigating allegations of wrongful killing and prosecuting its soldiers if evidence points to their culpability.
The ICC came into effect in July 2002 and has 124 state parties. Several countries, including China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and the U.S., have not joined, meaning only about one-third of the world’s population comes under its jurisdiction. It is based at The Hague and has more than 900 staff members from 100 countries; its 2024 budget is €187m (£159m). In 22 years the court has issued 46 arrest warrants and recorded 10 convictions and four acquittals. Is this value for money? The court has been criticised for focusing on crimes committed by smaller countries and turning a blind eye to misdeeds of powerful countries. The ICC issued an unenforceable arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin last year. But the ICC has not even bothered to investigate possible crimes by China against Uighurs.
The ICC isn’t embedded into a broader system of democratic policymaking and there’s no political check on it. Why should it have any authority over constitutionally legitimated democracies? If not over them, can it fairly claim jurisdiction over non-democracies such as China and Russia? The most sustained criticism of the ICC came from African nations that faulted it for unfair targeting and jeopardising delicate peace negotiations in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Libya.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2009. The African Union warned this could jeopardise peace talks. Kenya refused to hand over suspects to the ICC as required by the court’s rules. Instead the African Union adopted a resolution calling for a mass withdrawal from the ICC. In a sign of the widening rebellion, Bashir was welcomed to the India-Africa summit in New Delhi in 2015 and held bilateral talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India’s position was that Security Council Resolution 1593, urging states to co operate with the ICC, wasn’t binding on non-parties. South African Deputy Minister Obed Bapela said the ICC had “lost its direction”.
Echoing the two-decade-old African complaint, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the ICC’s action is “not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in”. The three-judge panel that will consider Khan’s request should decline to follow the prosecutor’s lead. If they agree to the request, all countries will be under an obligation to arrest Netanyahu should he set foot in their territory.
If this transpires, I will regret my part in the ICC’s development. Criminal law cannot replace a country’s public or foreign policy. As control of global governance institutions passes into the hands of countries with incompatible values, does the West risk being trapped in a prison of its own making, or will this attempted overreach sound the ICC’s death knell?
Ramesh Thakur, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General, is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Senior Research Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute, and Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. His new book, Our Enemy, the Government: How Covid Enabled the Expansion and Abuse of State Power (Brownstone Institute, 2023), is out now. This article was first published by the Australian.
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The Next Tuesday’s working behind the scenes to destroy the country and doing a very credible job of it.
Send for Madame Guillotine.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/democracy-in-decay-the-shadowy-unelected-figures-who-scuppered-our-country/
Totally agree with Ramesh. Did the ICC also issue an arrest warrant for president Assad in years gone by? Maybe that one got lost in the post…
Hard to watch this. I could be their mother. They’re probably dead, who knows? Who cares? Well, not the resident Jeremy/Piers Corbyn Fan Club, who no doubt wouldn’t call this a war crime, merely an act of ‘resistance’, and they’re likely just actors and paid stooges anyway. I’m sure the resident terrorist supporters and rape apologists will be all about debunking this. It’s the girls’ fault for being Israeli, you see. Just that fact alone invalidates their human rights and automatically makes them sub-human liars, am I right?
You’re either a decent human being and oppose this or you’re one sick and twisted individual who condones it. No ambiguity or room for fence-sitting here;
”Imagine watching this and telling yourself “Nice job! Well done! We should reward these barbarians with a state!”
https://x.com/DrEliDavid/status/1793391346331398292
Good grief. I want to puke.
Animals.
Anyone who supports war supports this. This is what can happen to captive soldiers as a result of politicians far-removed from harm. Extremist Minister Smotrich reportedly didn’t wish to see the video so he could sleep at night.
Just more Zionist propaganda, ain’t that right, antisemites and rape apologists? I mean, see how nonchalant he is in the video. He’s obviously an actor, probably a member of the dreadful IDF even, and the subtitles will be incorrect. Because everybody who hates Jews but loves terrorists knows that none of this actually happened, did it? You’d take ”refugees” like this in to your country, welcome them into your home, meet the wife and daughters, wouldn’t you? Be honest, don’t be shy now. They’re oppressed, remember?? ”Refugees Welcome”, isn’t that how it goes?
”An evil father and son have revealed to Israeli investigators how they killed and raped innocent civilians after taking part in the Hamas invasion.
Shameless Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi, 47, and his son Abdallah, 18, were captured by IDF forces in Gaza and questioned about the atrocities they committed in a kibbutz close to the border.
Without any visible sign of remorse he said: ‘In each house where we found someone, we either killed them or kidnapped them.’
Pressed further he added: ‘In the first house I found a woman and her husband, and we hit them with fire and killed them…they were in their late 40s.’
He then went on to confess how he had raped one woman and said: ‘She was screaming, she was crying, I did what I did, I raped her.
‘I threatened her with my gun to take her clothes off, I remember she was wearing jean shorts, that’s about it.’
‘I don’t know what happened to her, I was there for fifteen minutes and then I left.’
But according to his son Abdallah, his father killed the woman, as he told investigators: ‘My father raped her, then I did and then my cousin did and then we left but my father killed the woman after we finished raping her.
‘Before this woman, we had raped another girl as well, I killed two people, I raped two people, and I broke into five houses.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13451089/The-father-son-Hamas-rapists-Terrorists-going-house-house-carrying-sex-attacks-murder-One-screamed-cried-father-raped-did-cousin-did-father-killed-her.html
A Daily Mail exclusive according to i24 and Times of Israel refers to it as a Daily Mail article. Curious that it has been published through this route and certainly very timely.
Taking this at face value: is it known when this was recorded? If it wasn’t very recent then it’s been sat-on until it became politically useful and whoever would do that has no concern for any victims.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-father-and-son-terrorists-admit-to-murder-and-rape-of-israeli-women-on-oct-7
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/interrogation-video-shows-father-and-son-hamas-members-admitting-to-rape-murder-at-nir-oz-on-oct-7/
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https://thenewconservative.co.uk/wilders-victorious/
Frank Haviland rightly singing the praises of Geert Wilders in Holland.
Good luck Sir.
The author claims he didn’t expect the International Criminal Court to be weoponised. In which case he is an idiot. All supranational governmental institutions become weaponised and are used to attack the democratic nation state. The United Nations Organisation and all its bastard offspring should be eliminated.
Just as well America is not a member of the ICC. Just how long do you need the list to be, Billy Joel does the job:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
An alternative view from the Israeli media.
“In Israelis’ wallowing and victimhood; in endless self-righteous panels on TV; in cries about an antisemitic world and the injustice of bundling Israel with Hamas, there’s one fundamental, fateful question missing: Did Israel commit war crimes in Gaza? No one dares deal with this critical, key question: Were there, or were there not, crimes?
…If Hamas committed war crimes – and there seems no argument about this – then its criminals must be brought to justice. And if Israel committed war crimes – and there seems no argument about this in the world, except in suicidal self-deceiving Israel – those responsible for them must also be brought to justice.
Bundling them does not imply moral symmetry or legal equivalency. Even if Israel and Hamas were accused separately, Israel would have raised a ruckus against the court.”
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-05-23/ty-article-opinion/.premium/at-last-justice-but-will-israelis-also-start-waking-up/0000018f-a1a3-d5dc-a7df-efe79f950000
One can only applaud this article.
Any organisation that claims to serve the public and has any of the words international, world, global or foundation in the name should be immediately shut down.
Most likely the last people it serves is the public.
Does the guy have an opinion of the way Israel handled the plandemic, when you consider it is supposed to be a sanctuary against Nuremberg violations.
It’s scandalous that Israel’s leaders have been likened to Hamas.
Netanyahu is far worse.
Your comment is incredibly insightful. Not because of what you write, but because of the reaction it creates. At the time of my writing this, you have exactly 13 up votes and 13 down votes. That pretty much shows how incredibly divisive the topic of Israel and Palestine is, how incredibly difficult it is to find the right moral stance and how the result is opinion being split right down the middle.
I think you will find that support for Israel is the minority view around the world.
Not on The Daily Septic of course where there is a huge majority who love to see brown faced Muslims killed in their thousands.
I have been following independent alternative media journalists for decades and nearly all have been supporting the plight of the Palestinians.
Not all jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews.
Many Western governments are run and funded by Zionists.
The financial system is run by Zionists.
Hollywood is run by Zionists.
The main stream media is run by Zionists.
Zionists dictate the narrative.
Anyone speaking out against Zionism in the main stream media says goodbye to their career.
The ICC seems like a bad idea to me, whichever side of this debate one is on.
The British King’s Counsel responsible for bringing the arrest warrant – Karim Ahmad Khan – is shockingly a muslim. So the ICC did not even have the good sense to disguise the religious politics behind this move.
One can only assume that they could not get an independent objective and impartial lawyer to do it.
It is a shocking example of partisanship.
It is an example of how religious political culture wars now exist in the United Kingdom.
The ICC treaty is yet another the UK should resile from along with W.H.O. and ECHR treaties.
And how shocking it is that democracy has gone out of the window.
One can I understand – but I may be completely wrong on this – petition the King not to ratify treaties but I do not know enough to know whether that applies to resiling from them.
And even if it is possible, how likely is it anything would happen as a result?
With Charles there is a glimmer of hope whereas the late Queen, despite any reservations, would follow convention.
With 4 upvotes – I see a downvote at the time of writing – so someone does not believe the ICC should be and be seen to be independent objective and impartial.
So let us see how many disagree with what is an historical truth and something else which is not become a truth in modern Britain.
It is yet another scary aspect to modern Britain – diluting the indigenous values and culture with imported values and cultures – which are also in direct conflict.
Thereby creating divisions, undermining social structures and creating the environment for dictatorial government over divided peoples in Britain.
Look at all the people who turn out for well-funded demonstrations at weekends over months calling for intifada and supporting genocide of Jewish peoples worldwide – which is Hamas’ stated aim.
It is not just Jewish people that Islam throughout its history seeks to destroy.
All other faiths and no faiths are at risk. This is the ultimate culture clash.
“There is no peace between the Muslims and the Jews and/or the Christians.”
Professor Moshe Sharon, one of the most senior Middle East scholars in Israel, ties in the Oct. 7 massacre with “the most basic issues in Islam that the public in Israel is unaware of.” A conversation with a man who served as the advisor of Menachem Begin and Rafael Eitan, a globally renowned expert on Islam. 04-09-2024
If Britain were ever involved in another conflict with a majority muslim state – God forbid – who could be trusted to fight in Britain’s armed forces and who could be trusted not to undermine any future war effort.
We are starting to see that multiculturalism not just does not work but cannot work.
This country has seen what religious sectarianism achieved in Northern Ireland and that was just two different flavours of christianity tied in to an uncomfortable political history of violent conflict over centuries.
Here we can see Islam and the politics of Islam at work in Britain.
No one can deny that.
The clock is ticking louder and louder.
CORRECTION “something else which is now become a truth in modern Britain.”
I really do not understand how anyone can write such utter nonsense as the author of this report.
“… I never expected the ICC would be weaponised against democracies defending themselves against terrorists.” – Well, it depends how a democracy reacts to terrorists: indiscriminately bombing a whole population, destroying any medical care and starving any survivors, while knowing that the so-called terrorists are well out of harm’s way, is hardly the action of humane or intelligent leaders.
“There is no parallel between terrorists who target civilians to kill, maim, rape and abduct and a professional and disciplined military.” – Once again, the old, long dismissed claims of rape, maiming and the claim that civilians were targeted, when it is the Israelis who are carrying out indiscriminate bombing! A professional and disciplined military does not torture prisoners (e.g. CNN report here: https://skwawkbox.org/2024/05/13/video-cnn-investigation-exposes-israeli-concentration-camps-and-torture/.)
“It is clear Israel and Hamas cannot coexist peacefully.” – Here I agree with the author, unless a very strong diplomatic force manages to get the two groups around a table and negotiate some very solid peace arrangement.
“Hamas could end the civilian carnage immediately by releasing all remaining hostages, giving up arms and surrendering.” – Here the typical one-sided argument of a warring faction, which changes nothing.
“The allegation that Israel is deliberately starving civilians as a method of warfare is baseless.” – Sorry, there is too much evidence to the contrary.
“never expected the ICC would be weaponised against democracies”
Wow, Ramesh, did you really not see that coming?!
“The ICC is mandated to step in only when national authorities fail to hold alleged perpetrators of war crimes to account”
So the ICC has power over national authorities.
The ICC, like any globalist project, is a threat to ALL nation states, democratic or not. That is why the nation states that actually still care about their sovereignty, like the US, China and Russia, refused to join.
I’m sorry, Ramesh, if you are still committed to the globalist project then you need to do some serious thinking.
How else does one bring charges such as ‘ethnic cleansing ‘ to bear.
“There is no parallel between terrorists who target civilians to kill, maim, rape and abduct and a professional and disciplined military.”
Unfortunately the IDF has shown that it not a professional and disciplined army countless times.
At the so called ‘great march of return’ Israeli snipers targeted the knees of entirely peacefull demonstrating by dancing and also wheel chair users who were 300 mts from the wall.
Perverse is a better description and it’s routine intimidation of Palestinians in the West Bank is well documented and ongoing.
Read no further than the above quotation.