The 185 signatories to a letter to the International Criminal Court, including 10 Israel Prize laureates, suggest that the court rely instead on information from Israeli human rights groups
By Nir Hasson, HAARETZ May. 6, 2021 3:19 PM
International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Fatou BensoudaCredit: Bas Czerwinski / AP
More than 180 Israeli scientists and intellectuals have called on chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague not to accept Israel’s conclusions arising from its investigation into alleged war crimes.
Instead, the group of Israelis suggested in a letter addressed to Chief ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda that the court obtain the assistance of Israeli human rights organizations to gather evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israelis.
The letter was signed by 185 Israelis, including 10 Israel Prize recipients and 35 professors, in addition to senior reserve army officers, authors, intellectuals, left-wing activists and researchers. The letter noted the ICC’s practice of approaching countries potentially subject to an investigation to determine whether they plan to launch their own war crimes investigation of their nationals’ conduct.
“We … are writing to the ICC following your request to the Israeli government to clarify whether it intends to investigate complaints of war crimes allegedly committed in the Occupied Territories, including Gaza and east Jerusalem, in general and since 2015 in particular,” the letter states. “We understand that such a request is required in accordance with your procedures in such instances, and we do respect your method of operation.”
But the letter goes on to state, “We wish to assert at this early stage our deep suspicion, based on past experience, that the State of Israel, including its investigative and legal institutions, has no intention to seriously investigate complaints of war crimes. Our suspicion is backed by a very large number of documented cases ostensibly involving war crimes committed by Israel in the Occupied Territories in gross violation of international law. Most of these cases have not been investigated at all, and a few have been concluded with acquittal following a superficial and inadequate investigation,” the letter asserts. The writers go on to list incidents that they allege constitute war crimes.
Israel is not a member of the International Criminal Court and has asserted that the court therefore has no jurisdiction to investigate its conduct in the territories. “Israel vehemently rejects the claim that it is committing war crimes and stresses its unequivocal stance that the ICC has no jurisdiction to open a probe against it,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement last month. “This stance has been made clear to the ICC through other countries and world-renowned experts.”
But senior officials in the Israeli justice system have presented Israel’s position to the International Criminal Court in The Hague through intermediaries, despite Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the court’s probe into alleged war crimes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel has said that the Israeli army investigates every incident in which there is a reasonable suspicion that procedures were violated and, when necessary, puts those responsible on trial.
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Thursday’s letter from the group of intellectuals goes on to state: “In our assessment, the many acts of discrimination, severe restrictions upon freedom of movement, appropriation of Palestinian lands for the purpose of Israeli settlement, arbitrary collective punishments (such as curfews and blockades), unwarranted arrests … and the abject failure of the military courts to provide even a semblance of justice – all these and more are eminently worthy of investigation by your Court.”
“Sadly, despite Israel’s image as a state that maintains a proper and professional legal system, the reality paints a different picture – harsh, discriminatory, and outrageous. The law imposed on the Occupied Territories and the manner in which it is applied by the Israeli enforcement and security agencies effectively allow ongoing acts of moral injustice and prima facie war crimes.” the letter asserts.
With reporting by Judy Maltz and Yaniv Kubovich.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Perhaps someone more careful in their attacks than Joe McCarthy. His recklessly indescriminate actions single-handedly crippled the anti-communist movement for decades. But I understand your meaning here and, of course, you are correct.
Israel needs another Senator Joseph McCarthy to fire and blacklist traitors in positions of power and influence. So does America for that matter.
Pseudo intellectuals. Pseudo scientists.
“Great White Northerner” addresses the question of why so many intelligent people act so destructively into the hands of mortal enemies.
While there always have been traitors – to so many good causes, institutions etc. other true reasons were operative: personal interest, such as bribes, blackmail, etc. Today, however, being a traitor to your society, to your community, is definitely normal if not normative behavior in many intellectual circles in Western society.
It seems to me that the first modern intellectual of this sort was Rousseau – a brilliant individual and a thoroughly bad person, who abandoned his children. The most important person of this kind was Karl Marx, a much less brilliant but no less bad a person [see “The Red Prussian” by Leopold Schwartzschild]. Critical Race Theory is a development of Cultural Marxism, and the West supports its own demise by financing the proponents of this intellectual travesty.
@ GreatWhiteNortherner:
Maybe it is their “collective unconscious mind” trying to relive the past traumas of pogroms, Holocaust, etc.?
There is a wonderful book by Immanuel Velikovsky (who was also a Freudian psychoanalyst) called Mankind in Amnesia: An inquiry in the future of the human race.
The older I get and the more I see what’s happening all around us, especially these past few years, the more inclined I am to believe Freud’s death drive, “Thanatos”, theory is a very real thing. Perhaps worldwide declines in testosterone as postulated by Roy Barzillai are part of the reason, who knows?
Either way, how else to explain Israeli “intellectuals” and “scientists” wittingly or unwittingly sowing the seeds of national and personal destruction by singling out their own country? And even if there’s a kernel of truth to the allegations that some Israeli soldiers are guilty of so called “war crimes” how serious and pervasive are those alleged crimes compared to the countless ones routinely and far more egregiously committed by dozens of countries and actors in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and yes, even American deep state operatives, none of which apparently interest these “intellectuals”, “scientists”, the ICC or the vast majority of “human rights” groups?
A stiff necked people indeed.
Is it any wonder Israel was destroyed twice before?
There’s nothing new under the sun and none so blind as those who will not see.