Wednesday, October 07, 2015
Elder of Ziyon
The ruling comes after months of investigation into what the United Nations Security Council called "the situation in Palestine" following last year's Israel-Hamas war that killed more than 1,500 people. While most experts took for granted that the Court would adopt the position of most UN members, namely that any form of killing Jews, especially Israelis, constitutes an acceptable form of protest, some analysts thought the ICC would only narrowly examine the 50-day conflict. Instead, the Court adopted a broad ruling to apply to all situations, deciding that states and non-state actors alike are within their legal rights to foment, implement, incite, or otherwise engage in attacks on Jews using sharp objects.
Implications of the ruling include a potentially lightened docket for the Court in coming years, according to legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich. "By opening this legal avenue of recourse for Palestinians, either as 'lone wolf' stabbers or as part of organized terrorist operations, the Court has essentially told them exactly what to do to attain their aspirations while remaining within the boundaries of international law and whatever Laws of Armed Conflict may apply," he explained. "In one fell swoop, the ICC has both made its own work easier and endorsed policies that Palestinian entities are already favorably-disposed to pursue, basically guaranteeing that those entities will elect to engage in stabbing activities rather than more legally questionable methods such as rocket fire on Israeli civilian communities that might hit non-Jews."
Other experts noted that the Court had already shown its willingness to tackle cases with far-reaching implications. In a landmark case earlier this year, the ICC overturned the Nuremberg convictions of several prominent Nazi war criminals. That ruling turned on the specific observation that it would constitute a double standard to hold Nazi officials responsible for ethnic cleansing in Europe, yet insist that Jews must be removed from areas they inhabit in the Middle East. However, the implications of that decision were not lost on the justices, says commentator Hugh Manreitswacz.
"The Nuremberg decision this past February may have focused on the posthumous exoneration of various German officials, but the judges well knew that they were also condoning the killing and persecution of Jews," he explained. "This subsequent ruling illustrates exactly that point. I think we can expect future cases to further expand on what the Court deems permissible methods for getting rid of Jews, and we should anticipate specific treatment of shooting at motorists, bombing buses, firing bullets or anti-tank missiles at school buses, vehicular homicide, and Molotov cocktails, just to name a few."
