The Panel has operated pro bono and independently. It has unanimously reached all of the views contained in this Report. It will set out its key reasoning below, but notes that it cannot disclose any material that is currently confidential.
What confidential material could they possibly have?
After all, in Gaza, the only news that comes out is from Hamas media, people quoting Hamas media, and Palestinian stringers for news media and NGOs who are either supporters of or frightened of Hamas.
This panel of "experts" did not send anyone to Gaza. It relied on two major sources of information.
One was public news sources, Hamas press releases, Gaza health ministry statements, NGO reports, and similar.
The other is submissions from the public at large.. Anyone in the world could submit "evidence."
And in fact, there is at least one site dedicated to soliciting and submitting anti-Israel material to the ICC:
The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened a digital platform to enable people to submit complaints online to the ICC with the option to add pictures and videos that show the crimes of the Israeli occupiers against them for the court to consider them and to take a stance against Israel. Those with information relevant to current events in Israel and Palestine are asked to provide submissions. Information submitted under this portal should relate to alleged crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC, namely War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide, or Aggression.Anyone can submit information through the portal. You do not necessarily need to be a victim or witness of the alleged crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC listed above. Information can also be submitted collectively or through an organization (for example an NGO, your masjid, a church), as long as there is an identifiable sender.
This is a concerted campaign to flood the ICC with "evidence." It was publicized in anti-Israel social media groups.
How much of those submissions came from any verifiable source? How much of it was biased? How many submissions included Pallywood photos and videos, or photos from other conflicts, and said they were from Gaza?
We don't know. Because they are "confidential." Any submission by a pro-Israel source about the war in Gaza would be public information, since the IDF is transparent with what is happening.
So virtually all of the "confidential" evidence that we cannot review will be, by definition, anti-Israel. And as such, it is not evidence that Israel could defend itself against until a potential trial, by which time the damage has already been done. It is unlikely that anyone submitted to the court "we think the other side will accuse Israel of X, therefore here is the rebuttal" - you need to know the accusation before you can answer it.
In this way, anti-Israel activists could - and clearly did - stack the deck. The ICC "experts" are not experts in verification of facts, or investigating the social media posts of the submitters to detect a pattern of lies or bias or looseness with the facts. If a Gazan is shot near an aid truck, they don't know if it was from Gaza gunmen or Israel, but you can be sure they will only blame Israel and the ICC has no mechanism to verify or discount their testimony.
To give a simplistic example, many people might have submitted "evidence" that Israel bombed the Al Ahli hospital. Pro-Israel people would probably not have submitted evidence that it was a misfired rocket by Islamic Jihad and that the death toll was highly exaggerated, as the news media reported.. If the prosecutors only saw the fake evidence from the haters, and there were few or no evidence to the contrary, and the prosecutors were not familiar with the case, then that would become - under ICC rules - evidence for Israeli war crimes.
Multiply that by a thousand, or ten thousand. Hamas issues reports that are filled with obvious lies every day, that probably got submitted in different forms many times. At best, the IDF's own statements might be submitted (or solicited) once. The "experts" do no have the skill to investigate the facts, and they would tend to believe the majority fo submissions - even if they did not have an anti-Israel bias of their own to begin with,
There is normally very good reason why submissions should be confidential. Whistleblowers under a cruel regime would want to ensure that their submission never becomes public which could endanger their lives. .But that same mechanism to protect witnesses can be subverted to submit tons of bogus "evidence" that will be considered credible by default.
In short, the ICC submissions process is inherently biased when one side uses lies and propaganda as an essential part of their war strategy.
(h/t Irene)
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