Amb. Alan Baker: Is the International Criminal Court Becoming a Palestinian Propaganda Engine?
In July, judges from a pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court ordered a campaign of outreach to Palestinian "victims residing within or outside of Palestine."Israel said to formally protest ICC’s unusual appeal to ‘Palestinian victims’
With this unprecedented move, the court is openly turning itself into a Palestinian propaganda engine, similar to the UN Human Rights Council, with a regular reporting regime on Palestine and a distinct section of its website devoted to Palestine.
This is curious in light of the fact that the court has yet to decide whether it indeed has any jurisdiction whatsoever regarding the Palestinian complaints, and whether a non-state can indeed be a party to the ICC statute.
Moreover, this measure ignores the basic question whether, pursuant to the ICC statute, a "State of Palestine" can be party when no Palestinian state exists, apart from in a non-binding General Assembly upgrade recommendation, which is far from being a legal ground for acceptance.
All this indicates that the ICC is venturing far beyond its role and is being politically manipulated - or is manipulating itself - against its own better interests.
Israel has lodged a formal protest with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for launching a campaign last month to reach out to “victims of the situation in Palestine,” an unusual step which Jerusalem officials charge casts doubt on the court’s ability to treat the Jewish state fairly.
In a press release issued in July, three judges, who are members of the so-called pretrial chamber dealing with Palestinian complaints of alleged Israeli war crimes, ordered the court’s registry “to establish, as soon as practicable, a system of public information and outreach activities for the benefit of the victims and affected communities in the situation in Palestine.”
Furthermore, the judges required the registry — a neutral organ of the court providing administrative support — to open an “informative page on the Court’s website” geared exclusively to Palestinians, and to report on the progress of its activities every three months.
This despite the fact that ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has not yet decided whether the court has any jurisdiction over matters related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since it has no jurisdiction over Israel (which is not a member state) and because Palestine is not a state and therefore cannot exercise jurisdiction over the West Bank.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (AP Photo/Robin van Lonkhuijsen, Pool)
Bensouda has also not ruled on whether there is a basis to investigate Palestinian claims of war crimes.
“The court’s judges are completely ignoring the fact that the court lacks jurisdiction to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the court’s prosecutor hasn’t made any decision in her preliminary examination,” a senior Israeli legal official told Hadashot TV news.
“The judges’ eagerness to initiate such an anomalous decision leaves in serious question the court’s ability to fairly deal with matters relating to Israel,” he added.
Lawfare in the service of terrorism
Chicago experienced one of the most violent weekends in the city's history two weeks ago. It is impossible to escape the context for these killings; one can only try to avoid the problem altogether. But those who are forced to admit the truth say the politically charged policies put in place by the city's progressives are keeping police from dealing with the violence in both the city's South Side and West Side neighborhoods. The spike in the number of shooting deaths in Chicago is directly related to these progressive policies.
A similar approach has been adopted toward terrorism. The aim of some left-wing organizations in Israel and around the world is to create a friendly environment for terrorism, to deter the Israel Defense Forces and provide the terrorists with as much freedom of operation as possible. This system, which has been in development for nearly 20 years, is one of legal warfare. The courts, and in particular the International Criminal Court at The Hague, are turning into political tribunals. "Values" and "rights" take the place of the law.
Instead of the rule of law helping enforce anti-terrorist operations, the rule of law has been eroded by the "human rights" warriors, who have in their sights those same people who defend peace and democracy. Take Peter Beinart, an American Jewish journalist who has become an anti-Israel political activist, and who recently completed a disinformation campaign that could serve to deter Israeli security officials from doing their job in the future.