Israel's Secret Undermining of the ICC to Derail War Crimes Charges

this news is funded by viewers like you please support our work at democracynow.org early last week the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court made headlines around the world when he announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister benjaman Netanyahu and defense minister yoav Galant on war crimes charges over the assault on Gaza in His official announcement Kim Khan also issued a warning it is critical In This Moment that my office and all parts of the Court continue to conduct our work with full Independence and impartiality and I insist that all attempts to impede to intimidate or to improperly influence the officials of this court cease immediately Khan did not specify what he was referring to regarding attempts to intimidate the court or interfere with its work but a joint investigation by the guardian and the Israeli News Outlet 972 this week reveals how Israel has run an almost decade long secret war against the IC in an attempt to derail the court from F filing war crimes charges against Israeli officials the report details how Israel surveilled hacked smeared and threatened top bycc officials including Khan and his predecessor Fatu B suda the investigation reveals that the former head of the Israeli mad Yosi Cohen personally threatened B suda telling her quote you should help us and let us take care of r view you don't want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family end quote the news outlets also report that Netanyahu took a close interest in the intelligence operations against the ICC and was described by one intelligence source as being quote obsessed with the intercepts about the case the Israeli newspaper haret today reports they were about to publish details about the Israeli intelligence operations against the IC two years ago but an Israeli security official blocked publication the hararat reporter GMO writes he was summoned to the office of an Israeli security official was told if he published the story he would quote suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside end quote the arrest warrants sought by the IC against Netanyahu and Galant include starvation civilians as a method of warfare and extermination of Palestinians in Gaza our first guest Kenneth Ross has a column in the Guardian newspaper published yesterday that begins I should not be surprised at the lawlessness of a government that bombs and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza but I was still shocked by the shamelessness of Israel's efforts to subvert the international Criminal Court's investigation of its war crimes Ken Roth joins us here in our New York Studio he's a visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and international Affairs served for nearly three decades as the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Ken welcome back to democracy Now good so let's talk about the significance of this expose uh Yosi Cohen um head of mosad the intelligence agency extremely close to Netanyahu for 10 years um leading this campaign to stop the ICC from bringing charges can you talk about the significance of this and how it affected what Fatu Ben suda did the previous IC ICC Chief and then K and then kareim Khan well first it's this is a crime um Kareem Khan made that clear I mean when he issued that that notice that any effort to intimidate or retaliate against prosecutorial staff will be an obstruction of justice in essence I thought he was referring to Republican Senators who had threatened severe sanctions if Israeli officials are charged but he clearly also had in mind what the Israeli mosad had been doing mainly to his predecessor now what's interesting is they the Israelis clearly misjudged Fatu B suda um one person is quoted as saying they thought of her as you know basically merely black and African so who cares as they put it um but she's a tough woman and she resisted you know these threats to her family a sting operation against her husband um and she didn't have to act at that point because the court authorized the investigation to go forward in February 2021 near the end of Ben suda's term in June 2021 so she could have just sat on it and let Kareem Khan her her successor take over she didn't she actually opened the investigation a month later and so this really speaks to her bravery um this effort backfired now I think the most significant ongoing effect of this if we think back last week Anthony blinkin the US Secretary of State his main argument against Karim Khan charging Netanyahu and Gand is what's known as the principle of complimentarity um that's a rule under the court statute that the court should defer to genuine good faith National prosecutions and blinkin basically said Israel's got a you know a sophisticated legal system let them handle it what this shows is that this whole thing is a sham that the Israeli investigations are not about securing Justice they're about obstructing justice and we've heard about this for years from from bet selum for example the the leading Israeli Human Rights group that calls these whitewash investigations you know whenever there's some incident and there's International outrage Israel announces an investigation you then never hear anything further but the announcement of the investigation pushes things off they did something very similar with the ICC they would listen in to what um Ben suda or Khan were looking at and they would say aha they're interested in that incident you mean they would EES drop yes they would EES drop they would you know hack and they would um so they they learned that the ICC prosecutor was interest interested in an incident and they would start an investigation and they would then send somebody into the ha to the prosecutor's office and say you don't need to look at this we've got an investigation going and it would it sounded as if they were on top of it all but in fact these were purely reactive investigations they were not good faith investigations and think that this whole hacking and surveillance and and threatening incident gives the lie to blink's argument that Kem Khan should defer to Israeli Justice efforts these are not goodfaith Justice efforts these are coverup efforts and Ken if you could just put this in the context of I mean why would Israel go to such extraordinary lengths uh to compromise the international criminal court if you could give us some background cuz does the international criminal court have any in enforcement mechanism what is the symbolic weight of decisions taken by the court if you could place this in in the broader context of what decisions and investigations and prosecutions the IC has launched uh and and made before uh and explain in that context why Israel H has done this decade long uh attempt to subvert the Court's work well the international criminal court is the world's leading war crimes tribunal in Ence and nobody wants to be charged with war crimes or crimes against humanity you know as as both Netanyahu and Gant are about to be done because the prosecutors requested arrest warrants based on basically starvation charges in Gaza and you know no one wants said first of all because it means that if you travel to any ICC country including all of Europe including in more than 100 governments around the world they have a duty to arrest you and send you to the hag for trial so you know there are real consequences and you can end up in prison so you know nobody wants that and you know that's why Netanyahu was seen as obsessed with this because you know it's not as if what goes on in Gaza or even the West Bank are you know low-level operations these are very much directed from the top you know Netanyahu is commander-in-chief and so he understood his criminal liability and he seemed determined you know not to change the conduct not to say oh my goodness are we committing war crimes in Gaza let me stop that right away you know no he just you know let it keep going and tried to obstruct the investigation that might lead to his prosecution for war crimes and if you could say I mean in it was in 1998 at July 1998 that the Rome statute of the international criminal court was adopted uh the vote was 120 to7 21 countries abstained the seven countries that voted against the treaty were China Iraq Israel Libya Qatar the US and Yemen and Israel's opposition was reportedly uh stemming from the inclusion in the list of war crimes of quote the action of transferring population into occupied territory and that's effectively what's happened well what we're speaking to now is something that has been going on long before this Gaza War the settlements are war crimes they violate article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its population to occupied territory and the ICC statute the Rome statute codifies that crime so you know Israel has been vulnerable to this charge it still is vulnerable to this charge I would like to see Kareem Khan bring that charge at some stage because it's a straightforward case you know there's no complicated facts behind it it's just happening out in the open so um that is a vulnerability I mean the US opposed you know partly because of that but also the US was concerned with what's known as territorial jurisdiction the fact that the court has the power to prosecute somebody for crimes committed on the territory of a court member even if um the person's own country has never ratified the Court's treaty now the US hated that because it could mean that you know Americans are vulnerable um and indeed there was an investigation that Fatu Bens suda opened in Afghanistan that threatened Bush error torturers but the US gave up on that objection because it was territorial jurisdiction that the court used to prosecute Putin in Ukraine and Biden said that was justified in fact you know Lindsey Graham the the leading Republican senator led a unanimous resolution in the Senate that affirmed this use of territorial jurisdiction so that objection is gone they still say oh well palestine's not really a state but the court has addressed that already and said you know the UN General Assembly found it to be a nonmember Observer State that's sufficient for it to ratify a whole host of Human Rights treaties that we should welcome as well as the Rome statute of the ICC so that objection is pretty much gone and that's why Anthony blinkin fell back on this principle complimentarity you should defer to good faith Israeli investigations and what this latest Guardian 972 investigation shows is there is no good faith Israeli investigation there is an concerted highlevel effort to undermine Justice to protect Netanyahu Galant and others from war crime charges I want to go back to kareim Khan's predecessor Fatu Ben suda who announced in 2019 that she intended to investigate alleged atrocities during Israel's 200 14 war in Gaza she said at the time there was a quote reasonable a reasonable basis to argue Israeli authorities are guilty of war crimes for relocating Israeli civilians uh into the West Bank to live in settlements I am satisfied one that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Street two that potential cases arising from the situation would be at admissible and three that there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interest of justice so that's Fatu B suda back in 2019 she brought the she open in this case in 2021 and I wanted to ask you more about her the guardian writes quote as a gambian national she did not enjoy the political protection that other ICC colleagues from Western countries had by virtue of their citizenship a former ICC Source said this left her vulnerable and isolated they went after her husband they went after her and then I want to ask you about the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo that um The Guardian reported on Joseph cabil and how they used him this is an amazing meeting well first um Fatu B suda is a tough woman I I met with her numerous times she is super professional she is dedicated to Justice um she knew she was facing threats and she you know just persisted and that's really to her credit I think the Israelis totally underestimated her they thought that she could just be pushed over with these threats and it totally didn't happen now Joseph cabila the congales president is an interesting case i' I've met with him multiple times um on the one hand he handed over more suspects to the ICC than any other another president in the world so he is you know somebody who Ben suda legitimately was meeting with but the mosad head wanting to meet with B suda knowing that she would not accept a meeting just like that probably paid off kabil I mean who knows but kabil is notoriously corrupt and so Ben suda is meeting with cabila and imp poops the head of the mosad which cabil authorized they called it an ambush and that was you know how the head of the mad set up an opportunity to communicate with menuda um and you know am I surprised that kabila would do this no um but that was the kind of underhanded methods that um the Israeli mosad Chief used to try to begin the process of threatening Ben suda wasn't kabila himself being investigated for uh war crimes or atrocities in war well I mean kabila um was vulnerable for you know for example um his force of shooting at demonstrators when he was trying to hang on to the presidency beyond the end of his term but in fact he was never the subject of a a major ICC investigation those were mostly focused on on groups in in eastern Congo where you know he was I think doing what he could to stop it so I don't think he felt threatened by the ICC um and had a Cooperative relationship with vuda and then talk about what happened to alhak and how they were EES dropped on when they would relate to this is the uh rala based uh Human Rights group and ultimately being called a terrorist organization well Al Hawk is a super respected Palestinian Human Rights group I've worked with them for decades in fact I I just did a webinar yesterday with it with its head um and they were communicating regularly with the ICC because they have field operatives throughout the West Bank and Gaza they would collect solid evidence and they would pass it on to the ICC because they wanted to see Israeli war crimes prosecuted um the Israelis learned about this because they were monitoring Ben suda's commun ation with all Palestinians and essentially in retaliation the Israelis called Al Haw and five of its colleague organizations terrorist organizations a label that that you know remains there to this day now they haven't actually shut them down but it was the effort to say these are illegitimate groups you know don't rely on them and it was a punishment of them in essence for cooperating with the ICC well Israel is intensifying its attacks so if we could just go to to what's unfolding at the moment Israel is intensifying it attack on the southern city of Rafa on Tuesday the White House said that Israel's devastating air strike on a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafa does not cross President Biden's so-called Red Line in Gaza Sunday's attack which set off a fire in the camp killed 45 Palestinians and injured over 200 mostly women and children an investigation by CNN found Israel attacked the camp using Munitions made in the United States by Boeing White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby was was questioned Tuesday by Edo Keefe of CBS News how does this not violate the red line that the president laid out as I said we don't want to see a major ground operation we haven't seen that at this point how many more charred corpses does he have to see before the president considers a change in policy we don't want to see a single more innocent life taken and I kind of take a little offense at the question no civilian casualties is the right number of Civilian casualties and this is not something that we've turned a blind eye to nor has it been something we've ignored or neglected to raise with our Israel counterparts including it this weekend as a result of this particular strike now they're investigating it so let's let them investigate it and see what they come up with so Ken if you could respond uh to Kirby's response and then overall the Biden administration's position uh on this and in fact on the ICC which which you referred to earlier well Biden seems to have an endlessly movable red line and he you know rightly at the rhetorical level keeps pushing the Israeli government to allow in food and other humanitarian supplies to take greater care not to harm Israeli civilians it's all the right thing to say he never backs it up the only consequence he's imposed so far has been he did stop delivery of these huge 2,000lb bombs that Israel was using to decimate entire neighborhood hoods and he didn't want that to happen in Rafa so that's to his credit but then he turned around and authorized $1 billion in additional arms sales to Israel so that really kind of undercut the message there um they've been saying you know we don't want this Rafa operation to harm civilians but Israel has now chased 1 million out of the 1.4 million Palestinian Sheltering in Rafa out of the city and most of them are you know trying to survive on this beach front camp with no food no sanitation facilities no Medical Aid nothing you know and that was um it was near that area that this latest bomb that killed 45 people took place but you know the international court of justice last week said these are horrendous conditions you know this is not a safe response to this rtha military operation but Biden's closing his eyes to that and says we haven't seen any real problems yet you know it's proceeding so the red line keeps moving and what do you think finally Ken what do you think is going to come out of this investigation the guardian and 972 investigation and Revelations about what Israel did uh to subvert the work of the ICC well it'll be interesting to see whether Kem Khan does in fact use article 70 of the Rome statute to to prosecute you know in essence obstruction of justice um you know the the sense I got from his statement a week and a half ago was that he was not going to apply that retroactively but if anything like this happens again he would use it um I I think the most significant effect will be that you know Israel is going to try to defend itself um using this principle of complimentarity saying we're investigating ourselves and I think the real effect of this investigation is to really undermine The credibility of any self-investigation claim democracy Now is funded by viewers like you please give today at democracynow.org slash give

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024