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ICC Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant – A Watershed Moment in International Justice 

By Iqbal Jassat 

As the world absorbs the impact on global geopolitics following the groundbreaking bombshell dropped by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue warrants of arrests for the settler colonial regime’s notorious war criminals, a number of issues stand out for me. 

Foremost is a post on X that has gone viral by an Israeli writer Alon Mizrahi, known for his biting criticism of the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israelis. 

In it he alluded to the military genius of Hamas’s martyr Yahya Sinwar and the Al-Aqsa Flood of October 7 that set off  “…the global unmasking, the cultural and diplomatic tremors, the coming into being of an entirely new political movement and energy worldwide, the disintegration of old norms and alliances, the first arrest warrant against a Western ally – all this was born in the mind of one Gazan man who was born and raised in the Khan Yunis refugee camp after his family was driven out of their ancestral home in Majdal Asqalan…”.

Mizrahi’s post goes on to remind his audience that Sinwar was: “A man who grew up in poverty under occupation, with no future and no dignity but the kind he could muster himself, from within…”. 

He credits Sinwar for pulling off an operation by channeling all his talent into it, that would change history forever. 

” One Palestinian refugee…he spent years and years in Israeli prisons… 

” If you don’t treat people with dignity, you will get Yehya Sinwar. And all your walls will crumble. Don’t occupy and colonize people. It’s not worth it. And you will be destroyed.” 

The other, equally compelling, is the profound observation made by Caitlin Johnstone. 

Johnstone, a reader-funded journalist, essayist, painter and poet based in Melbourne, Australia, writes that the ICC’s decisive action ends decades of impunity and challenges Israel’s longstanding shield of immunity. 

She argues that despite relentless nightmare happening in Gaza, at long last the western world is getting a clear look at Israel. The real Israel. 

Not the Israel taught about in schools as “the only democracy in the Middle East”. 

“Not that Israel. The real one. Arguably the most racist society on earth, whose existence has depended on nonstop violence, theft, tyranny and abuse since its very inception.” 

The real Israel whose government is deliberately and methodically starving Palestinian civilians to death by the tens of thousands for being the wrong ethnicity, insists Johnstone. 

Not the Israel Netanyahu claims to be killing barbarians in defence of western civilisation against Islamic fundamentalists, but the real Israel whose snipers such as South African Aaron Bayhack, routinely murders Palestinian children by shooting them in the head. 

In similar vein, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland makes his views clear: 

“Israel, which once dreamed of being a light unto the nations, has taken a step closer to becoming a leper among the nations.” 

He asserts that the ICC arrest warrants will accelerate Israel’s path to international pariahdom. 

And that it will strengthen calls for arms embargos of Israel, as well as calls for criminal investigations into lower-level Israeli political and military figures. 

Interestingly, Freedland believes that Netanyahu walked into a trap set by Hamas, by lashing out in ways that would destroy Israel’s international legitimacy. 

Undoubtedly, Israel’s reputation is in the pits. The writers I’ve quoted above are but a sampling of analysts who overwhelmingly allude to the fact that public opinion is not in Israel’s favour. 

Even before the ICC decision, data from a Pew Research Center survey conducted in September 2023 pointed to more Americans think Israel’s military operation against Hamas has going too far than thought so in December 2023.

Around the same period, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs confirmed an increase in sympathy for Palestinians —and the opposite for Israel. It attributed it to human rights violations by the “IDF in the Gaza Strip”.

As at January 2024, more U.S. adults believe the military response from Israel in the Gaza strip has gone too far, up from 40% in a November AP-NORC poll. 

With its morals and reputation in tatters, Israel now faces further indignity of being led by a Prime Minister wanted by the ICC for war crimes. 

None except the settler colonial regime and its army of well-resourced propagandists who hide behind intimidatory allegations of antisemitism, can deny that the issuing of arrest warrants is a watershed moment in international justice. 

Let’s be clear too, this wouldn’t have been possible without courageous and rigorous on-the-ground reporting by Palestinian journalists. More than 180 have been killed, deliberately targeted by Netanyahu and his criminal gang of warlords, for documenting truthful accounts of the genocide. 

Iqbal Jassat

Executive Member

Media Review Network

Johannesburg

South Africa

 

Iqbal Jassat
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