‘License To Kill’: Why The ICC Will Never Prosecute Netanyahu For Gaza

“If there was no “Israel”, the United States would have to invent one”

– a quote as old as time and as old as the one who said it – “Genocide Joe”,

aka US President Joe Biden.

The United States molded and formed today’s “Israel”, and the United States is playing it like a puppet. It is also true to say that the US has played the principles of international law like a fidget around its fingers. 

Hence, to understand the International Criminal Court’s failure today is to absorb the decay in the roots of the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

The ICC was established by the United Nations General Assembly which was created by the United States alongside China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. It has state parties that abide by the Rome Statute that defines crimes in international law. 

The US is not a member of the ICC, nor is “Israel” – and it refuses to be – as it voted against the Rome Statute of 1998, the treaty that defined and outlined Genocide, Crimes against humanity, War crimes, and Crime of aggression and which later led to the establishment of the ICC.

If there were no occupational forces of “Israel” – commanded, driven, and puppeteered by the US – then there would be no entryway for the US into the Middle East. The US is overtly an accomplice to the genocide in Gaza, through Genocide Joe and Antagonistic Antony (Blinken). Acknowledging the murder of babies in Gaza is one thing, but contributing to committing it hand-in-hand is cooperating with a failure bound to blow up and take the West with it.

Bringing the world to its knees

Diving into the endless list of violations of international law committed by “Israel” eventually in this context will not drive this conversation to where it needs to reach, as it remains known and in the open and on every digital screen in the world no matter how much the West tries to conceal it. 

Given that the ICC prosecutes individuals as opposed to countries which the International Court of Justice does, Netanyahu can be taken to the ICC and prosecuted even though “Israel” is not a state party to the Rome Statute.

This occurs as individuals accused of committing crimes listed in the Rome Statute can be prosecuted even if the State they belong to is not a party to the Rome Statute. 

Turkey has already submitted an ICC application to prosecute Netanyahu for war crimes, as have Colombia, Algeria, South Africa, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Comoros, and Bolivia. Perhaps if every country in the world submitted an ICC application to prosecute Netanyahu, if the US wants to impede it, it will and it will go to every corner and turn every stone over to ensure “Israel” does not attend a single court hearing for the genocide it continues to commit against the people of Occupied Palestine. 

Netanyahu can appeal the decision to prosecute and the United States may potentially back that appeal, and an even longer trial will occur – that’s if the ICC accepts the applications being sent to prosecute – which will delay justice being served (as if it ever was with the US around).

However, one, two or 200 applications may be a test of the ICC’s veracity to its principles and the very core values of human rights it was founded on, but bound to be shaken and manipulated with the hand of Western hegemony steered by US and European greed.

Thus it is important to indicate first the legal definition of ‘genocide’ in Article 6 of the Rome Statute. It defines it as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• (a) Killing members of the group;
• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. 

Article 7 defines ‘crimes against humanity’ as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

• (a) Murder;
• (b) Extermination;
• (c) Enslavement;
• (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
• (e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
• (f) Torture;
• (g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
• (h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender…
• (i) Enforced disappearance of persons;
• (j) The crime of apartheid;
• (k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to the body or to mental or physical health. 

Even if one believes “Israel” or Netanyahu did not commit all of the above-mentioned crimes, the war on Gaza after October 7 is a blatant package of evidence and only those blinded by ignorance can argue otherwise. 

Netanyahu and his war cabinet have ordered the killing of Palestinian men, women, and children, have caused serious bodily harm through chemical weapons and white phosphorus (leaving charred and burnt skin), and have deliberately inflicted conditions to contribute to the destruction of Palestinian life, forcible deportation (as is being done now in Gaza where they are told to move South and are being bombed as they do), torture and sexual violence (as witnessed in their occupational prisons), persecution, crime of apartheid and other inhumane acts intentionally causing grave suffering and serious mental and physical injuries. 

If words fail to speak, then the pictures of Gaza’s children amputated, awakening to sights of blood, in pieces separated in body bags and thrown into mass graves unidentified should be sufficient to bring the world to its knees and admit international justice’s failure in protecting a people who have never seen the light of day or a day of peace. 

The Devil-Duo and Business as Usual  

Put the Rome Statute aside, customary international law has become a mere option for both “Israel” and its ‘pat-on-the-back’ parent, the United States. What is human rights if it doesn’t benefit the economy, the status, or the political handshake? Human rights to the devil-duo have become a transaction of ‘business-as-usual’. 

“Israel” has targeted not only medical personnel and journalists but hospitals housing hundreds if not thousands of the wounded. All three entities are protected under international law and Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Convention. 

“Israel” has cut off food, fuel, water, and electricity to Gaza – a clear ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people (see above for deliberately inflicted conditions to contribute to the destruction of Palestinian life)  in addition to the fact that it constitutes starvation as a method of war, additionally violating Additional Protocol I.

Yet, not one European president or head of government has stood up and overtly described the bloodshed in Gaza as a ‘massacre’ because business as usual may never be any business again and what’s human life in business? 

When the US threatens retaliation against the ICC in case of any court filing against one of its nationals or that of its allies – “Israel” – and the ICC remains silent as children’s screams become muffled by the sound of bombs, then what is worth remains of an institution that represents the justice of victims of war crimes, selectively? 

Back in March 2021, when ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened an investigation into Gaza and the West Bank, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “The United States firmly opposes and is deeply disappointed by this decision.” Netanyahu also condemned the investigation, saying: “The decision of the international court to open an investigation against Israel today for war crimes is absurd. It’s undiluted antisemitism and the height of hypocrisy.” Bensouda’s visa to the US was taken away as a result of then-US President Donald Trump. 

Selective human rights AND selective democracy, ladies and gentlemen! 

The children of Gaza eventually bear the brunt after deals are struck between “Israel” and the US, or between “Israel” and the usual business partners who were once colonizers (the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, now does it?).  

The number of martyrs and murdered children continues to climb, as the complicity by the US and Europe continues to intensify at the hands of governments who preach democracy but fail to practice it, feeding a monster created to continue the legacy of colonialism with a bow of Zionism and an arrow made to pierce a child’s heart in Gaza and strike on land taken from the Palestinians, bought by land taken from the Indigenous Native Americans.