December 16 is the 71th day since the genocide in Gaza began
December 16 is the 71th day since the genocide in Gaza began. Israel has killed more than 19,000 civilians, with over 8,000 being children in Gaza and occupied West Bank. At least 18,787 killed in Gaza and 270 in West Bank. In Gaza, there are 7,000 missing or unaccounted for, and the number of casualties is staggering, with hospitals overwhelmed and more than 50,000 injured awaiting treatment. For the past two months, Gaza has been without electricity, and access to water, and over 2 million surviving inhabitants are unable to access food and essential supplies. Israel restricts humanitarian aid to Gaza from entering. . Read More
Al Jazeera – December 16, 2023
Israel keeps the pressure on Gaza as Qatar confirms truce talks
Attacks on Saturday heavily targeted Khan Younis in the south, where thousands have been forced to flee.
The Israeli army has continued to pound areas across the Gaza Strip to devastating effect as Qatar has confirmed that talks are once more under way to evaluate if a new truce can be reached.
The Qatari foreign ministry said in a statement Saturday that talks are continuing.
“Qatar affirmed its ongoing diplomatic efforts to renew the humanitarian pause and expressed hope for building upon the progress made to accomplish a comprehensive and sustainable agreement that would end the war, stop the bloodshed of our Palestinian brethren, and lead to serious negotiations and the launch of a political process that yields a comprehensive, permanent, and just peace in accordance with international resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Israeli ground, air and naval forces launched attacks on the besieged enclave on Saturday, leaving many dozens dead. At least 18,787 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, after Hamas launched an attack inside Israel killing about 1,200 people.
Attacks on Saturday heavily targeted Khan Younis in the south, where thousands have been forced to flee, as Israel has expanded its ground military presence in the north and towards the south.
Al Jazeera journalists Samer Abudaqa and Wael Dahdouh were covering the aftermath of an Israeli bombing of a school in Khan Younis on Friday when they were targeted by a drone strike.
Cameraman Abudaqa died after paramedics were prevented from reaching him for hours, and Gaza bureau chief Dahdouh walked to a hospital after suffering injuries from shrapnel.
Abudaqa was the 13th Al Jazeera journalist killed since the founding of the news network, and one of at least 57 Palestinian journalists killed while covering the war on Gaza.
The Israeli army said on Saturday it raided two schools in Gaza City, in the north of the Strip, claiming it killed 25 fighters and captured 50 more.
Since the war started, the military has repeatedly legitimised attacks on civilian infrastructure, including United Nations-run schools and hospitals, to target Hamas fighters.
However, reports from the ground show that scores of civilians have been killed in most of these strikes. Earlier on Saturday, several Palestinians were killed and injured in an Israeli attack targeting the vicinity of the al-Mazraa School run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip.
No significant progress has been made on stopping the war – even temporarily – since last month, when Israel pulled back its Mossad negotiators from Doha after an agreement with Hamas could not be reached through Qatari mediation.
Reports on Saturday suggested Israel may be looking to revive the talks that had earlier led to a week-long truce and the exchange of dozens of captives held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
This comes after Israel admitted to mistakenly killing three of its captives held inside Gaza who were initially believed to be fighters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under increasing pressure from the families of the people held in Gaza to secure their release.
Another large demonstration was held in Tel Aviv on Friday to demand the release of captives.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/16/israel-keeps-the-pressure-on-gaza-as-qatar-confirms-truce-talks
Daily Sabah – December 14, 2023
'Perfect storm' of deadly diseases looms over battered Gaza
The residents of Gaza, who have so far survived Israel's bombs and bullets, are now facing a silent, invisible killer as the besieged Palestinian territory faces a "perfect storm' of deadly diseases.
A lack of food, clean water and shelter have worn down hundreds of thousands of traumatized people and, with a health system on its knees, it's inevitable epidemics will rip through the enclave, 10 doctors and aid workers told Reuters.
"The perfect storm for disease has begun. Now it's about, 'How bad will it get?'" James Elder, chief spokesperson for the U.N. children's fund (UNICEF), said in an interview Tuesday.
From Nov. 29 to Dec. 10, cases of diarrhea in children under five jumped 66% to 59,895 cases, and climbed 55% for the rest of the population in the same period, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The U.N. agency said the numbers were inevitably incomplete due to the meltdown of all systems and services in Gaza because of the war.
The head of the pediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, told Reuters his ward was overrun with children suffering extreme dehydration, causing kidney failure in some cases, while severe diarrhea was four times higher than normal.
He said he was aware of 15 to 30 cases of Hepatitis A in Khan Younis in the past two weeks: "The incubation period of the virus is three weeks to a month, so after a month there will be an explosion in the number of cases of Hepatitis A."
Since the truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed on Dec. 1, hundreds of thousands of people have moved to makeshift shelters – abandoned buildings, schools and tents. Many others are sleeping in the open with little access to toilets or water to bathe, aid workers said.
At the same time, 21 of the Gaza Strip's 36 hospitals are closed, 11 are partially functional and four are minimally functional, according to WHO figures from Dec. 10.
Marie-Aure Perreaut, emergency medical coordinator for MSF's operations in Gaza, said the medical charity had left a health center in Khan Younis 10 days ago – because the area was within Israel's evacuation orders – where it had been treating respiratory tract infections, diarrhea and skin infections,
She said two things were now inevitable.
"The first is an epidemic of something like dysentery will spread across Gaza, if we continue at this pace of cases, and the other certainty is that neither the Ministry of Health nor the humanitarian organizations will be able to support the response to those epidemics," she said.
'Practice of medicine under attack'
Academic researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine warned in a Nov. 6 report – a month after the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war – of how the indirect health effects of the conflict would worsen over time.
They said that two months into the war there would be an increased burden of infant malnutrition due to disrupted feeding and care, and the nutrition of mothers would worsen. "With time, increasing chance of introduction of epidemic-prone pathogens. Risk factors: overcrowding, inadequate (water and sanitation)."
Aid workers say what the experts in London predicted is exactly what's playing out now. Three experts said diseases such as dysentery and watery diarrhea could end up killing as many children as Israeli bombardments have done so far.
The U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said two months of brutal war combined with a "very tight siege" have forced 1.3 million Gazans out of a population of 2.3 million to seek safety at its sites in the strip of land by the Mediterranean Sea.
"Many of the shelters are overwhelmed with people seeking safety, with four or five times their capacity," said Juliette Touma, UNRWA's director of communications. "Most of the shelters are not equipped with toilets or showers or clean water."
Since the war started, 135 staff of UNRWA have been killed and 70% of staff have fled their homes, two of the reasons why UNRWA is now operating only nine of the 28 primary health clinics it had prior to the war, Touma said.
All told, at least 364 attacks on healthcare services have been recorded in Gaza since Oct. 7, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, said in Dec. 7 statement.
"The practice of medicine is under attack," she said.
More than 300 Gazan health ministry staff and medics have been killed since Oct. 7, the ministry said Wednesday.
'Epidemic potentinal'
Salim Namour, a Syrian surgeon who treated the sick and wounded in eastern Ghouta outside Damascus during a yearslong siege imposed by the Syrian government, said the images from Gaza reminded him of the scenes he experienced first-hand.
He said hepatitis and tuberculosis spread in Ghouta as its sewage system was destroyed and water contaminated. Malnutrition weakened people's immunity and – setting aside wounds caused by shelling – shortages of antibiotics and vaccines for children encouraged the spread of disease.
"Siege ... is a way to cause society to collapse. It means hunger, it means shortages of medical supplies, no electricity, no refrigeration, no way to preserve medicines or food, no heating," said Namour, who left Ghouta in 2018 and lives in Germany.
Gaza's Health Ministry said Wednesday its supplies of childhood vaccines had run out. Overnight Wednesday, strong winds and heavy rain ripped the flimsy tents at a camp in Rafah and flooded the ground, forcing people to spend the night huddled in the cold on wet sand.
The United Nations is tracking the incidence of 14 diseases with "epidemic potential" and is most concerned about soaring rates of dysentery, watery diarrhea and acute respiratory infections, according to a list the U.N. is currently using for Gaza seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
Dr. Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is in Cairo working on the U.N. response, said a diarrhea outbreak could happen as soon as tomorrow, unless many more aid trucks were let in and clean water was provided.
He also said the U.N. plans to start documenting the levels of acute malnutrition among children in Gaza soon by measuring their mid-upper arm circumference, known as a MUAC test.
"When you have acute malnutrition, which is called wasting, people, they die from that, but then they are also so much more vulnerable to other diseases," said Spiegel.
The U.N.'s World Food Programme said Monday that 83% of the people who have moved to southern Gaza were not eating enough food.
'Unfit for Human'
To avoid epidemics, aid workers said hospitals and health centers would need to be able to treat large numbers of people for such diseases, instead of only the trauma wounds they're already overwhelmed with.
Drinking and bathing water would need to be available at minimum required levels according to emergency humanitarian standards while greater amounts of food and medicine would need to come into the Gaza Strip and safe passage provided for humanitarian convoys to deliver it, the aid workers said.
During the recent truce, about 200 aid trucks a day entered Gaza but that has since dwindled to 100 and fierce fighting has mostly prevented any distribution beyond Rafah.
Doctors at Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah told Reuters on Tuesday they were overwhelmed with hundreds of patients needing treatment for infections and communicable diseases given the squalid conditions in overcrowded shelters.
"There will be outbreaks of all contagious diseases across Rafah," said Dr. Jamal al-Hams.
Nasser Hospital's pediatric head al-Farra said ongoing hostilities had made it impossible for many families to bring their ill children for care in time, which in any case he could not provide adequately due to shortage of medicines.
"Children are (drinking) water that is unfit for human consumption," he said. "There's no fruit, no vegetables, so children have a deficiency in vitamins, in addition to ... anemia from malnutrition."
Without clean water to mix with infant formula, doctors and aid workers said, babies were going hungry too. Even relatively well-off Gazans working for international agencies or media companies said their children were now ill and did not have enough food or water.
Standing among a sea of tents near Nasser Hospital, Mahmoud Abu Sharkh, who fled northern Gaza early in the war with his three children who are all under three, pointed to the squalid conditions around him in the dusty camp.
"The children get better for two days, and on the third day they are sick again."
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/perfect-storm-of-deadly-diseases-looms-over-battered-gaza
Informed Comment – December 15, 2023
The Plague as Life: 327,000 Stricken with Infectious Diseases in Gaza
By Juan Cole
Ann Arbor – In Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, a character at one point asks, “But what does it mean, the plague? It’s life, that’s all.”
The plague has come to Gaza.
What happens when you force 1.8 million people into a postage-stamp-sized territory and destroy or damage half of their dwelling places, breaking the water pipes with 2000-pound bombs? You create homeless people sleeping rough, with few toilets. Many people are forced to urinate and defecate in the streets.
The UN explains, “Due to the lack or limited capacity of latrines especially in IDP shelters, people are adopting unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as open defecation. In shelters, people wait for hours to access toilets, and in some other locations where IDPs [internally displaced people] are located, no toilets are available at all. Children reportedly defecate in the open, while adults resort to buckets and dispose of the waste in improvised areas or solid waste dumps. In many locations, solid waste is piling up with no effective waste management mechanism for collection or disposal. Reportedly, rats and insects, including mosquitos, congregate in these areas, contributing to the risk of spreading disease.”
Human waste carries bacteria and viruses. The winter rains come and spread around the urine and feces and bacteria and viruses.
Since many water pipes have been broken by the bombardment and anyway there is no fuel to pump the water through them, there is almost no potable water. People are drinking from puddles, which are contaminated. Most have no means of boiling the water collected from such puddles, so there is no way to make it safe.
“Well, personally, I’ve seen enough of people who die for an idea.
I don’t believe in heroism; I know it’s easy
and I’ve learned that it can be murderous. What interests me
is living and dying for what one loves.”
-Raymond Rambert, journalist, The Plague.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health provided the following information, conveyed by the UN: “There have been significant increases or increased risk of outbreak in some communicable diseases and conditions such as diarrhea, influenza, chicken pox, meningitis, jaundice, impetigo acute respiratory infections, skin infections and hygiene-related conditions like lice and scabies. The heavy rains and flooding which affected large parts of Gaza on 13 December compounded human misery and added to the risk of waterborne diseases.”
Chicken pox and meningitis sound dangerous. Cholera is also being reported. Ironically, it is possible that these diseases will spread back into Israel through its soldiers.
Some of these diseases are especially dangerous to the little ones because, as Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudraﾠreported Thursday, the hospitals have completely run out of vaccines for children.
Australian Broadcast Co.: ﾓHealth situation inside Gaza ﾑcatastrophicﾒ, says WHO | ABC Newsﾔ
James Elder of UNICEF, just back from Gaza, explains that 100,000 children have diarrhea and 150,000 suffer from respiratory diseases. One physician on the ground told him that he expects the same number of children to die of disease as have been killed by Israeli bombing. Currently the latter are estimated at over 7,000, though that does not count the little bodies under the rubble.
“I have no idea what’s awaiting me,
or what will happen when this all ends.
For the moment I know this:
there are sick people and they need curing.”
– “Dr. Rieux”, The Plague.
Elder calls this campaign a “war on children” because the proportion of children killed by Israeli actions has been twice that of other conflicts. He insists that Israelis are bombing indiscriminately, and frequently with dumb bombs rather than precision munitions. Indiscriminate fire that recklessly endangers the lives of noncombatants is a war crime. President Bidenﾠalso complained this week about indiscriminate Israeli fire.
In the south of Gaza where a handful of hospitals are still trying to operate, often without medicines or functioning equipment, a Ministry of Health spokesman said that displaced individuals huddling in shelters had fallen ill and come for treatment. Among them, some 327,000 were diagnosed with infectious diseases. Apparently the doctors have run out of antibiotics to give them, according to Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudraﾠ.
“I have realized that we all have plague,
and I have lost my peace. And today
I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand
all those others and not to be
the mortal enemy of anyone.”
Jean Tarrou, idealist, The Plague.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
https://www.juancole.com/2023/12/stricken-infectious-diseases.html
Anadolu Agency – December 15, 2023
Hezbollah member killed in clashes with Israeli forces on Lebanese border
Lebanese group says 105 members killed in clashes with Israeli troops since Oct. 8
The Lebanese group Hezbollah said Thursday that one of its fighters was killed in clashes with Israeli forces near the border between Lebanon and Israel.
The group identified the member as Mehdi Halil Zahter.
Tensions have flared along the border between Lebanon and Israel amid intermittent exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah in the deadliest clashes since the two sides fought a full-scale war in 2006.
At least 105 Hezbollah members have been killed since the clashes first erupted on Oct. 8, according to figures released by the group.
The border tension comes amid an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7.
World Socialist Web Site – December 15, 2023
Israeli regime assassinates journalist in Gaza amid growing threat of region-wide war
Jordan Shilton
The Biden administration dispatched National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to Tel Aviv Friday to underline Washington’s unyielding support for the Israeli regime’s genocide against the Palestinians. As Sullivan reiterated that US imperialism places no restrictions on Israel’s onslaught and threatened a wider war against Hizbollah and Iran, the Israeli regime continued its savage onslaught on Gaza’s defenceless population.
The Zionist regime’s barbarism was demonstrated once again Friday with the targeted killing of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa. Abudaqa was fatally wounded in a drone strike on a school in Khan Younis. His colleague, Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, suffered light injuries. A third journalist, Ramy Budair of the New Press Agency, also died in Khan Younis Friday. Earlier in the conflict, Dahdouh was forced to mourn the loss of almost his entire family following a deliberate Israeli air strike on his house.
“The Network holds Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing Al Jazeera journalists and their families,” stated Al Jazeera in an official statement condemning Abudaqa’s killing. “In today’s bombing in Khan Younis, Israeli drones fired missiles at a school where civilians sought refuge, resulting in indiscriminate casualties. Following Samer’s injury, he was left to bleed to death for over 5 hours as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him, denying the much-needed emergency treatment.”
Denouncing Israel for “carnage and crimes against humanity,” the statement called for the International Criminal Court to pursue war crimes charges. The statement noted that over 90 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October.
Dahdouh later described how the attack unfolded as the media team accompanied a civil defence unit seeking to evacuate a family from their destroyed home. “We captured the devastating destruction and reached places that had not been reached by any camera lens since the Israeli ground operation started,” he recounted. While he managed to escape to safety, Abudaqa remained stranded. An ambulance trying to rescue the cameraman came under fire from Israeli soldiers.
Abudaqa’s killing prompted international outrage. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists appealed for “international authorities to independently investigate the attack and hold those responsible to account.” The International Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders issued their own statements condemning the deliberate attack.
Israel has a notorious record when it comes to the targeted killing of journalists. In May 2022, IDF snipers shot and killed respected journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The 51-year-old Palestinian-American reporter was covering brutal Israeli raids in the West Bank city of Jenin for Al Jazeera when she was assassinated.
On Friday, video emerged of Israeli security forces beating photo journalist Mustafa Haruf in East Jerusalem.
The Zionist regime’s deliberate targeting of journalists is inseparable from its explicit policy of genocide against the Palestinians. The savage bombardment of Gaza has officially claimed the lives of well over 18,000 people, with an additional 7,000 people reported missing. Some 85 percent of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been forced to flee their homes. Using bombs supplied by the United States, the IDF has systematically targeted academics, engineers, artists, and other prominent Palestinians. The targeted killing earlier this month of professor and poet Refaat al-Ar’eer provoked a wave of outrage around the globe.
The strategy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government is to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and force the remaining inhabitants into Egypt’s Sinai Desert. The elimination of journalists on the ground is a critical component of this plan. The fascistic members of Netanyahu’s government hope that they can conceal the horrendous war crimes they are committing from the world.
Sullivan left no doubt during his visit of US imperialism’s endorsement of Israel’s savagery. There are “no disagreements” between the White House and Netanyahu’s government that the war in Gaza will take “months,” he told a press conference.
Reiterating the blank cheque extended by Washington to Israel throughout the onslaught, he added, “We’re not here to tell anybody you must do X, you must do Y.” Sullivan added that in his meetings with Israeli government officials, he “did not hear [them]…say things that would lead me to feel I need to answer the hypothetical question of how Washington will respond if the current phase drags on.” In other words, Israel can continue using US-supplied weapons to indiscriminately slaughter men, women, and children with impunity.
Underlining the impending danger of an escalation into a region-wide conflict, Sullivan also took aim at Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Hauthis in Yemen. Israeli citizens from areas near the northern border with Lebanon “have to be able to return to their homes and have to be able to do so with a true sense of security,” Sullivan said. This entails “dealing with the threat that comes from the other side of the border.” Although he asserted that for the time being, Washington feels “that threat can be dealt with through diplomacy and does not require the launching of a new war,” he added ominously that “deterrence” is needed to send a “clear message” to Hizbollah.
Shortly after Sullivan’s remarks, reports emerged of the Israeli Defence Forces dropping leaflets over southern Lebanon threatening civilians who fail to “stop” Hizbollah from “infiltrating” the area. The IDF is currently conducting “intensive war simulations” on the Lebanese border for mandatory and reserve troops entitled “Valuable Time.”
Some of Sullivan’s most provocative remarks were reserved for the Houthis in Yemen, who have fired missiles at several ships in the Red Sea bound for Israel. The Houthis are a “threat to freedom of navigation,” he declared, and Washington “is working with the international community, with partners from the region and from all over the world to deal with this threat.” “While the Houthis are pulling the trigger,” he continued, “…they’re being handed the gun by Iran.”
Coming from one of the Biden administration’s top representatives, these statements must be taken with the utmost seriousness. US President Joe Biden has already deployed two aircraft carrier battlegroups to the region and a nuclear-capable submarine.
Earlier this week, Central Command chief Erik Kurilla paid unannounced visits to Iraq and Syria to discuss “current regional and local security concerns” with Iraqi Prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and visit “multiple bases” in Syria, according to the Pentagon. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke by phone Friday with his British counterpart Grant Shapps to discuss the “significant international problem” posed by the disruption to the Red Sea, a key trade route.
The largest presence of US military hardware in the region for decades is aimed at setting the stage for a war engulfing the entire Middle East. Iran is viewed by American imperialism as a major regional obstacle to the consolidation of its hegemony. Washington’s goal is to open up the Middle East front in what is increasingly developing as a third world war to secure the lion’s share of the spoils in a new imperialist redivision of the world.
The task of halting the imperialists’ war plans and stopping the genocide in Gaza falls to the working class. The mobilization of workers in every country to prevent the supply and manufacturing of all military equipment destined for Israel must be combined with the struggles of the working class developing in all the major imperialist powers against the ruling elite’s attempt to make working people pay for the war through austerity and wage cuts. This fight necessitates the construction of a global anti-war movement guided by a socialist and internationalist perspective.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/16/sogi-d16.html
Is ICC still relevant? Not so, says Brazil’s Lula da Silva. And he is not alone
By Uriel Araujo
Whenever people hear about the “International Crime Court”, they often assume it is some essential part of the fabric of international law. The court’s name, however, should not be taken at face value. It is true that about 124 countries are ratified state parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. It is also true, though, that 30 others have not yet ratified it, some of which have no intention of doing so. China, Russia, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Turkey are not states parties – no Great Power in fact is a party to the ICC, unless one considers France, the UK and Germany as such. South Africa and the Philippines have already given formal notice of their intention to withdraw from the Statute, and so have Gambia and Burundi. Many other countries are considering doing so – which is not surprising at all.
Consider this: having been formed in 2002, with the exception of the Putin/Lvova-Belova warrant and the investigation on Rodrigo Duterte (former President of the Philippines), all other cases thus far launched by the court have been against Africans, including prominent regional leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. It is no wonder then that over the last years the African Union has often accused the ICC of being biased against the continent. William Schabas (professor of international law at Middlesex Universit) summarized it: “Why prosecute post-election violence in Kenya… but not murder and torture of prisoners in Iraq or illegal settlements in the West Bank? Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and George W. Bush, the former American president… were never indicted by the ICC… in spite of the ample evidence available to justify legal proceedings against the two.”
In September, Brazil’s aforementioned President Lula da Silva had already questioned the value of a Hague-based court that does not include the US, Russia, or China. In his reasoning, the ICC cannot be that relevant, considering the fact that major powers do not submit themselves to its jurisdiction. Similarly, Flavio Dino, then the Brazilian Minister of Justice, described the court as “unbalanced”, saying that “it makes no sense to have a court that is only to judge some and not others”, even adding that his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs could debate Brazilﾒs participation in the Statue.
As shown, Lula da Silva is not the only who has doubts about the ICC and the controversies pertaining to the court have been around for a long time, way before its arrest warrant for Putin. Take the United States for instance. The US and the ICC have a peculiar record, to say the least. Back in 2002, President George W. Bush famously signed into law the so-called “Hague Invasion Act”, which in fact authorized the use of military force to liberate any American citizen being held by the ICC. More recently, it was described as a ﾓkangaroo courtﾔ by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when President Donal Trump authorized sanctions against an ICC investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan. Washington went so far as to threaten to arrest the courtﾒs judges over the same issue.
However, in 2022, S.Res.546, a bipartisan, unanimous resolution by the US Senate (agreed to without amendment) came into being to support the ICC, which is quite remarkable, considering all the aforementioned record. It would seem the US is quite ready to applaud the Hague court, as long as it only persecutes its geopolitical rivals and never points its finger to any American war criminal – in this case Washington will literally threaten the court and its judges with arrest and invasion.
The ICC is predominantly funded by European states. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Spain (and also Japan) have long been among the court’s top 10 contributors. Moreover, it also receives contributions from private donors, such as large corporations. All of that throws some doubts on its credibility and impartiality as an international organ often accused (justifiably so) of having a pro-Western bias.
I wrote before about the dangerous trend of employing international lawfare as a geopolitical tool – as seen in Germany, where local courts have been invoking “universal jurisdiction” (over some crimes) to convict Syrian authorities accused of having committed torture in Syria. This development was applauded by many, including Wolfgang Kaleck, founder of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), who described it as a step towards bigger things.
One could very well ask how big it can get. We know that torture and sexual abuse were and have been common place in CIA-operated bases overseas as well as in places such as Guantánamo Bay (Cuba), and Abu Ghraib (Iraq). We also know Biden admittedly authorized the infamous August 29 drone strike in Kabul that killed civilians only. His predecessor Donald Trump in turn ordered the illegal assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, who was on a peace mission. Even so, it is hard to imagine a top CIA official (or Biden and Trump themselves for that matter) being investigated by a German court – or by the ICC.
From a perspective informed by legal realism and political realism, one could reason that the very way a country’s judicial systems’ “universal jurisdiction” can be exercised is limited by certain conditions regarding political, economic, and military power. The same limitations apply to the ICC. To sum it up, it is about geopolitics as much as it is about international law. The ICC today is a reflection of the inequalities between countries in today’s architecture of international law.
Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts
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