Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, speaks during a rally with supporters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot on October 26, 2022.
(Photo: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
One advocate responded: “Take this seriously. If extremists like Smotrich get their way they will do to the West Bank exactly what they have done to Gaza.”
Israel’s forces have killed at least 36,224 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in less than eight months, and far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday threatened to similarly attack the illegally occupied West Bank.
Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, shared on social media a video he recorded in Bat Hefer, following similar posts a day earlier. The Times of Israelreported that the minister’s comments came after Palestinians’ gunfire from Tulkarem in the West Bank toward the Israeli settlement.
“Our message to the neighbors beyond the fence in Tulkarem, Nur Shams, Shuweika, and Qalqilya: We will turn you into ruined cities like in the Gaza Strip if the terror you are exerting on the settlements continues,” Smotrich said in Hebrew, according to a translation from Al Jazeera.
NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy pointed out that not only is Smotrich an advocate of illegal Israeli settlements—he has a home near Kedumim—but also “his role as finance minister means he oversees budgets, like police and army.”
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns of the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said of Smotrich’s remarks: “Take this seriously. If extremists like Smotrich get their way they will do to the West Bank exactly what they have done to Gaza. Starting with the refugee camps and Area C communities (to a certain extent it has already begun).”
Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 500 Palestinians in the West Bank.
Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights group in the United States, issued a statement about multiple recent events, including the minister’s comments.
“Every day, we see Israel’s far-right government targeting civilian infrastructure vital to the lives of ordinary Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank,” Hooper said. “This ongoing destruction has one goal—to make life unbearable for the Palestinian people and to force their removal from the land of Palestine.”
The group further pointed out that the devastation in Ramallah followed Israeli forces bombing a pair of encampments in and near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, attacks that killed dozens of Palestinians displaced by the war—which over 30 countries have argued to the International Court of Justice amounts to genocide.
Smotrich has come under fire for other statements since Israel launched its retaliation for the October 7 attack. Just last month, in what critics called blatantly genocidal language, he advocated for “total annihilation” of Gaza.
In January, Smotrich said that the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza would be a “humanitarian solution” and “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where, four minutes away from our settlements, there is a hotbed of hatred and terror, where there are 2 million people who wake up every morning with the desire to destroy the state of Israel.”
Smotrich made similar remarks before the current escalation, declaring in March 2023 that an entire Palestinian town should be “wiped out” by Israel and that “there’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
Senator Lindsay Graham was bursting with contempt for the International Criminal Court (ICC) when he grilled Secretary of State Blinken at a May 21 Congressional hearing. Wagging his finger, he warned that, if the ICC gets away with issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “we are next.”
The audience at the hearing, stacked with CODEPINK pro-Palestine supporters, burst out in applause at the notion of the US being hauled before the world’s highest court. “You can clap all you want,” an angry Graham retorted, “but they tried to come after our soldiers in Afghanistan.” Graham was thankful that in the Afghan case “reason prevailed” when the case was dropped, adding that the US must level sanctions against the ICC “not only to protect our friends in Israel but to protect ourselves.”
Graham was referring to the 2019 efforts of former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to hold both the Taliban and the US accountable for war crimes in Afghanistan. When Graham said that “reason prevailed,” he really meant that US thuggery prevailed because the Trump administration brazenly imposed sanctions against ICC officials, denying them visas to the US and freezing their assets in US banks. President Biden lifted the sanctions but did so with the tacit understanding that the court would not resume the probe of US crimes in Afghanistan. The message from both Democratic and Republican presidents was clear: Do not dare hold the US to the same standards you use for others.
The International Criminal Court was founded in 1998 as the result of a lifetime’s work by an American (and Jewish) international lawyer, Benjamin Ferencz, rooted in his experience as an investigator and chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg tribunals after the Second World War. Ben passed away in 2023 at the age of 103, but the universal jurisdiction that the court is exercising in this case is the fruition of his life’s work to hold war criminals accountable under international law, no matter what country they are from or who their victims are.
Enter Israel. The ICC has been building a case against Israel for nearly a decade. A recent blockbuster investigation by the Guardian and two Israeli-based news outlets revealed a shocking almost decade-long secret campaign against the court by Israeli intelligence agencies, who surveilled, hacked, pressured, smeared and threatened ICC officials in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries.
Despite the pressure, on May 20, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan made his request for Israeli and Hamas arrest warrants. Among the charges against the Israeli officials are extermination, using starvation as a method of warfare, willfully causing great suffering, and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request has now gone to a panel of three judges who will determine in the coming weeks whether the request is granted. But pro-Israel forces in the US are trying their best to throw sand in the wheels of justice with threats of new sanctions.
One ultimatum already came from Senator Tom Cotton and 11 other Republican senators in a toxic April 24 letter. “Target Israel and we will target you,” the senators signaled to the ICC. “If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States.” The letter concluded with a hair-raising: “You have been warned.”
The Biden administration has responded to the ICC by flip flopping like a fish on dry land. On May 20, the White House put out a statement calling the ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders “outrageous”, adding “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called the request “shameful.” At a hearing on May 22, he told Senator Graham that he welcomed working with him on efforts to sanction the ICC.
But on May 28, National Security Council Communications Advisor John Kirby said at a White House press briefing, “We don’t believe that sanctions against the ICC is the right approach here.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who spoke after Kirby, reiterated that message. She said that legislation against the ICC “is not something the administration is going to support” and that “sanctions on the ICC are not an effective or appropriate tool to address U.S. concerns.”
This new position from the White House will make it easier for more Democrats to say no to the bills that will be introduced as soon as Congress returns from recess on June 3. Already, dueling statements are coming out from Congressional members. While Senate Majority Leader Schumer called the ICC appeal “reprehensible” and Democrat Joe Manchin joined with Republicans to call for visa bans for ICC officials and sanctions on the international body, Senator Bernie Sanders defended the court, saying, “The ICC is doing its job. It’s doing what it is supposed to do. We cannot only apply international law when it is convenient.”
On the House side, progressives voiced support for the ICC. Rep. Cori Bush said, “Seeking arrest warrants for human rights abuses is an important step towards accountability. It’s shameful for U.S. officials to threaten the ICC while continuing to send weapons that enable war crimes.” Rep. Mark Pocan gave a gutsy response, saying, “If Netanyahu comes to address Congress, I would be more than glad to show the ICC the way to the House floor to issue that warrant.”
While most Republicans and pro-Israel hawks in the Democratic Party will likely join hands to hammer the international court, President Biden may ultimately feel pressured to adopt the position best articulated by Senator Van Hollen. “It is fine to express opposition to a possible judicial action, but it is absolutely wrong to interfere in a judicial matter by threatening judicial officers, their family members and their employees with retribution. This thuggery is something befitting the mafia, not U.S. senators.” It is also not befitting the White House, especially one that has been such a willing partner to Israel’s war crimes.
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK, is coauthor, with David Swanson, of the forthcoming NATO: What You Need to Know.
There is no ambiguity about Israel causing Gaza to suffer occupation, apartheid and genocide. To counter Israeli denialism, here is a short primer on why these terms are accurate.
Malak Mattar, Palestine, “Hind’s Hall,” 2024. (Via Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)
In a chapter from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952), called “The Fact of Blackness,” Fanon writes about the despair that racism produces, the immense anxiety about living in a world that has decided that certain people are simply not human or not sufficiently human.
The lives of these people, children of a lesser god, are assigned less worth than the lives of the powerful and the propertied. An international division of humanity tears the world into pieces, throwing masses of people into the fires of anguish and oblivion.
What is happening in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, is ghastly. Since October 2023, Israel has ordered 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to move southwards as the Israeli armed forces have steadily moved their gunsights across the Wadi Gaza wetlands down to the edge of Rafah. Kilometre by kilometre, as the Israeli military advances, the so-called safe zone moves further and further south.
In December, the Israeli government claimed, with great cruelty, that the tent city of al-Mawasi (west of Rafah, along the Mediterranean Sea) was the new designated safe area.
A mere 6.5 square kilometres (half the size of London’s Heathrow airport), the supposed safe zone within al-Mawasi is nowhere near large enough to house the more than one million Palestinians who are in Rafah.
Not only was it absurd for Israel to say that al-Mawasi would be a refuge, but — according to the laws of war — a safe zone must be agreed upon by all parties.
Ismail Shammout, Palestine, “Odyssey of a People,” 1980. (Via Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)
“How can a zone be safe in a war zone if it is only unilaterally decided by one part of the conflict?” asked Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA); “It can only promote the false feeling that it will be safe.” Furthermore, on several occasions, Israel has bombed al-Mawasi, the area it says is safe.
On Feb. 20, Israel attacked a shelter operated by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, killing two family members of the organisation’s staff.
On May 13, an international U.N. staff member was killed after the Israeli army opened fire on a U.N. vehicle, one of the nearly 200 U.N. workers killed in Gaza in addition to the targeted assassination of aid workers.
[On May 26, an Israeli airstrike in Rafah killed at least 45 civilians, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now tries to claim was a “tragic mistake.” The attack, which burned mostly women and children alive, took place two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its Rafah attack.]
Aref El-Rayyes, Lebanon, untitled, 1963. (Via Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)
Not only has Israel begun to bomb Rafah, but it hastily sent in tanks to seize the only border crossing through which aid dribbled in on the few trucks a day that were allowed to enter. After Israel seized the Rafah border, it prevented the entry of aid into Gaza altogether.
Starving Palestinians has long been Israeli policy, which is of course a war crime. Preventing aid from entering Gaza is part of the international division of humanity that has defined not only this genocide, but the occupation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank since 1967 and the system of apartheid within the borders defined by Israel following the 1948 Nakba or “Catastrophe.”
Three words in this sentence are fundamentally contested by Israel: apartheid, occupation and genocide. Israel and its Global North allies want to claim that the use of these words to describe Israeli policies, Zionism, or the oppression of Palestinians is tantamount to anti-Semitism.
But, as the United Nations and numerous respected human rights groups note, these are legal descriptions of the reality on the ground and not moral judgments that are made either in haste or out of anti-Semitism. A short primer on the accuracy of these three concepts is necessary to counter this denial.
Nelson Makamo, South Africa, “Decoration of the Youth,” 2019. (Via Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)
Apartheid. The Israeli government treats the Palestinian minority population within the borders defined in 1948 (21 percent) as second-class citizens. There are at least 65 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. One of them, passed in 2018, declares the country a “nation state of the Jewish people.”
As the Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm wrote, through this new law, the Israeli government “formally endorses” the use of “apartheid methods within Israel’s recognised borders.” The United Nations and Human Rights Watch have both said that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians falls under the definition of apartheid. The use of this term is entirely factual.
Laila Shawa, Palestine, “The Hands of Fatima,” 2013. (Via Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)
Occupation. In 1967, Israel occupied the three Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. From 1967 to 1999, these three areas were referred to as part of the Occupied Arab Territories (which at different times also included Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Syria’s Golan region and southern Lebanon).
Since 1999, they have been termed the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In U.N. documents and at the International Court of Justice, Israel is referred to as the “occupying power,” which is a term of art that requires certain obligations from Israel toward those whom it occupies.
Although the 1993 Oslo Accords set up the Palestinian Authority, Israel remains the occupying power of the OPT, a designation that has not been revised.
An occupation is identical to colonial rule: it is when a foreign power dominates a people in their homeland and denies them sovereignty and rights. Despite Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 (which included the dismantling of 21 illegal settlements), Israel continued to occupy Gaza by building a perimeter fence around the Gaza Strip and by policing the Mediterranean waters of Gaza.
Annexation of parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as the punctual bombing of Gaza are violations of Israel’s obligation as the occupying power.
An occupation imposes a structural condition of violence upon the occupied. That is why international law recognises that those who are occupied have the right to resist.
In 1965, in the midst of Guinea Bissau’s struggle against Portuguese colonialism, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 2105 (“Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples”). Paragraph 10 of this resolution is worth reading carefully:
“The General Assembly… [r]ecognises the legitimacy of the struggle by the peoples under colonial rule to exercise their right to self-determination and independence and invites all States to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial Territories.”
There is no ambiguity here. Those who are occupied have the right to resist, and, in fact, all member states of the United Nations are bound by this treaty to assist them.
Rather than sell arms to the occupying power, who is the aggressor in the ongoing genocide, the members states of the United Nations — particularly from the Global North — should aid the Palestinians.
Genocide. In its order published on 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found “plausible” evidence of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians.
In March, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, published a monumental report called “Anatomy of a Genocide.”
In it, Albanese wrote that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.” “More broadly,” she wrote,
“they also indicate that Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold.”
Intent to commit genocide is easily proved in the context of Israel’s bombardment. In October 2023, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said that “an entire nation out there is responsible” for the attacks on Oct. 7, and it was not true that “civilians [were] not… aware, not involved.”
The ICJ pointed to this statement, among others, since it expresses Israel’s intent and use of “collective punishment,” a genocidal war crime. The following month, Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was “an option” since “there are no non-combatants in Gaza.”
Before the ICJ ruling was published, Moshe Saada, a member of the Israeli Parliament from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said that “all Gazans must be destroyed.” These sentiments, by any international standard, demonstrate an intent to commit genocide. As with “apartheid” and “occupation,” the use of the term “genocide” is entirely accurate.
Earlier this year, Inkani Books, a Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research project based in South Africa, published the isiZulu version of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Izimpabanga Zomhlaba, translated by Makhosazana Xaba. We are so proud of this accomplishment, bringing the work of Fanon into another African language (it has already been translated into Arabic and Swahili).
When I was last in Palestine, I spoke with young children about their aspirations. What they told me reminded me of a section from The Wretched of the Earth:
“At 12 or 13 years of age the village children know the names of the old men who were in the last rising, and the dreams they dream in the douars [camps] or in the villages are not those of money or of getting through their exams like the children of the towns, but dreams of identification with some rebel or another, the story of whose heroic death still today moves them to tears.”
Children in Gaza will remember this genocide with at least the same intensity as their ancestors remembered 1948 and as their parents remembered the occupation that has loomed over this narrow piece of land since their own childhood. Children in South Africa will read these lines from Fanon in isiZulu and remember those who fell to inaugurate a new South Africa 30 years ago.
The Israeli regime’s deliberate massacre of at least 45 displaced people in a tent camp in Rafah marks yet another act of barbarism in its genocide against the Palestinians. Dozens of men, women and children, who had already fled multiple times in the past seven months, were massacred and maimed in a firestorm of American-supplied missiles fired by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Palestinians react next to the destruction after an Israeli strike where displaced people were staying in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Monday, May 27, 2024. [AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi]
Sunday’s bombardment was a direct response by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fascistic government to Friday’s order from the International Court of Justice calling for an end to Israel’s military intervention in Rafah. The Zionist regime wanted to make clear that it will not be bound by any restrictions imposed by international law. It feels able to act so provocatively because it has full confidence in the unflinching support of the imperialist powers, first and foremost the United States, for its “final solution” of the Palestinian question.
The strike was carried out “with precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence,” the IDF asserted. Its statement blandly noted that the military was aware that “several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.”
The most commonly used “precise ammunition” fired by the IDF at Gaza are weapons fitted with US-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits, which transform standard weapons into GPS-guided munitions. US aerospace company Boeing accelerated the dispatch of at least 1,800 such kits to Israel in October 2023, as the Netanyahu regime’s genocide got underway. Since then, they have played a major role in slaughtering well over 36,000 Palestinians, the current official death toll.
The Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood of western Rafah, where the camp was located, was supposedly a “safe zone” for Palestinian civilians. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, many victims were “burned alive” in their tents. An estimated 249 people were injured the strike, which eyewitnesses told CNN included at least eight missiles. One survivor, who made it to the Kuwait hospital, stated, “The air strikes burned the tents, the tents are melting, and the people’s bodies are melting.”
With Gaza’s healthcare system collapsing after months of repeated attacks by the Israeli regime, many of the injured will not survive. A doctor, who spoke to Al Jazeera after returning to Britain from an aid mission in Gaza, stated that hospitals in the enclave are providing “medieval medicine” to patients. “It is what you would hear about or read about what would be happening in Europe maybe 300, 400 years ago,” commented Dr. Khaled Dawas, the head of gastrointestinal surgery at University College London. He added that injured Palestinians often avoid going to hospital because it “means pretty much a death sentence.”
One day after the massacre, the director of the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah, where many of the injured were treated, announced the closure of the facility due to Israeli attacks. Earlier in the day, two healthcare workers were reportedly killed in a strike on the facility’s gates. The al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah was also set to suspend all services due to a lack of fuel triggered by an IDF blockade that was initiated on the same day as the refugee camp massacre.
This latest atrocity has the Biden administration’s fingerprints all over it. The IDF’s onslaught on Rafah has proceeded over the past three weeks after the White House gave it the green light. Just two weeks before Israel attacked Rafah, Biden signed a supplementary military assistance bill passed with bipartisan support that included $26 billion in funding for Israel.
Biden has asserted that Israel is doing “all it can to ensure civilian protection,” while National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan insisted that the IDF’s assault has “not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas.” This line has been maintained even as over 800,000 people have fled the city. Likewise, administration officials continue to claim that killing civilians in Rafah is a “red line,” even as the IDF does this every day with impunity.
The Biden administration’s lying claims that no “major” operations are taking place in Rafah and that it opposes killing civilians are no more credible than Netanyahu’s attempt to present the bombing of the refugee camp in comments Monday as a “tragic mistake.” The fact of the matter is that as horrific as Sunday’s massacre was, it is part of a pattern of the systematic targeting of defenceless civilians by the IDF.
From the bombardment of the al-Ahli hospital killing upwards of 500 people, to the storming of the al-Shifa hospital, and the destruction of Khan Younis, millions of workers and young people know all too well the brutality of Netanyahu’s regime and what it is capable of with imperialist backing.
The imperialist governments in the United States and Germany, Israel’s two most important weapons’ suppliers, reiterated their backing for the Zionist regime after Sunday’s massacre. Adopting the Israeli government’s propaganda wholesale, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said, “Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we all understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists, who are responsible for attacks on Israeli civilians.”
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit labelled the strike as a “mistake,” echoing Netanyahu. Hebestreit also noted that the Israeli military had launched an investigation to determine what happened, adding, according to Der Spiegel, “First of all investigate what happened and then judge. And don’t come to an immediate judgement on the basis of pictures.” In other words, let the murderers investigate the crime scene and cover up any evidence that implicates them before we say anything about it.
No “investigation” is needed to determine what the motivation for Sunday’s massacre was. Israeli government and military officials have repeatedly asserted since the genocide began that their plan is to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, by killing them, starving them to death, or forcing them to flee the enclave, so that Israel can seize the territory. Gaza’s inhabitants are viewed by the Zionist regime as “human animals,” as Defence Minister Yoav Gallant put it in October. Fascist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who recently declared that he would like to live in Gaza, celebrated Sunday’s slaughter with a post on social media urging an intensification of the attacks: “Rafah with full force.”
The imperialist powers support this barbarism because they view the Gaza genocide as a critical component of their plans to redivide the world in a rapidly escalating Third World War. The same indifference to the savage massacring of human beings in Gaza by the IDF with its never-ending supply of US-manufactured bombs is on display in Ukraine, where the US and its NATO allies have sacrificed some 500,000 Ukrainians in a war for imperialist plunder.
It was not for nothing that US Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson remarked in his denunciation of the application of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant last week, “If the ICC is allowed to threaten Israeli leaders, ours could be next.”
The key lesson that must be drawn following the Rafah refugee camp massacre is that appeals to the powers that be, whether to imperialist governments, the United Nations, or international courts, to “stop the genocide” will fall on deaf ears. The millions of workers, students and young people who have joined anti-genocide protests and encampments over recent months around the world must turn to the international working class, the only social force capable of leading a genuine struggle to halt the genocide against the Palestinians.
The mass political mobilisation of the working class, which produces all of society’s wealth, is the only way to stop the Israeli war criminals and their imperialist accomplices in their tracks. As workers are told in every country to accept sweeping attacks on conditions and public services to pay for militarism, war and genocide, a powerful basis exists to rally workers in struggle to stop the production and delivery of all conceivable military equipment to Israel and its allied imperialist war machines in North America and Europe. It is the fight to build such a movement which requires arming the working class with a socialist programme to defeat capitalist barbarism, that is the most urgent task of all for those who want to bring the genocide in Gaza to an end.
Renowned American political scientist and analyst Prof. John Mearsheimer says: On 15 May 2024, I was in Sydney, Australia, where I spoke at the Centre for Independent Studies about the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. I analyzed both the war in Gaza, which started on October 7 and continues to rage, and the fighting between Iran on one side and Israel and the US on the other side, that took place between 1 April and 19 April 2024.
Israel’s attack on Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, has now displaced nearly 1 million people and massively intensified famine throughout the entire territory.
Palestinians wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 23, 2024 [AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana]
This assault is taking place with the effective endorsement of the Biden administration, despite Biden’s earlier public declarations that a full-scale attack on Rafah would be a “red line” for the White House.
On Tuesday, an unnamed senior Biden administration official told reporters, “It’s fair to say that the Israelis have updated their plans. They’ve incorporated many of the concerns that we have expressed,” giving the administration’s stamp of approval for the widening attack on the city.
On Thursday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that Israel had not carried out “major maneuvers into dense urban areas.” He added, “What we have seen so far has not been that.”
This is an absurd falsehood. Israel has been bombing Rafah non-stop and is pushing armored columns deep into the city, leading to the total suspension of humanitarian operations amid widespread hunger and starvation.
As a result of the offensive, only 150 trucks of food have entered Gaza since May 6. “We’re going back to levels of aid that we were getting in October when the war first started,” said Sam Rose, planning director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
On Monday Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a meeting that Israel intends to broaden its offensive into the city. “We are committed to broadening the ground operation in Rafah to the end of dismantling Hamas and recovering the hostages,” Gallant said. Sullivan posed for a photo shaking the hand of black-shirted Gallant on the day that the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) lead prosecutor brought charges against him.
In a column published the same day, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said that US and Israeli officials had reached an agreement over the plans to attack Rafah. Ignatius wrote, “Israeli leaders have reached a consensus about a final assault on Hamas’s four remaining battalions in Rafah,” in a move that “Biden won’t oppose.”
The Times of Israel wrote, “the Biden administration appeared to signal its initial approval of the operation launched by Israel early Tuesday morning to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.” It added, “Spokespeople for the administration said the goals of the operation were legitimate.”
In response to the ICC’s charges against Netanyahu, the Biden administration has effectively dropped its earlier token criticisms of the Israeli government, with Biden declaring Tuesday, “It is clear that Israel wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection. Contrary to allegations against Israel made by the International Court of Justice, what’s happening is not genocide,” Biden said.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate amid ongoing mass starvation imposed by the Israeli blockade.
In a briefing to the United Nations Security Council Tuesday, Edem Wosornu, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, called the situation “hell on earth.”
“To be frank, we are running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza. We have described it as a catastrophe, a nightmare, as hell on earth. It is all of these and worse,” Wosornu said.
She added, “And living conditions continue to deteriorate as a result of heavy fighting, particularly in Jabalya and eastern Rafah, as well as Israeli bombardment from air, land and sea.”
She noted that more than 35,000 people have been killed and another 79,000 injured, with 17,000 children unaccompanied or separated from their families.
She declared, “Since October 2023, 75 percent of the population in Gaza—1.7 million people—has been forcibly displaced within Gaza, many of them up to four or five times, including as a result of repeated IDF-issued evacuation instructions.”
In a statement, the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) said it was running out of food in central Gaza. “Humanitarian operations in Gaza are near collapse,” said WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa, adding that unless food is provided “in massive quantities, famine-like conditions will spread,” she said.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops launched raids into the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, attacking a local hospital and killing a doctor, a teacher and a ninth grade student.
“Undercover forces raided the area suddenly, and they were firing at any moving body in the street,” said ambulance driver Hazim Masarwa to Al Jazeera. “They were targeting anything moving.”
In a statement, the UN Human Rights Office in Palestine said, “We are horrified by the deadly Israeli Forces operation in Jenin: 7 Palestinians killed, including two children, one on his way to school, a school teacher, and a doctor. This senseless bloodshed must stop, and those responsible must be held accountable.”
United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant (Wikicommons/ Chad J. McNeeley)
Extermination, murder, starvation of civilians, wilfully causing great suffering and intentionally directing attacks against civilians. These are the crimes levelled at Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant by Karim Khan (see right).
He is the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Khan said that he has “reasonable grounds to believe” that both Israeli ministers “bear criminal responsibility” for war crimes and “crimes against humanity” committed in Gaza. They used acts of starvation, murder as a war crime and intentionally directed attacks against civilians “as part of a common plan” to “collectively punish the civilian population of Gaza”.
Khan is now seeking an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant. The list of crimes won’t be a surprise for many. We’ve seen the evidence of Israel’s genocide for more than seven months, even if our leaders have tried to ignore them. But the charge of war crimes by the ICC is still a devastating blow for Israel.
The ICC is the only permanent international court that can prosecute war criminals for crimes against humanity. And its actions have enraged the West. Khan revealed that “a senior leader” told him the ICC “is built for Africa and for thugs like Russian president Vladimir Putin”—not for the West and its allies.
Predictably Netanyahu repeated slurs about antisemitism. He said that Khan was “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging across the world”. The outrage against Netanyahu is stacking up, even if the ICC will not punish him for all his crimes.
To show “balance” Khan said the court would also push for the arrest of three Hamas leaders. But the ICC accusing Netanyahu of war crimes is a big moment. It will make it easier for pro-Palestine activists to argue in workplaces, schools and universities that the Israeli state is guilty of genocide.
And by implication the ICC’s charges are also an indictment of Israel’s Western allies. If Netanyahu is guilty of murder, extermination and deliberate starvation of civilians, so are those who arm and fund Israel. That includes Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak—and Keir Starmer. And for all their recent claims to be holding back the Zionist state, the West has rushed to defend Netanyahu.
President Joe Biden said, “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous.” He added that what is happening to the Palestinians “is not genocide”. Then he said, “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
Biden is an apologist for murder. But he is right that there is no equivalence between the Israeli state and Hamas. Hamas hasn’t levelled vast sections of Israeli cities with bombs. It hasn’t closed off checkpoints and border crossings to intentionally starve civilians to death. It hasn’t systematically tried to destroy all healthcare infrastructure or targeted health care workers.
It hasn’t held Gaza under siege for 17 years in an open-air prison. And Israel has—so far— murdered at least 35 Palestinians for every Israeli that Hamas killed on 7 October. The Palestinian resistance is fighting in reaction to the brutality that Israel has used against their people for more than 76 years. There is no equivalence between Israel—the oppressor— and Hamas—an expression of an oppressed group fighting back.
By seeking arrest warrants for the state’s top figures, the court has punctured the myth that Tel Aviv is beyond the reach of international law
Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galant arrive for a briefing near the Salem military post in the occupied West Bank on 4 July 2023 (AFP)
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For 76 years, Israel had a narrative more robust as a protective shield than any Iron Dome.
For the victims of the worst case of industrial killing in modern history, self-determination for post-Holocaust Jewry was not merely a necessity, this narrative went, it was a moral imperative. Any state that emerged was immune from judgement, the story went. Israel was beyond international law.
It was allowed to have indeterminate borders. It was allowed to occupy. It was allowed to settle the areas it occupied. It was allowed to regularly attack its neighbours pre-emptively. It was allowed nuclear weapons, outside the control of any regulatory authority.
It could violently discriminate against its non-Jewish minority and still be accepted into the family of democratic nations. It was not just allowed to lay siege to Gaza and starve the territory’s population for 16 years, it was assisted in this by the international community.
Anyone who rejected the credo that this violent state had a right to exist faced political banishment.
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Israel was a “lifeboat” for Jews facing antisemitism throughout the world. It was not the primary cause of waves of antisemitism. It safeguarded Jews. It did not endanger them.
For 76 years, Israel literally had a licence to kill. Until Monday.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, did much more than apply for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC prosecutor punctured the myth that any Israeli leader, official or soldier was beyond the reach of international law.
Opening Pandora’s box
Netanyahu was right to be nervous about the consequences, which are indeed far-reaching. A real Pandora’s box has been opened by this application.
Yes, for the moment, it’s only an application before the judges of the ICC. There have been occasions in the past when such an application was initially dismissed, as in the case of a Rwandan militia leader sought over crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or for Omar al-Bashir, the former Sudanese president.
But the pretrial chamber of three judges must only convince themselves on two points – that there are reasonable grounds to believe that at least one crime within the court’s jurisdiction has been committed, and that the arrest of those named “appears necessary” to ensure they appear at trial, do not endanger an investigation, and cannot continue to perpetrate the same crime.
Considering the bullying that the court itself has come under, with the US threatening its members with sanctions, a third unwritten imperative will loom large in their minds: the need to uphold the independence of the ICC.
If they bow to this pressure, the ICC’s legitimacy will be finished – and besides, the evidence for the seven charges is overwhelming.
It exposes, as never before, the colonial nature of the stance that international justice applies only to others
The Pandora’s box is large. If arrest warrants are served on Netanyahu and Gallant, every other member of Israel’s war cabinet and military machine, down to the humble reservist uploading videos taken on his iPhone, could be subject to the same charges.
The second point to bear in mind is that the charges only relate to what happened on or after 7 October. Khan based his application on a report by a panel of international law experts, who homed in on Israel’s policy of famine and siege, restricting the means necessary for the population as a whole to survive. The experts did not examine the legal implications of the mass killing of civilians.
If this application succeeds, or even if it is dismissed temporarily, the ICC’s purview goes back to the moment Palestine was admitted as a member in 2015. In 2021, the ICC opened an investigation into allegations of war crimes committed in occupied Palestine since June 2014.
Monday’s application is about the here and now. A growing queue of applications about everything Israel has done in the occupied territories over the last decade awaits.
Long history
The long arm of the ICC’s law has a bitter history. Khan’s application was not the work of one moment, or indeed the work of one man who might have thought that Ukraine would be his main legacy after becoming chief prosecutor in 2021.
The ICC’s jurisdiction over the occupied territories has been bitterly contested, and a series of obstacles had to be overcome before this application could be launched. Palestine was not initially recognised as a state, so it was not allowed to be part of the ICC. Huge pressure, including the threat of US sanctions, was then put on the Palestinian Authority (PA) not to use its membership to pursue Israel.
Unpacking the ICC arrest warrant bids against Israeli and Hamas leaders
The ICC then had to debate whether it had jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and it was only the decision of the previous prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, which allowed the current proceedings to go ahead. But that debate took six years, from 2015 to 2021.
The need for the ICC to step in had been only too obvious. There had been a number of failed legal attempts to get Israeli officials to face justice abroad under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, former Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni all faced possible arrest if they travelled to London. But former Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended Livni, saying he “completely opposed” the warrant issued by a British court for her arrest for war crimes, and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband phoned his Israeli counterpart to apologise.
Miliband said at the time of the 2009 incident that British law permitting judges to issue arrest warrants against foreign dignitaries “without any prior knowledge or advice by a prosecutor” had to be changed.
Indeed it was. All such attempts now need the consent of the director of public prosecutions before a warrant is issued.
US ties itself in knots
The current reaction of the US to the ICC’s recommendation for arrest warrants is another indicator of what is at stake. This has ranged from outright threats to the court members to attempts to defund the PA if it continues to back the ICC’s case.
US President Joe Biden expressed outrage at the fact that the ICC was establishing an equivalence between Israel and Hamas by also seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders. “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” he said.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller went further by saying that Washington’s two preferred outcomes for the leaders of Hamas were assassination or being tried before an Israeli court. “The Israeli government should hold them accountable on the battlefield. And if not a battlefield, then a court of law,” he said.
US President Joe Biden is pictured in Tel Aviv, on 18 October 2023 (Miriam Alster/AFP)
Biden’s outgoing administration is tying itself in knots. If it follows its own instincts by punishing the PA, withdrawing funds, or undermining the legitimacy of the ICC by slapping sanctions on its judges and prosecutor, the US will be shooting itself in the foot.
If Biden agrees with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the ICC is a “kangaroo court”, and attempts to undermine it, what happens to the ICC’s prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal for invading Ukraine, a prosecution the US supports? What happens to all the other important ICC work?
More importantly, what happens to the US attempts to construct a civilian authority to take over Gaza instead of Hamas, if Washington defunds the only other arm of the Palestinian government?
Biden says he wants to rebuild a Palestinian state after this war is over. Instead, he is fully engaged, with the Israelis, in dismantling it.
Watershed moment
For Hamas, the prospect of charges against its leaders is not nearly as problematic. Having welcomed the ICC’s establishment of jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories, Hamas condemned the court’s decision to seek warrants for its political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, and Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Deif, arguing that armed resistance against occupation was enshrined in UN resolutions.
But as Hamas is listed as a terrorist organisation in much of the western world, nothing much will change, apart from the fact that Haniyeh might not trust a visit to Egypt in the current climate.
The ICC action is urgently needed to stop the barbarous war that is now being prosecuted
Whichever way you look at it, this is a watershed moment. It punctures Israel’s immunity and deeply embarrasses its backers. It exposes, as never before, the colonial nature of the stance that international justice applies only to others.
Khan himself quoted an unnamed western leader as telling him that the ICC was built for “Africa and for thugs like Putin”. As Khan observed, this was a sad indictment of a court which was created as the legacy of the Nuremberg trials.
In this regard, Aipac is right to warn the US that if the ICC warrants succeed, the same could be applied to American troops. “These actions by the court pose a serious threat: Past and current American and Israeli officials and citizens could face secret arrest warrants or summons issued by the court that ICC member states are obligated to carry out,” Aipac said in a statement.
For all these reasons, the ICC action is urgently needed to stop the barbarous war that is now being prosecuted.
Kicking the habit
It is a war without end. It is a war without an endgame, as no credible plan has been devised for the future of Gaza. It is a war where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are herded like cattle from one tent to another, while Israel continues to cut off all aid. And this is all happening under the umbrella of impunity.
ICC seeks arrest of Israeli and Hamas leaders. What happens next?
The ICC move has split the countries that have thus far put their weight behind Israel’s seven-month offensive. The UK is becoming isolated from Europe in its insistence that the court does not have jurisdiction in Palestine. France, Belgium and others have expressed support for the ICC investigation.
So, too, has Josep Borell, the EU foreign policy chief who reminded states that are parties to the ICC’s Rome Statute that they must implement the court’s rulings.
But for those leaders, like Biden, who are finding it hard to kick the habit of a lifetime, support for Israel is now coming at a cost. It means denying apartheid, denying genocide, and denying war crimes such as mass starvation. The charge sheet is growing, and it’s becoming impossible to defend.
The war has shredded not just Israel’s international reputation, but the global standing of all those who continue to support it – and for them, the writing is on the wall. Not before time.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was the Guardian’s foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.
The legislation would grant IDF soldiers the same protections as US military personnel while they’re on active duty
by Dave DeCamp May, Antiwar. com, 21, 2024
A bill introduced in the House by Reps. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) and Max Miller (R-OH) would extend certain benefits for Americans serving in the US military to American citizens in the Israeli military.
The legislation, introduced on May 17, would give Americans in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) protections under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA).
The SCRA protects US service members from civil legal action while they’re on active duty and for up to a year after. The USERRA protects the civilian employment of active and reserve military personnel when they’re called to active duty.
“Over 20,000 American citizens are currently defending Israel from Hamas terrorists, risking their lives for the betterment of our ally,” Reschenthaler said in a statement on the legislation.
The Washington Post reported in February that an estimated 23,380 American citizens are serving in the Israeli military. Many are dual citizens who were already living in Israel, but as of November 2023, about 10,000 people living in the US had traveled to Israel to report for duty with the IDF after receiving draft notices. According to Responsible Statecraft, 21 American citizens serving in the IDF have been killed in Gaza, and one was killed in northern Israel near the Lebanon border.
Reschenthaler said his legislation will “ensure we do everything possible to support these heroes who are standing with Israel, fighting for freedom, and combating terrorism in the Middle East.”
It’s unclear what the chances are for Reschenthaler’s bill to pass Congress and become law, but there is strong support for the Israeli military among House Republicans. For example, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) is an IDF veteran who recently wore his Israeli uniform on Capitol Hill, and he did not receive any backlash from his colleagues for showing up to work in the House wearing the uniform of a foreign military.
Republicans have introduced a slew of pro-Israel legislation over the past few months to show staunch support for the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, including bills to impose harsh punishments on college protesters. One bill introduced by Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) would send protesters to Gaza.
To expect the Nakba to end when the ideology of ethnic cleansing is still in power is only a dream, but the only hope is that the people of the world stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine as lately, they have shown and the resistance movement of Palestinians continues the struggle for the liberation of their land despite all the heavy odds the people of Palestine face. No colonial power has offered freedom to its colonized people on a platter, without their struggle. The history of colonialism and imperialism has taught us that.
Peace and Justice Post 
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