I am delighted that Palestine has finally applied to join the International Criminal Court. It is over three years since I blogged in recommendation that Palestine do this, and I have been somewhat baffled as to why it has taken so long to take a step which much of the international legal and human rights community has been so long urging. My own contacts into PLO circles (which do not rise above middling level) indicated simply that the leadership view was that “the time was not yet right”.
This delay was but one indicator of the powerlessness of the Abbas position, obliged to pay lip service to a US-led “peace process” which he knows to be an utter sham, and bullied by Blair and Obama into comparative quiescence by the threat of cutting off international lifelines to the beleaguered Palestinian people. But there should never have been any doubt that quiescence would result in continuing but deadly sure, slow strangulation. Intelligent pro-activity, such as joining the ICC, is a far better option.
For Obama to describe Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court as “provocative” is ludicrous. How can it be provocative to seek to come under the jurisdiction of international law? It is US and Israeli exceptionalism that is a standing provocation to the international community.
We will now see what the ICC actually is. As a strong supporter of the rule of international law, I was reluctant to join the criticism of the ICC which notes it is active only against those condemned by the West. But the ICC’s inaction over the illegal invasion of Iraq remains inexcusable. It’s African trials conveniently ignore the colonial context. For example, the root cause of the ethnic violence in Kenya was white appropriation of the best farming land which evicted indigenous tribes into the territory of other tribes, causing resource conflict which still echoes. The ICC’s interest in Africa also carefully avoids the West’s preferred dictators and mineral grabs.
The ICC has already failed a key test where it declined to take action over the murderous Israeli assault on the Mavi Mamara on the grounds that the scale of the war crime was insufficient to reach the bar of the Court’s attention. That was not an incorrect legal argument, but an activist court could have gone either way.
The illegal Israeli settlements and murderous invasions of Gaza cannot be ruled inconsequent. Now the ICC has a chance to show whether it really is interested in the rule of international law, or whether it is simply a tool of neo-conservative hegemony.
The World is watching. Can The Hague redeem itself?
‘This is all bunkum. George Galloway’. He was probably drunk.
Galloway has been teetotal since the age of 18. He was actually spot on.
“Let us be clear” agent Cameron according to UNICEF the Israeli occupation killed around 500 Palestinian children during the war on the Gaza Strip and wounded around 3,000 others, many with fourth degree burns that extend into muscle and bone who are still slowly dying.
UNICEF have also said that the Israeli occupation has destroyed the houses of more than 50,000 children.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/13680-unicef-israel-killed-500-children-in-gaza
Agent Cameron hosted a reception in Downing Street to mark Chanukah 2014.
At this huddle, Cameron reconfirmed Britain’s staunch support for the State of Israel’s demolition of Gaza he affirmed in the telephone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95o-EPjSUus
I posted this on the next thread, but in case you missed it, MG, here’s Tony demonstrating his total obliviousness to irony. See also ‘Arrest Blair.’
http://www.friendsofsimonwiesenthalcenter.com/FastForward/121914.html
Enjoy.
I read the Torygraph when out! The sum that Netanyahu is withholding is £83 million.
Israel threatens more retaliation against Palestinian court move after tax freeze
Benjamin Netanyahu says he will “not sit idly by” if Palestinians try to drag Israeli soldiers to the International Criminal Court
By Robert Tait, Jerusalem
4:01PM GMT 04 Jan 2015
‘Israeli officials vowed further retaliation against the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Sunday after withholding £83 million in tax revenues in retribution for its decision to join an international war crimes body.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister said he would not “sit idly by” and allow Israeli soldiers to be summonsed by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, signed up to last week.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11324171/Israel-threatens-more-retaliation-against-Palestinian-court-move-after-tax-freeze.html
The usual slurs against Hamas within.
January 05, 2015
A Gory Pandora’s Box
Palestine and the ICC
by ROBERT FISK
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/05/palestine-and-the-icc-2/
Kempe, I reject most of the alternative 9/11 theories.
Torture was used probably about a hundred times to extract the confessions upon which most of the 9/11 Commission Report was based, and the most significant conclusions of the report were redacted. Do you regard this as acceptable?
Old Mark,
If some day we ever get there, the final solution seems to me to be:-
1. Israel pays substantial reparations for the losses the Palestinians have suffered ( most definitely for the lost land.
2. Remove from the settlements back to the 1967 border.
3. Permit Jerusalem to be an international zone – accessible to all, not least because of its religious significance to several millions around the world.
Alternatively:-
Fight on.
@BZ
I can’t see Putin welcoming a couple of million pretty pissed-off Muslims into Crimea…
It would likely be the Tartars who would object most strongly. But they are relative newcomers to Crimea so why shouldn’t they move over a bit. And as for the Palestinians, I’m not sure they’d be pissed off. Genuine refugees usually make good citizens ready to assimilate with the host population.
But if idea of a New Palestine in Crimea is impractical, why not in more spacious California, or perhaps Mexico another place with a climate that would be congenial to Palestinians?
” Torture was used …. Do you regard this as acceptable? ”
No.
Not sure how critical it was to the overall narrative of what happened or what relevance it might have to the mechanics of the collapses though.
Kempe, I’m not particularly interested in the mechanics of the collapses; if such theories were going to prove anything they’d have done so by now.
Well exactly. I don’t find that acceptable with regards to such a major crime; do you? And what about the redactions?
Kempe, the redactions are said to deal with the people behind the attack, so it seems the US is effectively protecting the perpetrators. Do you think they’d be doing that if the answer were really as simple as “al-Qaeda”?
How stuff works No 94
Former US Senator Bob Graham who served for 10 years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he chaired during and after 9/11 and the run up to the Iraq war, has talked often of Saudi involvement in 9/11.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bob+graham+9%2F11
He was against the Iraq war even whilst chairing the Senate Intelligence Committee. Seems to be part of a high level group which opposes the neocons.
This Saudi issue pops up from time to time, and it’s believed that much of the redacted material refers. It’s been getting increasing attention of late.
Should Saudi look like they’re glancing eastwards, I’d imagine the info would be released sharpish, US peeps would of course be outraged by the inevitable mass media reports and the House of Saud may find itself ditching the Ferarris for camels and tents and a swift return to nomadic ways.
RD
Hitch was always fine on the Palestinian plight and on Israel.
I can’t imagine anything I’d disagree with him on those issues.
He’s no threat to me on those issues, but very rarely would he agree with you.
Those who suggest the Palestinians should relocate are forgetting something that is possessed by the Palestinians.
Sumud. Steadfastness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumud
Their once beautiful limestone land – http://www.sumud.net/ – now dominated by ugly concrete embattlements on the tops of the hills.
No suggestion that the Israelis should push off is there. Where do most of them originate?
No suggestion that the Israelis should push off is there.
That’s been suggested for decades, the suggestion has achieved nothing has it.
Why not therefore consider the alternatives.
@ Herbie: Saudi Arabia had sweet FA to do with 9/11, apart from providing the ‘Patsies’ who in no way had anything to do with it, would appear to provide a Muslim link. Yes, Saudi Arabian ‘authorities’ knew what was coming off, and were completely onside; but ‘responsible’, NO WAY.
“BDS BDS BDS BDS, maybe a little bds on the side and some custard and bds for afters.”
Like that will have any effect – I’m afraid if I were a Palestinian I wouldn’t place much hope on Surrey BDS shouting gratuitous abuse at shoppers as a strategy for peace.
No suggestion that the Israelis should push off is there. Where do most of them originate?
Since you ask most came from Arab and Moslem countries. Of course if Mary replaced Israelis with Blacks/Pakis/Poles/Moslems she would be rightly attacked for being a racist and probably praised by Canspeccy.
@Herbie
He’s no threat to me on those issues, but very rarely would he agree with you.
You are so wrong!
@Canspeccy
It would likely be the Tartars who would object most strongly. But they are relative newcomers to Crimea so why shouldn’t they move over a bit.
The Tartars were the original inhabitants of the Crimea you idiot – although some have returned relatively recently following their excursions out easy courtesy of Uncle Joe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars
Paul Barbara
I’m just saying that there is a powerful current blaming them. When has whether someone actually did something or not got anything to do with who gets blamed.
Anyway, who are you saying did it?
Paul Barbara and Kempe just ignore the incontrovertible points I made above, and this typifies the whole 9/11 mess. Everyone has made up their minds how it was done and who did it, and they just all call each other idiots, dupes, sheeple, whatever.
The US authorities offer us that part of their document which is based on forced confessions, whilst withholding the most important findings concerning the alleged perpetrators.
The opposition hatch a hundred contradictory theories which offer no serious evidence trail towards any perpetrators, and fail to complain about forced confessions and redactions!
While everyone shouts at and ridicule each other, mass murderers escape scrutiny and the event itself is used to justify perpetual war against an enemy that has never even been defined.
Keystone Cops all round.
The dollar or dollar i.o.u is extremely vulnerable because it is worthless, a piece of paper of zero value. What gives the dollar virtual value is American military muscle, her ability to strike and annihilate and eliminate any piece of land or it’s occupiers in any portion or piece of the planet.
A good con artist never admits the con, he just stays on message helped by props and propaganda till you reject reality and accept his bullshit! The ‘war on terror’ quite frankly buttresses the assumption and acceptance of the statement in the first paragraph; a message that is IMO the springboard for that leap in consciousness essential for survival. Deficit of transformation in the human psyche is the route to extinction, to apathy, depression, impotence, tribulation, hopelessness and death.
The massive ‘big bubble’ collapse of the economic system in 2015 as ‘Dr Doom’ predicts (Schiff called the 2008 collape), ensures our world will be
governedcommanded ‘from a bunker’ wired to assassination drones, the best strategists, ‘hacktivist’ psychopaths and one ‘motherfucker’ of a database.The credulous will expire. The tortured whose loyalty was ripped from their hearts, obey the machine and subvert in a 2015 ‘World Spring’ now extensively exercised in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and recently Ukraine.
No MG has not gone mad, cuckoo or bananas – this is not my hypothesis, it is the chatter of deep-state gatekeepers putting in order.
We have IMHO 6 months to quicken and advance past the tipping point which is still reachable, to bring back into a clarifying light and force the world court to indict these bastards, the corrupt, the torturers, the warmongers and war-crime recreants.
On the seventh month we all feel the pain of Gazans first-hand — or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGhVpmRLI54
The Tartars were the original inhabitants of the Crimea you idiot
Of course they weren’t, you idiot.
The Tartars are a remnant of the Golden Horde, Ghengis Khan’s lot. Long before them in Crimea were the Cimmerians, the Cythians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Khazars and the Russians. And there were a bunch of others that I’ve forgotten.
Ukraine was the cradle of the Russian state and Crimea was the cradle of the Russian Orthodox faith: Prince Vladimir of Kiev was baptized at Kherson, just outside Sevastapol, in the year 988. The Tartars didn’t arrive until the 13th Century. They were conquered by the Ottoman Turks, under whose rule they made a habit of raiding Russian territory, capturing peasants in the tens of thousands and selling them in the slave markets of the Ottoman Empire. Peter the Great, gave the bastards a kicking, then Potemkin, under Catherine the Great, conquered both Crimea and most of Ukraine.
So just get your facts straight, laddie, before you start shooting your mouth off.
That last addressed to the idiot Res. Dis.
Look up ethnogenesis idiot. As for seeking to claim the whole of Ukraine for modern day Russia based on Kievan Rus – why not go the whole hog and claim all Slavic countries?
Those who suggest the Palestinians should relocate are forgetting something that is possessed by the Palestinians.
A large modern army? Nukes? Security Council vetoes? Oh. Resilience. Yes, Mary. And very good luck to them. I for one would hate them to leave, so what’s the realistic alternative? How does it all come right in the end? With no-one getting shot at any more? Contiguous Palestinian state? Wholly integrated Israel? They don’t look like viable proposals to me. No-one’s going to kick the Israelis back to their legitimate boundaries…ok, ISIS might, but the solution would be even worse than the problem…why? Because the Israelis have resilience – and bloody-mindedness – too. Maybe you’d like to Google the Hebrew for that?
As for seeking to claim the whole of Ukraine for modern day Russia based on Kievan Rus – why not go the whole hog and claim all Slavic countries?
You truly are a total idiot, aren’t you Res Dis.
Neither I, nor Russia, nor anyone else, so far as I know, claims any part of Ukraine for what you refer to as “modern day Russia”.
But for your information, since you evidently know nothing whatever of the history of Crimea, Ukraine or Russia, much of Ukraine was part of Russia for hundreds of years after the Mongol occupation of the Kievan Rus. It was conquered by Russia in the late 18th century, before the founding of the United States. That is why so many prominent Russians were in fact natives of Ukraine: Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gogol, Igor Sikorski, Sergei Prokofiev and thousands more.
@BZ:
Those who suggest the Palestinians should relocate are forgetting something that is possessed by the Palestinians.
I’m not forgetting anything, BZ. I am just suggesting that having been consistently worsted in the struggle against Israeli aggression for 60 years the Palestinians might be mistaken to expect further struggle to yield different results, and therefore they might consider other options.
The idea of relocating to Crimea, though it has a certain logic to it, is hardly realistic. Crimea is just too small. Western Australia might be a better bet, although so many immigrants in one shot would likely cause political instability not only in western Australia, but in Australia as a whole. Canada could hardly absorb so many at once either, and anyhow it is too damn cold for the Palestinians to feel really comfortable there. So it seems to me that it would most likely have to be California, or Utah or some other place in the great American melting pot, although Mexico or Brazil might work too.
Money would be required of course, but the Israelis should be happy to pay the Palestinian people for what property they still retain in the occupied territories, plus compensation for the inconvenience, etc. Something like a quarter of a trillion dollars might suffice, an amount the Israelis should be able to raise with a whip round of their American sponsors in about five minutes.