[noemon]

What does that mean?

[Rich]

Well I'd just like to register my total support for Russian and Israel if they manage to arrest any members of the ICC, which I consider a criminal orgnisation. I'd be interested to know what Zelesnky says, he's stated before that Ukraine and Israel's straggles are one and the same.

[Yaqum]

[Deutschmania]

What does that mean?

This is what it means , in more depth .

The international criminal court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant and the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes relating to the Gaza war.

It is the first time that leaders of a democracy and western-aligned state have been charged by the court, in the most momentous decision of its 22-year history.

Netanyahu and Gallant are at risk of arrest if they travel to any of the 124 countries that signed the Rome statute establishing the court. Israel claims to have killed Deif in an airstrike in July, but the court’s pre-trial chamber said it would “continue to gather information” to confirm his death.

The chamber ruled that there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore criminal responsibility as co-perpetrators for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.

The three-judge panel also said it had found reasonable grounds to believe Deif was responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder, torture, rape and hostage taking relating to the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 in which fighters killed more than 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, and kidnapped 250.

Netanyahu’s office denounced the chamber’s decision as “antisemitic”.

“Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the international criminal court, a biased and discriminatory political body,” the office said in a statement, adding that “no war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza”.

The statement pointed to an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct against the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan who sought the charges against the three men in May. Khan, 54, has denied the allegations and said he will cooperate with the investigation.

The US national security council issued a statement “fundamentally” rejecting the court’s decision. “We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” the statement said, without any detail of the alleged errors.

“The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter. In coordination with partners, including Israel, we are discussing next steps.”

The US has previously welcomed ICC war crimes warrants against Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials for atrocities committed in Ukraine, exposing the Biden administration to accusations of double standards from many UN members, particularly from the global south.

Netanyahu can expect more resounding support from the incoming Donald Trump administration. During his first term, in 2020, Trump imposed US sanctions on the ICC, aimed at court officials and their families. The then secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, made clear the sanctions were imposed because the ICC had begun investigating the actions of the US and its allies in Afghanistan, as well as Israeli military operations in the occupied territories.

The panel said the full version of the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were secret “in order to protect witnesses and to safeguard the conduct of the investigations”, but the judges released much of their reasoning. This focused on the obstruction of the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza, which it judged to be deliberate.

“The chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” the written ruling said.. The warrants were broadly welcomed by human rights groups. Balkees Jarrah, an associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said they would “break through the perception” that certain individuals were beyond the reach of the law.

“Whether the ICC can effectively deliver on its mandate will depend on governments’ willingness to support justice no matter where abuses are committed and by whom,” Jarrah said. “These warrants should finally push the international community to address atrocities and secure justice for all victims in Palestine and Israel.”

Israel has denied committing war crimes in Gaza and has rejected the jurisdiction of the court. However, the pretrial chamber noted that Palestine had been recognised as a member of the court in 2015, so the ICC did not require Israeli approval to investigate crimes on Palestinian territory.

The chamber also rejected an Israeli appeal for the warrants to be deferred, saying the Israeli authorities were informed of an earlier ICC investigation in 2021, and at that time, “Israel elected not to pursue any request for deferral of the investigation”.

An ICC statement said of Deif that “the chamber found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Deif … is responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, torture and rape and other form of sexual violence, as well as the war crimes of murder, cruel treatment, torture, taking hostages, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape and other forms of sexual violence”. Khan had sought warrants for two other senior Hamas figures, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, but they were killed in the conflict. Israel’s claim to have killed Deif has been neither confirmed nor denied by Hamas. Benny Gantz, a retired general and political rival to Netanyahu, condemned the ICC’s decision, saying it showed “moral blindness” and was a “shameful stain of historic proportion that will never be forgotten”. Yair Lapid, another opposition leader, called it a “prize for terror”.

The warrants have been issued at a sensitive moment for Khan, in the face of an investigation of claims of sexual misconduct. The inquiry will examine the allegations against the prosecutor, which, the Guardian reported last month, include claims of unwanted sexual touching and “abuse” over an extended period, as well as coercive behaviour and abuse of authority. The alleged victim, an ICC lawyer in her 30s, has previously declined to comment.

The arrest warrants could increase the external pressure on Netanyahu’s government as the US seeks to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but could well strengthen the prime minister’s political position in Israel in the short term, as most Israelis reject the ICC’s jurisdiction, regarding it as interference in their country’s internal affairs.

Joe Biden has said he does not believe Netanyahu is doing enough to secure a ceasefire, after the Israeli leader vowed not to compromise over Israeli control over strategic territory inside Gaza. Netanyahu has accused Hamas of failing to negotiate in good faith. The Guardian

[Deutschmania]

In a further update , Canada, Netherlands are among the countries are pledging to arrest Netanyahu following ICC warrant .

For Benjamin Netanyahu, the world just got a little smaller.

Israel’s prime minister has long touted his worldwide network of relationships and years of experience working with foreign leaders. But now that the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest, he’ll face incarceration if he sets foot in countries where he once strode with ease.

In 1996, he was the first Israeli prime minister ever to visit Ireland. Now, the country has pledged to abide by the warrant if Netanyahu lands there.

In 2016, the Dutch prime minister extended a “warm welcome” to Netanyahu as the two leaders stood side by side in Amsterdam. On Thursday, the Netherlands pledged to arrest him if he returns. The United States, like Israel, is not a party to the ICC, and has condemned the warrants against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

But the same cannot be said of its neighbor to the north: Canada, which once exported tens of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to Israel, has now said it will abide by the ICC warrant as well.

The countries’ pledges put Israel, which has long feared the prospect of international boycotts, in uncharted waters. On Thursday, the ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity over Israel’s conduct in Gaza. It also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, a Hamas commander believed to be dead.

The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were themselves an unprecedented step. But it quickly became clear that the warrant for the prime minister also carried concrete consequences for Israel’s standing in the world — and even among countries it considered allies. Aside from damaging Israel’s foreign relations, the warrant puts a serious crimp on Netanyahu’s ability to travel as he seeks to defend the country’s conduct in its multi-front war.

“This may boost Bibi’s hometown cred and bunker mentality, but Israel is now a pariah,” tweeted Shai Franklin, a former top staffer for Jewish organizations who now works as a government consultant, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

In addition to Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland, Switzerland has also said it will abide by the warrants. A number of other Western countries, including Britain, France, Italy and Sweden, remained non-committal. Others that are led by conservative ideological allies of Netanyahu — including Austria, Argentina and Hungary — have said they will ignore the warrants.

More than 120 countries — a majority of the world — are signatories of the statute establishing ICC. In principle, that means Netanyahu and Gallant risk arrest if they travel to any of them. But in reality, the countries are split.

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, framed his agreement to comply as other countries did — less in agreement with the court’s conclusions and more as a matter of abiding by international law.

“As Canada has always said, it’s really important that everyone abide by international law,” Trudeau said in a press conference. “This is something we’ve been calling on from the beginning of the conflict. We are one of the founding members of the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice. We stand up for international law, and we will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts.”

Switzerland also said, according to Reuters, that its obligations under the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the ICC, required it to abide by arrest warrants.

Other countries were less definitive. Officials in France and Britain recognized the independence of the ICC, but declined to say whether they would act on the warrants.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the court “the primary institutional institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes in relation to international law,” according to The Telegraph, but added that “Israel has a right to defend itself in accordance with international law. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, which are terror groups.”

Argentine Prime Minister Javier Milei, a staunch ally of Israel’s, decried the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant as “an act that distorts the spirit of international justice.” Milei added in his statement, “This resolution ignores Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself against constant attacks by terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

A statement posted by the Hungarian ambassador to the United States, on behalf of the country’s Foreign Ministry, said the decision “brought shame to the international court system by equating the prime minister of a country attacked with a diabolical terrorist attack and the leaders of the terrorist organization that carried out the diabolical attack.”

The warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest comes more than a year after the ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Countries have been split over enforcing that warrant as well — Putin traveled to Mongolia, a signatory, without incident — but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged all of the parties to the ICC to “fulfill their obligations” to the court when it comes to Putin.

In Israel’s case, the Biden administration has criticized the decision, and President-elect Donald Trump is likely to go further: In his first term, he sanctioned the ICC for contemplating cases against American personnel. Biden removed the sanctions, but Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, hinted on X that they may be invoked again. “You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January,” Waltz said.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, said he would introduce legislation to take action against countries that abided by the warrants.

Such a law already exists, passed in 2002 after the United States invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack. It says the president can use “all means necessary” to free a U.S. citizen or a citizen of an allied country held on a warrant issued by the ICC. One nickname for the law is “The Hague Invasion Act,” and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, suggested that it could be more than a nickname.

“The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic,” Cotton said on X, referring to the court’s chief prosecutor. “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency

[Negotiator]

What does that mean?

It means its the typical rock and a hard place situation.

They went after Putin, even if Russia aint their jurisdiction and the complaints is completely retarded. Putins "crime" is to not keep children (found without their parents) in an active war zone. I mean its not as retarded as the USA imprisoning that minister from Venezuela for trying to feed his people, which the USA considers "terrorism", or the UK imprisoning Assange for journalism, but its close in absolute idiocy.

So they had to go after Netanyahu, too, given that he does a genocide in the public and doesnt shut up about it either.

Now the USA threatens with invasion.

But if they would have NOT done this, they would have publically admitted they are a total joke.

Sucks to be them, but its the logical consequence of ignoring their jurisdiction in the first place.

As Linsey Graham correctly stated - next they will have to go after the USA and its many, many, many crimes against humanity.

[Rich]

So often use the term Liberal as a focus of ideological attack. It like so many political terms has a vague, shifting and inconsistent meaning and I use it with different meanings in different contexts. But a lot of the time you could probably substitute, "anyone who has the slightest respect for the trial of Hermann Goering." There are some people, and that category includes myself, who think that trial should be treated with total and utter contempt and there are some people who don't. It seems the difference in outlook between these two groups is irreconcilable.

In general I'm a big fan of the rule of law and due process. I also have no problem with Hermann Goering being executed.

On the one hand I'm a big supporter of the rule of law and due process. On the other hand I'm a big fan of democratic politics, of diplomacy, of war when necessary and the imposition of our will on the defeated when victorious in war. I am however totally opposed to the conflation of those two groups.