[Ha'aretz] Adi Schwartz - Next month, a new element will be introduced into the discussions about the international community's attitude toward Iran, which is becoming a nuclear power. A group of Israelis, headed by former UN ambassador Dr. Dore Gold, recently completed the composition of a lawsuit to be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for incitement to genocide in violation of the 1948 UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. According to the convention, "direct and public incitement to committing genocide" is a criminal offense, with genocide defined as an activity "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." "The time has come to go on the legal attack," says Gold. "It is easy to imagine what would happen if Israel announced that it desired to destroy another country," says Meir Rosenne, former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry and Israeli ambassador to France and the U.S. "Sanctions against it would be applied immediately. Were the threat only theoretical, we could live with it. But we are talking here about a country of about 70 million people, which is increasingly arming itself, and in addition is arming organizations that it sponsors, such as Hizballah, which are acting directly against Israel."
2006-08-25 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive