(Telegraph-UK) Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp - British lawyer Karim Khan, the current International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor, requested arrest warrants concurrently for Hamas and Israeli leaders. However, creating a false equivalence between arch terrorists whose currency is blood and suffering and the leaders of a democratic state defending their people from attack is nothing short of morally bankrupt. It is like indicting Osama Bin Laden and President George W. Bush at the same time. Or dragging Winston Churchill into the dock at Nuremberg beside Heinrich Himmler. If the judges do decide to grant Khan his warrants, that would align the ICC with Hamas's jihadist agenda and against the global values of justice that the court was set up to protect. This precedent would create a two-tier international justice system under which terrorists are effectively inviolable while democratic states trying to resist them are hung out to dry. That would inevitably undermine Britain's own national security, with political and military leaders fearful of criminalization if they have to order their armed forces into action for the legitimate defense of the country. The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA.
2024-08-22 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive