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Video: America and the International Criminal Court

(Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Dore Gold - In April, the State Department revoked the U.S. visa of International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda after she declared her intention to conduct an investigation of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The ICC had been based on the principle of complementarity - that is, it only has jurisdiction if an alleged crime occurred in a state that has no effective legal system to prosecute it, due to a lack of capacity or political will. American critics rightfully are concerned that the ICC could be abused to drag American military personnel in front of the court, regardless of the fact that the U.S. military has its own system for investigating allegations. Israel's concerns have been similar to those of the U.S., due to its bad experience with multilateral institutions in the past that have made baseless allegations against IDF soldiers, accusing them of war crimes. U.S. law prohibits economic support for the Palestinian Authority if it prompts a process that places Israelis under an ICC investigation. The debate over the creation of the ICC in 1998 illustrated that any political issue might be converted into a legal weapon. The U.S. has long been aware of this problem, which explains why, like Israel, it could not back what started as a noble cause but later became a seriously flawed idea. Amb. Dore Gold, former director general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli ambassador to the UN, is president of the Jerusalem Center.
2019-04-19 00:00:00
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