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Israel Must Fight Back Against the ICC and Not Be Intimidated by Its Charges

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Amb. Dore Gold - People forget that when the International Criminal Court (ICC) was created in 1998, the Clinton administration ordered the U.S. delegation to vote against its formation. Neither President Clinton nor President Bush sought Senate ratification of the Rome Statute setting up the court. During its two decades, the ICC has repeatedly failed to fulfill its mission to protect human rights. For example, in April 2015, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda issued a statement that there was nothing she could do about ISIS crimes in Syria and Iraq, despite all the reports of mass executions, torture, and the wanton destruction of religious properties. Nor has the ICC ordered an investigation of the assault on the Uighur minority in China, including their forcible mass transfer. The ICC has demonstrated striking determination to pursue legal actions against the State of Israel. Yet Bensouda's predecessor, Louis Morano Ocampo, stressed in an interview this week that when he was the ICC Prosecutor, his organization did not agree to recognize the Palestinians' territorial jurisdiction to bring a complaint against Israel because no Palestinian state existed and still doesn't exist. Israel must resist these efforts to turn the ICC into a political weapon against it. An ICC indictment might have the aura of international law. But Israel must not allow these moves at the ICC - which are essentially political - to undercut its own self-assurance about the fundamental justice underpinning its cause. The writer, former Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli Ambassador to the UN, is President of the Jerusalem Center.
2021-02-11 00:00:00
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