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The International Criminal Court (ICC) Has Been Hijacked, Politicized, and Abused

(Jerusalem Post) Amb. Alan Baker - The International Criminal Court's (ICC) reported intention to issue warrants for the arrest of Israel's senior governmental and security personnel shows that the international judicial body has been simply hijacked, politicized, abused and, to all intents and purposes, ruined. From the very establishment of the court, Arab and Palestinian leaders have eyed the ICC as a potential target for their struggle to undermine the legitimacy of Israel, in addition to the various UN bodies that they have already politicized and ruined. Despite the clear and basic requirement that only sovereign states may be party to the 1998 Rome Treaty which defines the aims and purposes of the ICC, the UN Secretary General accepted the Palestinian request to be recognized as a "state party" to the ICC. Thus, a non-existing, terror-oriented state was granted full party status in the ICC, although its sole purpose was not to advance the cause of international justice but to undermine the legitimacy of Israel. Accompanied by some accommodating and politically-oriented prosecutors, the Palestinians have succeeded in manipulating the ICC into possibly issuing arrest warrants against Israel's leadership, while the brutal Palestinian Hamas perpetrators of the largest and cruelest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust apparently go scot-free and enjoy apparent immunity. People like myself who were heavily involved in negotiating, drafting and creating the ICC and who are intimately familiar with its original aims and purposes cannot but shudder in fear at the unbelievable abuse of that Statute and of the noble aims and intentions of its founding fathers. The writer, Director of the Institute for Diplomatic Affairs at the Jerusalem Center, served as Legal Adviser and Deputy Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2024-04-30 00:00:00
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