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The ICC's Legal Sophistry Won't Bring Peace

(UnHerd) David Patrikarakos - The International Criminal Court has, for the first time in its 22-year history, issued arrest warrants for democratically elected politicians. It's hard, though, to see how the warrants stand up as law. Israel is not a member of the ICC and Palestine is not recognized as a state by many. Meanwhile, the Rome Statute that governs the ICC states that any member cannot affect "the rights and privileges" of a third party that is not a signatory. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of the crime of starvation which, according to the Statute, relates to "willfully impeding relief supplies." Yet Israel permits aid into Gaza daily. Food insecurity is not an indication of deliberate starvation; nor can Israel do anything to mitigate the hijacking of aid supplies by Hamas. We need international law to govern maritime rights and arbitrate on cross-border trade disputes. But on fundamental questions of national self-defense undertaken by people answerable to electorates, the idea that the ICC has the essential competence or legitimacy to be the ultimate arbiter is massively stretching the power that international law should have. The clash here is about a fundamental understanding of reality. On the one hand, we have those who believe that the bloody and chaotic practice of war can be ordered and adjudicated upon by bureaucrats in Holland. On the other, we have Hamas's psychopathic barbarities. If the ICC's vision ever had any basis in fact, it died in Gaza. This is the world we are now living in, and it will not yield to delusion or legal sophistry.
2024-12-01 00:00:00
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