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THREAD: The mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, today released a 12-page report on the events in Amsterdam during the past week. It provides the most detailed account we have thus far, and corrects some details in my earlier posts on the matter. For example, and contrary to what I reported, the police did in fact arrest a few Israeli hooligans (ten in total), but appear to have quickly released them as well.
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The above notwithstanding, Halsema like virtually every other Dutch politician continues to frame the disturbances within the broader framework of the long history of anti-Semitism rather than the specific one of opposition to continued Israeli participation in international sports competition while the state engages in genocide against the Palestinian people, or more directly of Israeli hooligans running amok in the streets of Amsterdam. As if the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans were singled out because they are Jewish, rather than on account of their violent and vile conduct. As if Israelis were singled out not because they were presumed to be visiting Maccabi supporters but because of Jew hatred.
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The report does provide evidence of anti-Semitic expressions, primarily by a taxi driver, and then goes on to conflate any and all hostility to rampaging Israeli hooligans and indeed to Israel and its genocide with anti-Semitism. (According to the report, Israel's foreign minister went one further, and in a telephone call with Halsema invoked the Holocaust).
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As previously noted, the fatal flaw in the anti-Semitism/pogrom framework is that there is no evidence of attacks on Dutch Jews on the night in question, nor is any provided in the report. In fact, as the report recounts, the Amsterdam Jewish community held its commemoration of Kristallnacht in the city's Portuguese Synagogue - a well-known landmark - on the same night as the football match. Yet the purportedly anti-Semitic hordes made no effort to attack or disrupt this event, or any other Jewish target that was not believed to be associated with Maccabi Tel Aviv's contingent of genocidal thugs.
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Given the authorities' understanding of what happened and why, the report recounts in great detail the additional measures they have since taken to provide extra protection to the Amsterdam Jewish community and its institutions. While these measures appear to have been taken as a general precaution rather than in response to specific threats, it's hard to quibble with any decision taken for the protection of communities who feel themselves to be at risk and are constantly being told that their neighbours want to slaughter them.
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Yet in doing so the report reveals the gross discrepancy in Halsema’s and the authorities' response to different forms of racism and discrimination. Indeed, the systematically downplays the anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism that was so very evident throughout the events in question, and for that matter the severity of the conduct engaged in by the Israeli thugs. It's inconceivable this would have been given the same treatment in the report had it been discussing a visiting Arab team directing similar abuse at Amsterdam's Jews.
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In contrast to a whole series of meetings with Amsterdam's Jewish community leaders and organizations, and constant communication with the Israeli embassy and Israeli officials, there was only minimal communication with the Arab or Muslim community and none whatsoever with Palestinians. And while the report recounts explicit calls to attack mosques (presumably from the nativist far right rather than the visiting fascist thugs), there is no indication the authorities considered these houses of worship worthy of protection.
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Clashes between hooligans affiliated with opposing football teams are hardly a novelty, but what happened in Amsterdam was fundamentally different. Rather than pitting supporters of the home team against those of the visitors, violence erupted between visiting hooligans and residents of the home city who had nothing to do with football but rather were presumed to be of Middle Eastern origin or visibly in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
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The explanation for this is to be found not in anti-Semitism, but in a somewhat opaque sentence on page 4 of the report: "Concerns centered particularly on the aggression shown by Maccabi supporters and the reaction of taxi drivers."
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Rather than drawing the appropriate conclusions, Dutch politicians have engaged in endless grandstanding, seeking to outbid each other in demonizing the country's Arab and Muslim citizens, and its Moroccan community in particular, while resorting to increasingly ghastly historical comparisons to characterise last week's events.
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There’s an ongoing power struggle in the country’s increasingly chaotic politics. Not only between left and right, but particularly between the right and far right, and within the expanding far right. And it is being waged on the backs and at the expense of society’s most vulnerable members. Not just by the right, but by all of them. And their political hooliganism is not expected to end anytime soon.
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Representatives of a civilization that within living memory gassed their fellow human beings to death on an industrial scale in purpose-built facilities, and literally burned humans in ovens, now lecture others about norms, values, and anti-Semitism without a scintilla of self-awareness.
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The link below contains links to both the Dutch original and English translation of the report in question. END
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https://www.amsterdam.nl/nieuws/nieuwsoverzicht/raadsbrief/
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THREAD: It’s now pretty clear what happened in Amsterdam this week. But first some background.
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For over a decade the football governing bodies FIFA, the International Federation of Football Associations, and UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, have consistently rejected demands to suspend or expel the Israel Football Association (IFA) and individual Israeli football clubs from their ranks.
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FIFA and UEFA have been formally requested to do so by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) on multiple occasions, and have additionally been called upon to adopt measures against the IFA by a variety of activists and fans who launched the Red Card Israeli Racism campaign.
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The demands to sanction Israeli football were made on a variety of grounds: that Israel is an institutionally racist state and should be treated no differently than apartheid South Africa (suspended by FIFA in 1961) and Rhodesia (suspended in 1970); that the IFA includes clubs based in illegal settlements in the illegally-occupied Palestinian territories; that the IFA discriminates against Palestinian clubs; that IFA teams discriminate against Palestinian players; that Israel in 2019 prevented the PFA cup final from taking place when it prohibited the Khadamaat Rafah team traveling from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to play against Balata FC; that Israel has killed and maimed Palestinian players; that Israeli clubs systematically tolerate racist and genocidal conduct by supporters; and a variety of other grounds, most recently that Israel is perpetrating genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that has resulted in the killing of numerous Palestinian players, officials, and staff.
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The PFA petitions were based not only on general principles or international human rights treaties, but rather, and primarily, FIFA’s and UEFA’s own regulations, which explicitly prohibit the conduct Israel, the IFA, and various IFA teams are engaged in.
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On each occasion FIFA and UEFA have rejected the PFA’s and Red Card Israeli Racism campaign’s demands on the grounds that sport and politics should not mix. On the same principle, namely that sports and politics must be strictly separated, teams and players who engage in gestures of solidarity with the Palestinians, or display symbols such as the Palestinian flag, have been fined and punished.
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Glasgow Celtic, which strongly identifies with the Palestinian cause, is in this respect the most notable example. In 2014 it was fined GBP 16,000 after fans raised the Palestinian flag during a Champions League qualifier against KR Reykjavik of Iceland. In 2022 it was fined GBP 8,619 after fans displayed hundreds of Palestinian flags during a match against Israel’s Hapoel Be’ersheva. In the latter case Celtic supporters responded by raising not only the full amount of the fine, but also a six-figure sum that was promptly disbursed to various Palestinian charities.
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Elsewhere, individual players have also been sanctioned. In one of many such examples, in January 2024 the Asian Football Confederation fined Jordan’s Mahmoud Al-Mardi for displaying the slogan “Palestine is the Cause of the Honourable” on his undershirt after he scored a goal against Malaysia during the Asian Cup.
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FIFA’s position on the strict separation between sports and politics is at least in theory an arguable proposition, but it was never consistently applied. Fans of Ajax, the Dutch club that hosted Maccabi Tel Aviv for the Europa League match on 7 November, for example, routinely waved giant Israeli flags in support of their team, and were consistently able to do so freely. It was only when supporters of opposing clubs began waving Palestinian flags in response that action was taken by the football authorities to ban both symbols.
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More importantly, the reasoning adopted by FIFA and UEFA ultimately proved to be a complete sham enveloped in brazen hypocrisy. Specifically: within days of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, both FIFA and UEFA suspended the Russian Football Union and every single Russian football club. The entire process literally took less than a week. And in contrast to the suppression of gestures in support of the Palestinians, explicit solidarity with Ukraine, and the prominent display of the Ukrainian flag, were if anything encouraged.
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As for the latest PFA application to FIFA to sanction Israel on a variety of grounds, submitted this May and supported among others by the Asian Football Confederation, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has ensured his organization moves even slower than the International Criminal Court (ICC). Most recently, and after months of foot-dragging and refusing to even put the PFA petition on the FIFA agenda, Infantino in October announced that an investigation would be conducted to assess the PFA’s case, but refused to announce a date on which this would be completed or its results announced. Had he behaved similarly in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he would have been dismissed faster than you can say “Infantino is a tool”.
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It is against this background, and also that of the long- and well-established reputation of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s fanbase for uninhibited genocidal racism, that pro-Palestinian activists sought to have the Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv fixture of 7 November cancelled. When they predictably failed, the activists announced they would be holding a protest at the Ajax stadium, the Johan Cruijff ArenA, on the day of the game. Just as predictably, this too was rejected by the Amsterdam municipality and police, who ordered the activists to hold their protest at a location some distance from the stadium. The activists complied, and their demonstration passed without incident.
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The violence that has been in the news for the past several days did not start during or after the game, but rather the day before it and even earlier. Several thousand Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, as is common for such events, had traveled to Amsterdam to attend their team’s away game. But rather than conducting themselves responsibly, or engaging in hooliganism directed at supporters of the opposing team or random passers-by – phenomena which are not uncommon in the world of football – the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters set their sights on a different target altogether: Arabs.
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Not only do the Israeli club’s supporters have a reputation for genocidal racism (their motto is “Death to the Arabs”, supplemented with the chant, “May Your Village Burn”), but many of those who traveled to Amsterdam have during the past year served in the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
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Imagining themselves to have the same liberties they are accustomed to in Israel, they began attacking private homes in Amsterdam that had the Palestinian flag on display in solidarity with Gaza; assaulting individuals of Arab appearance, including a number of Dutch-Moroccan taxi drivers; vandalized a number of taxis, completely destroying one; and more generally taunting those within earshot with chants of “We’ll Fuck the Arabs”, “Fuck you Palestine”, “Let the IDF Win to Fuck the Arabs”, and “There is No School in Gaza Because there are No Children Left”.
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Simply put, these foreign terrorists – arming themselves with sticks, bicycle chains, and various other implements – rampaged through the center of the Dutch capital, subjecting the city and its residents to a racist reign of terror. In this regard @ashatenbroeke reports that for days before the match, chat groups of pro-Palestinian activists had been warning members not to wear keffiyehs, Palestinian buttons, or other visibly Palestinian items in public because such people were being physically assaulted and spat upon by Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters.
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The Amsterdam police for the most part let their honoured Israeli guests go their merry way, and refrained from intervening. Indeed, there are several videos of police cars simply driving past physical assaults and similar incidents, as if attacks on residents by visiting Israeli thugs is completely normal behaviour. In one incident recounted by @ashatenbroeke that was filmed, Israeli hooligans threw a serving of French fries with mayo at an individual then beat them up. The police in this case did make an arrest – of the individual assaulted.
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As the game approached, the Israeli supporters were escorted to the stadium by the Amsterdam police force, apparently also a common practice in such circumstances but in this case likely intensified given widespread condemnation of Israel’s genocide and the attendant security risks. On their way to the stadium, gangs of Israeli supporters continued with their violent behaviour, all the while chanting their genocidal slogans. The Amsterdam police force is no less racist than its counterparts elsewhere in Europe or for that matter the West, and did not arrest a single one of the Israeli hooligans. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how the police escort would have responded to supporters of an Arab club marching through the center of Amsterdam chanting “Death to the Jews” and assaulting anyone wearing a kippa.
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@ashatenbroeke Once inside the stadium, and before the game started, the Israeli supporters observed the minute of silence commemorating the hundreds who recently died in floods in Spain’s Valencia with loud whistles, more racist chanting, and setting off flares.
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@ashatenbroeke As the supporters left the stadium, their genocidal racism now intensified by the 5-0 drubbing administered to their club by Ajax, they essentially picked up where they had left off before entering the stadium earlier that evening. This time, their intended victims fought back.
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According to some accounts the response was prepared and organized, according to others it was spontaneous. Most likely there were elements of both. Those who confronted the Israeli hooligans have typically been described as primarily consisting of Dutch Moroccans, with aggrieved taxi drivers prominent among them. More accurately they were primarily youths, consisting of many Amsterdammers of Arab origin but also others.
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In contrast to their previous inertia the Amsterdam police now swung into action, arresting approximately 60 of the Dutch defenders but again not a single Israeli. All but 4 were later released. Many more arrests are expected in the coming days and weeks based on CCTV footage and the like. But these too won’t include a single Israeli because they have left The Netherlands and enjoy total impunity in Israel. Rather, they are playing the heroic victim to popular and official acclaim in Israel, and indeed that of Western elites and media.
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The energetic support of the Amsterdam police notwithstanding, the Israeli hooligans discovered that fistfights on the streets of Amsterdam are somewhat more challenging than killing babies in Gaza. A number were beaten up, and five required hospitalization. (All were discharged from hospital the following day).
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@ashatenbroeke At this point Kafka and Alice in Wonderland jointly seized control. In the words of @elydia35, this was “Probably the first time in history we’ve seen world leaders offer their thoughts and prayers to football hooligans”. It is if anything a massive understatement.
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Almost immediately Western leaders and media commentators began describing the events as a “pogrom”. Not by the genocidal Israeli thugs but rather against them. As if the police encouraged the attacks against the Israelis rather than allowing Israeli gangs to rampage through the city they are paid to keep secure.
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Instead of being correctly framed as s confrontation between Israeli hooligans and those they sought out, it was transformed into a massive hunt against “Jews”. Genocide Joe, who still maintains he has seen images that don’t exist of beheaded Israeli babies, likened the disturbances in Amsterdam initiated by the Israeli hooligans to the rise of Nazism and preliminary phases of the Holocaust. He was far from alone in this respect. That this was an anti-Semitic rampage and nothing else and nothing less immediately became an article of faith.
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With the commemoration of 1938’s 9-10 November Kristallnacht, a key milestone on the way to the Holocaust, only days away, the comparisons flew fast and furious. As if it was Jewish properties and not those displaying Palestinian symbols or of Arab appearance that were being vandalized and smashed. Selective outrage, and selective condemnation, enjoyed another moment of triumph.
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Just as history commenced only on 7 October 2023, @ashatenbroeke notes that the response to the Amsterdam disturbances have simply elided anything and everything that transpired before the end of the Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv match. Even by the abysmal standards set by the media during the past year with respect to Palestine, coverage of Amsterdam very successfully plumbed new depths.
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Among the most hysterical reactions has been that of Dutch strongman Geert Wilders, who although not in government effectively rules The Netherlands. Wilders is of partly Indonesian background, and during his youth was due to his appearance often taunted by racist classmates. Rather than resolving to strive for a society free of racism, he became a peroxide blond and decided that he would defeat his tormenters by becoming the most accomplished racist of them all. A stint working on an Israeli kibbutz, where he was treated no differently than other unpaid labour, also transformed him into a fanatic Zionist and Israel flunkie. He for example continues to insist Jordan is Palestine, and has been a vociferous genocide cheerleader from the moment is commenced.
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After 9/11 Wilders found his calling, and it was Islamophobia. Given the demography of The Netherlands, his poisonous bile was specifically directed at Dutch Moroccans, who he would like to see stripped of their citizenship and deported. Indeed, he was in 2016 convicted by a Dutch court for a 2014 appearance in which he promised his audience that he would “arrange” for “less Moroccans” in The Netherlands.
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Wilders is very much the ideological heir of the wartime National Socialist Movement (NSB), the blood and soil Dutch fascist party which held that one could not be both Jewish and Dutch. The NSB enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis during the 1940-1945 occupation, was outlawed after liberation, and its leaders (e.g. Anton Mussert and Rost van Tonningen) were variously executed or committed suicide.
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Wilders’s rabid pronouncements proved too much even for the right-wing liberal (i.e. conservative) VVD, which in 2004 expelled him from its ranks. He thereafter formed the Party of Freedom (PVV), which is not a political party in the normal sense but rather a personal fiefdom with opaque funding solely and wholly controlled by Wilders.
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Wilders won the 2023 Dutch parliamentary elections on the strength of his positions. But since no party ever wins a majority in Dutch elections, he had to form a coalition with several other parties. Their condition for joining his government was that Wilders forgo the premiership (to which he would normally be entitled) because he would be too great an embarrassment on the European and international stage. Wilders agreed and nominated Dick Schoof, a former spy chief best known for authorizing the illegal surveillance of Dutch citizens, particularly Muslims.
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Wilders has even by his own standards reached new heights of hysterical rhetoric in response to the events in Amsterdam. Part of his project is to present anti-Semitism not as a European phenomenon that was exported to the Middle East, but rather a core Islamic value that is being imported into Europe by immigrants.
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Refusing to utter a word in defense of Dutch citizens violently assaulted by Israeli thugs, Wilders has instead spoken of “A pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam”, “Muslims with Palestinian flags hunting down Jews”, “A Jew hunt in Amsterdam” and to top it off, “We have become the Gaza of Europe”. His solution is to “denaturalize” (i.e. revoke the citizenship) of “radical Muslims” and expel them from the country. His rhetoric about reclaiming The Netherlands from “Islam” would have one think he’s about to reconquer Andalusia and impose similar measures.
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Wilders’s Islamophobia is only part of the story. There’s also considerable domestic politics at play. He has demanded the immediate resignation of Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema, who previously led the Green Left Party which represents everything Wilders hates. Although she has been a loyal soldier repressing and demonizing pro-Palestinian activists during the past year, Wilders clearly smells blood and is determined to extract his pound of flesh. He has also attacked the police in absolutely hysterical fashion and condemned the government for what he terms its limp response.
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This is best understood as Wilders seeking to ensure that it is he and not Schoof who rules the roost, and to establish power and influence over institutions independently of formal government authority. It’s the authoritarian playbook, which Wilders hopes will eventually catapult him to formal leadership of the country.
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Seeking to maintain their own fiefdoms, Halsema, Schoof, coalition partners, and other objects of Wilders’s ire have for all intents and purposes adopted the pogrom/Kristallnacht 2024 narrative and gotten with the program. Whichever way the internal power struggle plays out, massive repression of opposition to Israel’s genocide in The Netherlands now seems all but certain. END
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THREAD: Since assuming office in 2021, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, has done his best to avoid his responsibility to investigate what is known as the Situation in Palestine.
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There is no indication he took any significant action prior to 7 October 2023, and considerable evidence he avoided it like the plague.
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The ICC’s refusal to act was all the more remarkable since Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, had already in 2021 formally commenced an investigation into violations of the Rome Statute
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(the treaty which governs the operations of the ICC and defines the crimes over which it has jurisdiction). Having finally established that the Court has jurisdiction because Palestine successfully fulfilled its conditions for membership,
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a panel of ICC judges known as the Pre-Trial Chamber authorized the Prosecutor to investigate crimes committed in Palestine or by Palestinians as of 2014.
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This is significant because unlike the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which adjudicates disputes between states and provides advisory opinions to the United Nations on matters of international law (like, recently, the legality of Israeli rule beyond the 1967 boundaries),
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the ICC deals with individual criminal responsibility. In other words, it has the power to prosecute, convict, and imprison officials found guilty of serious international crimes.
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The crisis which erupted last October changed the equation. Khan, a British lawyer whose candidacy had been championed by the US, UK, and Israel,
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could now safely grandstand about the Situation in Palestine by putting the focus on Palestinian atrocities and their violations of the Rome Statute.
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But alas for him, Israel that same day unleashed a ferocious assault on the Gaza Strip and its Palestinian population, which by late December 2023 saw it accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice.
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As the months dragged on Khan and the ICC, already experiencing a severe legitimacy and credibility crisis because the Court exclusively prosecuted Africans, adversaries of the West, and those who fell out of its favor, came under increasing pressure.
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Global public opinion, governments that are members of the Court’s Assembly of State Parties and, notably, a growing number of Khan’s own peers – not least in the UK – publicly demanded that he do his job and begin to hold Israeli officials to account for their actions.
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On 20 May of this year Khan sought to resolve this dilemma by applying for arrest warrants for five individuals: Israeli Prime Minister (and Congressional heartthrob) Binyamin Netanyahu; Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant;
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head of the Hamas Polibureau Ismail Haniyya; the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar; and the Commander of the Hamas military wing, the Martyr Izz-al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, Muhammad Deif.
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Khan clearly hoped that by seeking the arrest of more Palestinians than Israelis, and by remaining mute about crimes committed between 2014 and 7 October 2023, he could mollify those who had sponsored his candidacy in the expectation that he would continue to do their bidding.
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It was a severe miscalculation. Western governments went audibly, visibly, and collectively apoplectic, culminating in an avalanche of threats against the Court, its officials, and their families by senior US politicians.
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Israel for its part resorted to the same tired cliches it always does, denouncing the ICC as Hamas, anti-Semites, etc.
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Pursuant to ICC procedures Khan cannot simply order the arrest of those accused. Rather, the Prosecutor applies to a panel of three judges, the Pre-Trial Chamber, to issue an arrest warrant.
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It had been widely anticipated that a decision on the application would be made by the judges within a month or two, and that based on its record the application would be approved.
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In June the British government decided to throw a spanner in the works. It requested, and was granted, permission to file an amicus brief challenging the ICC’s jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli citizens.
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To clarify, Israel is not a member of the ICC, and rejects its very existence as an abomination. Despite participating in the consultations that led to the adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998,
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it turned against the entire enterprise when a majority of founding members voted to include settlement and apartheid as prosecutable international crimes.
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But the Court’s jurisdiction over Palestine means it has the right to prosecute violations of the Rome Statute committed by any party on the territory of the State of Palestine, as well as by any Palestinian, anywhere, who it has issued with identity documents.
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What Israel thinks of the ICC’s jurisdiction is irrelevant, because such matters are decided by the Court.
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The reason London took the lead in objecting to the ICC’s intention to prosecute Israeli citizens for war crimes and crimes against humanity is fairly simple.
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It has been an axiom of British foreign policy since the 20th century that Israel has an indisputable right to commit war crimes, and to enjoy impunity for doing so, particularly when these are perpetrated on behalf of British imperial interests, as during the 1956 Suez Crisis.
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Secondly, London serves as Washington’s designated agent within the ICC, because the US like Israel has also refused to join the ICC or accept its jurisdiction.
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In fact, the US Congress (now preparing to receive Netanyahu as a conquering hero) in 2002 passed legislation popularly known as The Hague Invasion Act, authorizing the US to use military force in fellow NATO member The Netherlands to repatriate US citizens hauled before the ICC.
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Britain’s objection is based on Annex IV (Protocol Concerning Legal Affairs) of the "1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip".
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Also known as Oslo II, its main purpose was to regulate the expansion of the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the Gaza Strip and Jericho to other, limited areas of the West Bank,
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and to further circumscribe the limited autonomy Israel had agreed to in the original Oslo accords of 1993.
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According to Annex IV, the PA agreed that it would have criminal jurisdiction only over “Palestinians and/or non-Israelis” in the territories it administered, while Israel would retain “sole criminal jurisdiction” over offenses committed within PA territory by Israelis.
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It is therefore the position of Perfidious Albion that the Palestinians cannot delegate jurisdiction over Israeli crimes to the ICC because it is not theirs to transfer, and that the ICC can and should prosecute only Palestinians.
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In other words, Israeli impunity must be preserved unmolested by the ICC.
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Yet, as Rutgers Professor of Law Adil Ahmad Haque pointed out earlier this month in Just Security, where he serves as Executive Editor, “In 2020, arguments along these lines were submitted to the Pre-Trial Chamber …
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[which] found that such arguments over personal jurisdiction were ‘not pertinent’ to the issue of territorial jurisdiction”. He further notes:
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“Under the ICC Statute, States Parties do not delegate, transfer, or otherwise give their jurisdiction to the Court. Instead, States Parties accept the jurisdiction of the Court … That should be the end of the matter.
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Neither the Court’s jurisdiction nor its exercise is limited by Oslo II, or by any of Palestine’s bilateral agreements or internal laws.
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Indeed, a State Party cannot accept the Court’s jurisdiction or its exercise in part, that is, over some individuals, territory, or crimes but not others. It is all or nothing.”
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Haque penned his article shortly before the ICJ issued its landmark Advisory Opinion defining Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as illegal.
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I suspect he would now additionally point out that London’s sponsorship of Israeli impunity in this case also defies its obligations to refrain from aiding and abetting Israeli violations of international law as specified in the ICJ’s ruling.
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Not to be outdone Germany, in recognition of its genocidal history but not in the way it presumes, has also jumped to Israel’s defense at the ICC. Berlin’s arguments are even more bizarre than London’s.
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First, it claims that an ICC prosecution of Israeli officials would violate “complementarity”, the principle that the ICC can only prosecute individuals for crimes if national courts have failed to do so.
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But complementarity requires more than a functioning legal system. For it to be applicable, the government in question must demonstrate that it is actively investigating/prosecuting the named individuals for the specific crimes they stand accused of before the ICC.
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Germany gets around the reality that Netanyahu and Gallant will never be put on trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity by an Israeli court by claiming that it would be premature for the Court to act while the conflict remains ongoing.
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Not quite the position it has taken with respect to ICC indictments of Putin or others.
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The Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber has now accepted petitions for and against ICC jurisdiction from an additional seventy petitioners, including governments, organisations, and individuals.
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Most recently the United States has indicated it will also jump into the fray and do what it can to let Israeli criminals off the ICC hook.
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This is the same state that has invited accused war criminal Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress, and to meet with its sitting head of state as well as both candidates to replace him.
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The ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber has given petitioners until 6 August to submit their briefs, and will thereafter presumably take until the end of the year to study them before taking a decision.
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Given what we know about Israel’s campaign of espionage, intimidation, and attempted bribery of ICC officials, and more recently the torrent of US threats, it’s abundantly clear that the Court’s prosecutor and judges would rather have an enema than move forward with this case.
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They must be hoping that the time they have gained by permitting these spurious challenges to their role will give them an opportunity find an excuse to put this matter to rest.
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The thousands of Palestinians who will pay for this manufactured inertia with their lives is considered a small price worth paying. END
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THREAD: On 29 February I participated in a debate organised by Lex Fridman on Israel and Palestine, alongside Norman Finkelstein, Benny Morris, and Steven Bonnell (stage name “Destiny”).
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Apart from reposting a link to the recording of the event, I’ve thus far refrained from comment.
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I’ve done so on the grounds that people interested in the discussion and prepared to endure a five-hour video can watch it themselves and make up their own minds about the various issues discussed, rather than being told what to think by a participant.
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Bonnell has taken a decidedly different approach. In addition to multiple hours-long podcasts broadcast before the event, he began relitigating the discussion from virtually the moment it ended.
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Taking to Twitter/X and YouTube, he immediately began promoting his own version of events, including in podcasts, issued prior to the debate’s 14 March release, that were significantly longer than the debate itself.
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Much of Bonnell’s commentary consisted of juvenile name-calling, insults, and distortions directed primarily at Norman Finkelstein.
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Bonnell’s obsession with Finkelstein, and his fixation with convincing viewers he acquitted himself with distinction in his exchanges with Finkelstein before these were publicly available, speaks for itself.
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As does his repeatedly expressed view that nothing of substance was uttered during the debate and watching it a waste of time. (Bonnell also lamented that he missed a "gang bang" to participate in the debate.)
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As for my own contribution, Bonnell appeared to take particular exception to an observation of mine regarding a statement he made regarding apartheid in one of his pre-event podcasts.
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During that particular podcast, Bonnell stated that he doubted either Finkelstein or I would be watching. In fact, and since I hadn’t previously heard of Bonnell,
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had not previously come across anything he has published on the Middle East (he apparently hasn’t), and was entirely unacquainted with his views, I made it a point to watch.
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Full disclosure: I was at the time unaware that Bonnell had in previous podcasts identified himself as “pro-genocide” with respect to Israel’s mass killings of Palestinians.
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Or that among other displays of familiarity with the region he couldn’t identify Bashar Assad, thought Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the president of Israel, and was apparently unable to locate his favorite MENA state on a map.
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In any event, during the pre-debate podcast in question Bonnell was explaining to his audience how he would dispense with the finding that Israel is an apartheid state.
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Purportedly basing his views on the legal definition of apartheid (“separateness”), Bonnell asserted that Jim Crow did not constitute apartheid, but that Arab states that have not extended citizenship to Palestinian refugees in their territory is a clear example of this crime.
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I recounted this statement to Bonnell during the debate (at 4:45:59). Once again claiming to base himself on the legal definition of apartheid, Bonnell changed his position somewhat, this time to “I don’t know if Jim Crow would have qualified for apartheid”.
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For good measure he added, “just like if Israel were to literally nuke the Gaza Strip and kill two million people, I don’t know if that would qualify for the crime of genocide”.
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It remains unclear why the legal definition of apartheid leaves Bonnell clueless about the status of Jim Crow but sufficiently confident to indict Arab states.
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After all, Jim Crow was a formal system of rigidly enforced segregation in the United States imposed by state authority, enforced by legislation and violence, and confirmed by the US Supreme Court.
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By contrast, Arab states were at worst exercising a universally-recognized sovereign right to not extend collective citizenship to foreign refugees on their territory. Rather than clarify his position, he quickly changed the subject to Israeli civilian casualties on 7 October.
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Perhaps Bonnell thinks there is a state named Arabia that is withholding citizenship from its Palestinian minority, or simply doesn’t know – or care to know - how apartheid operated in his own country.
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What is certain is that he is entirely unaware that Jim Crow served as a model and inspiration for the South African white-minority regime’s racist policies, which bequeathed us the term and crime of apartheid.
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In his post-debate podcasts the above exchange metamorphosed into my “playing the race card” and the like. In fact, I had merely restated his own words, verbatim, seeking an explanation for his rather unorthodox understanding and misunderstanding of what constitutes apartheid.
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But the above incident was trivial compared to Bonnell’s multiple victory laps concerning the use of two Latin legal terms, “mens rea” and “dolus specialis”,
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with respect to South Africa’s 29 December 2023 application to the International Court of Justice instituting proceedings against Israel under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
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I’ll start by reproducing the relevant exchange:
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STEVEN BONNELL (03:17:58): I don’t know if you used the phrase “dolus specialis”, that’s the intentional part of genocide-
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MOUIN RABBANI: I don’t know that term.
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STEVEN BONNELL: I think it’s called “dolus specialis”, it’s the most important part of genocide, which is proving it is a highly special intent to commit genocide. It’s possible that Israel could-
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NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: That’s “mens rea”.
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STEVEN BONNELL: Yes, I understand the state of mind, but for genocide, it’s called “dolus specialis”. It’s a highly special intent. Did you read the case?
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NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah.
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STEVEN BONNELL: It is a highly special intent [inaudible].
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This was not the first time Bonnell that day questioned whether Finkelstein, arguably the world’s foremost forensic scholar, a voracious reader, and someone who has on multiple occasions discussed the relevant text in detail, had read the document in question.
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(Regarding my own ignorance of “dolus specialis” and for that matter “mens rea”, I know neither Latin nor legalese,
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and when confronted with such terms resort to a search engine to look up their translation into a language I understand, and typically consign the original to the memory hole).
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Briefly, and to the best of my understanding, “mens rea” denotes criminal intent, and “dolus specialis” specific intent. “Dolus specialis” is, in other words, a subcategory of “mens rea”.
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What is at issue in this specific instance is that in its application to the ICJ, South Africa references “dolus specialis” four times, but “mens rea” not once.
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As far as Bonnell was concerned this means not only that it is “dolus specialis” rather than “mens rea” that is required to demonstrate the intent to commit genocide, but also that Finkelstein had not read the document in question.
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For the record, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, South Africa and Israel’s oral arguments before the ICJ on 11-12 January 2024, the Court’s Order (initial ruling) of 26 January,
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and for that matter the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) mention neither Latin term, and speak only of “intent”.
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Bonnell appears to have taken too many victory laps for his own good. His continued juvenile taunting of Finkelstein on 21 March elicited a response from the latter entitled “Moron Specialis”. According to Finkelstein:
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“MENS REA (criminal intent, from the Latin for “guilty mind”) denotes the legal principle at stake while DOLUS SPECIALIS (criminal intent to commit genocide) denotes one application of it. Here is an example of this usage from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda:”
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Chapter and verse are duly provided by Finkelstein. Concluding his remarks he asks: “Did these distinguished judges err by referring to mens rea and not dolus specialis?
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I was stating the obvious that the critical point of contention in a genocide case is proving criminal INTENT ('That’s mens rea'), and of course everyone in the room understood that the threshold under the Genocide Convention is proving criminal INTENT to commit genocide.”
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Given that Finkelstein has a vested interest in the matter, I thought it would make sense to get an independent opinion, and approached an international lawyer who has participated in cases before the ICJ unrelated to Palestine for clarification.
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Here is the international lawyer’s response:
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“In the crime of genocide, both mens rea and dolus specialis are essential elements that must be proven to establish criminal liability. Mens rea refers to the mental state of the perpetrator when committing the acts that constitute genocide.
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The perpetrator must have the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such, which can be inferred from the actions, statements, and policies of the perpetrator.
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Dolus specialis is particularly relevant in proving the intentionality behind the commission of genocide. It requires demonstrating that the perpetrator had the specific intent to commit the acts that constitute the crime of genocide.
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Both mens rea and dolus specialis are necessary elements to establish criminal liability for genocide. Prosecutors must demonstrate that the perpetrator had not only the general intent to commit the underlying acts,
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but also possessed the specific intent to destroy a particular group, as required by the definition of genocide.”
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More recently we have the following from “Anatomy of a Genocide”, the 22 March 2024 report issued by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967:
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“[T]he crime of genocide comprises two interconnected elements:
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(a) The actus reus: the commission of any one or more specific acts against a protected group [these are enumerated]
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(b) The mens rea: the intent behind the commission of one or more of the above-mentioned acts that must be established, which includes two intertwined elements:
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(i) a general intention to carry out the criminal acts (dolus generalis), and
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(ii) a specific intention to destroy the target group as such (dolus specialis).”
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In other words, dolus specialis is a subdivision of the legal threshold called mens rea, exactly as Finkelstein stated.
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As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. END
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THREAD: On Monday Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, stated that Hamas’s military force, the Martyr Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades as well as the Jerusalem Battalions of Islamic Jihad (PIJ) were on the verge of collapse.
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His views have been echoed by most other Israeli military and political leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Chief of the General Staff Herzl Halevi and Ronen Bar, Director of the domestic intelligence agency known as Shin Bet or Shabak.
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These assessments were augmented by reports that Hamas and PIJ leaders are no longer able to command or communicate with their forces, and that the latter, feeling abandoned, are deserting and surrendering in growing numbers.
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The battle for control over the northern Gaza Strip was effectively over.
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Wednesday, Israel announced that ten of its soldiers were killed in a single encounter with the Qassam Brigades in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood on the eastern fringes of Gaza City, i.e. the neighborhood closest to the boundary with Israel.
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This is the highest daily toll of military casualties reported by Israel since 7 October. Significantly, those killed included a lieutenant colonel who was a battalion commander in the Golani Brigade, a colonel who led a commando brigade, and four majors.
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More than two dozen soldiers and officers were wounded in the incident.
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Significantly, the Israeli soldiers were not killed in street battles but in a carefully prepared and executed two-stage ambush.
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According to initial Israeli media reports, Israeli and Palestinian forces were engaged in house-to-house combat in the Qasaba quarter of Shuja’iyya, and an Israeli force, monitored by video surveillance, entered a building from which Palestinian fighters had withdrawn.
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An explosive device that had been concealed within the building was detonated, killing or injuring a number of Israeli soldiers. When a second force arrived to rescue them the building, which had been previously mined, was blown up over their heads.
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Further south, Israel airdropped supplies to soldiers near Khan Yunis, indicating the force was surrounded and could not be supplied by land from depots within Israel located only a few kilometers away.
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The villages east of Khan Yunis and closer to the boundary with Israel – Khuza’a, Bani Suhaila, Abasan al-Kabira and Abasan al-Saghira – as well as Qarara to its north continue to be bombed by the Israeli air force and artillery around the clock.
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Ergo, Israeli land forces have yet to establish control over them. Intermittent air raids and battles also continue to be reported in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun, the northernmost towns in the Gaza Strip that Israel entered on 26 October on the first day of its ground operation.
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And Hamas and PIJ last week fired their heaviest rocket barrages on greater Tel Aviv region since the war began.
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Although Israel several days ago reported that it had completed its encirclement of Jabalya Refugee Camp and the adjoining town of Jabalya-Nazla, located to the northeast of Gaza City, and expected to complete their subjugation within a day or two,
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satellite imagery suggested encirclement was still a long way off. Nor have Israeli ground forces yet penetrated the inner neighborhoods of Gaza City.
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Separately, Israeli media this week reported that its military forces have suffered over 5,000 wounded since (including) 7 October, with some 2,000 expected to have permanent disabilities, such as amputations.
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And yesterday the military reported that some twenty per cent of its casualties were the result of friendly fire.
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Given that Israel is operating under military censorship the above can be assumed to be an at best incomplete and partial account. There are persistent suspicions Israeli casualties are significantly higher,
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and we also for example know very little about Israeli casualties resulting from daily attacks launched from Lebanon by the much more powerful and better-armed Hizballah.
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Prohibiting foreign journalists, investigators, and human rights monitors from entering the Gaza Strip is only side of the coin. Restricting what Israeli media are permitted to report, for not only operational but also political considerations, is the other.
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The daily video clips released by Hamas, PIJ, and Hizballah, which document direct encounters with Israeli forces and whose authenticity has not been seriously questioned, certainly suggest a higher level of Israeli casualties.
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Israeli clips by contrast show soldiers firing into an empty classroom, or a stripped down captive (in this case a middle-aged restaurant owner forced to play the part of Qassam commander)
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successively handing over a machine gun apparently concealed in his shorts with different hands in multiple takes of Unconditional Surrender in Tokyo Bay. And, of course, hundreds of Hagari tunnel memes.
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As previously noted, Israel has yet to assassinate a senior Hamas or PIJ leader, and has thus far killed more UN staff, journalists, and health care workers (take your pick) than Hamas commanders.
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Its most visible achievements to date consist of raising an Israeli flag over Al-Shifa Hospital, and more recently blowing up an empty UN school in Beit Lahia to the deafening cheers of a company of Israeli soldiers cowering behind a sandy embankment hundreds of yards away.
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Given the overwhelming disparity in military power, Israel indisputably has the capacity to fully conquer the Gaza Strip and deal a severe blow to Hamas and PIJ. If it so chooses.
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The question, rather, is whether it is prepared to invest the (Israeli, not Palestinian) blood, treasure, and time required to do so. In this respect Israel’s military doctrine, that its wars need to be short, decisive, and fought on enemy territory, has already been shattered.
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Instead, Israel is fighting a war of attrition on multiple fronts. This is also imposing significant economic costs. Aside from the obvious price tag, it includes hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilised and removed from the work force since 7 October,
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reductions in foreign investment and tourism, ships avoiding the journey to the port of Eilat, and other losses that can’t be compensated by US taxpayers. The so-called Gaza envelope surrounding the Gaza Strip, and the far north abutting the Lebanese border,
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account for the bulk of Israel’s agricultural production, including fruits, vegetables, poultry and eggs. Not only have the residents of these regions been evacuated, but the foreigners who do the actual work are no longer arriving.
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It is probably true that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would, for personal as well as political reasons, like to see this war prolonged. As would his extreme-right brothers in arms. But those who are most determined to prosecute the war against the Gaza Strip,
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and Lebanon if given half a chance, are the security establishment. It is they who on 7 October lost the confidence of the Israeli public, and of their US and European sponsors.
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They are therefore determined to restore both this confidence and Israel’s power of deterrence vis-à-vis not only the Palestinians but the Arabs in general. No one likes to place their personal security in the hands of an incompetent weakling,
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or maintain a strategic partnership with one, but loves such an adversary. This explains the frenzied, genocidal violence unleashed by Israel against the Gaza Strip.
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It is not only a lust for revenge and campaign to either expel the Palestinians to the Sinai desert or make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation.
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It is equally to impress upon friend and foe alike that Israel remains a mighty regional power deserving of their support and fear.
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Israel’s problem, as previously noted and demonstrated yet again in Shuja’iyya yesterday, is that its military is a highly efficient killing machine but mediocre when it comes to combat. You can’t conquer territory using only an air force.
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And ground operations are by contrast not cost free. As for reports that Israel has begun flooding the Gaza Strip tunnel network, such wars are rarely if ever decided by silver bullets. Destroying the water supply in the Gaza Strip is probably the more important motivation.
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The Israeli military’s strength is colonization and genocide, not urban warfare. Even when pitted against a comparatively weak adversary that has been under occupation for half a century and blockade for almost two decades,
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two months have proven insufficient for decisive progress. Suffice it to say that Israeli, US, and European leaders have, in unison, been insisting Israel is fighting for its very existence and survival.
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Not against Egypt or Iran, or even Hizballah. But against Hamas and PIJ, which between them have zero fighter jets, zero tanks, zero battleships, and zero anti-aircraft systems.
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Reeling from the attacks of 7 October, Israeli public opinion was initially solidly behind Israel’s war effort. The campaign by the families of captives in the Gaza Strip to bring their loved ones home alive at any cost has eaten into this consensus,
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particularly after the Palestinians demonstrated that negotiations and truce, rather than insane violence, was the only option in this regard. In a society more sensitive to military than civilian casualties, mounting losses such as those in Shuja’iyya will have a further impact.
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But as with the US in Vietnam, a crisis of confidence in political and military leaders who repeatedly offer rosy predictions, mistaking mass killings of civilians for imminent military victory, can be decisive.
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People don’t like being lied to on matters of national security. What scares them even more is a realisation they’re not being lied to, but that their leaders are delusional.
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Aware of the dangers, expect Israel’s onslaught to escalate yet further and reach a murderous crescendo potentially without parallel since the Second World War.
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But there are increasing indications this is the darkness before dawn. When US and European leaders who have repeatedly demonstrated their thorough disdain for Palestinian life begin to advocate for a reduction in the pace of mass killings,
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it’s clear that as far as their real interests are concerned this war is gradually running its course. END
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THREAD: The following translation of a witness statement from the Gaza Strip was produced by a volunteer with the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate. It is provided here because it is an account that according to the translator “we find to be highly credible”.
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I am not in a position to verify it, but would suggest that doing so is an urgent task for those who claim to oppose human shields and suicide bombings, and demonstrate they are acting in support of a principle rather than of a state.
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Translation [Brackets indicate the translator’s clarifications, I have made no corrections]:
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Prior to our apprehension within Majda Wasila School, located near Palestine Mosque in the western sector of Gaza City. [When this incident occurred, the civilian was in Majda Wasila School along with his family members and others,
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near Palestine Mosque in the western part of Gaza City.] I was approached by an [Israeli] officer who asked my name, occupation, and age. He also sought information regarding my relatives and family.
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He then directed me to accompany him. When I asked about our destination, he said: "I am going to present you to your Lord akin to a bride." Clarifying if he meant a groom, he elucidated, "a bride adorned in white attire and makeup."
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[In this dialogue, the Israeli soldier is making light of the possibility of killing the civilian.] I was escorted to a location next to a tunnel that belongs to the resistance.
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There, the Israeli officer outfitted me with a belt containing explosives and a GoPro camera affixed to my head. He secured a rope around my waist, with the directive, "When I tug the rope, you are to return to me."
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I was held at gunpoint near the tunnel entrance and threatened with harm against my family. While I was resisting compliance with his commands, he suddenly thrust me into the tunnel opening, where I landed and remained for approximately 3 minutes.
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Then he started yelling [at me to move] and fired shots to force me to move forward in the tunnel. I walked a distance of about 40 meters.
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He then pulled me from the tunnel using the rope, and said: "your Lord still does not desire your presence." I was handed over to the soldiers, who received instructions to find another individual of younger age.
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When I got back outside the tunnel, I discovered my family members still near the tunnel, and a child (15 years old) was taken from the group. Fortunately, he returned unharmed, and I saw him upon my release from detention.
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The [Israeli military’s] objective underlying these actions is to avoid entering the tunnel. If the camera affixed to my head had detected the presence of resistance fighters within the tunnel,
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[the Israeli officer] would have detonated [the explosives on my belt], killing me and others. Further details will come out in the coming days. End of Translation. An Israeli acquaintance adds:
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What is described here is not "use of human shields", but rather a much more severe crime: forced conscription of a civilian to act as a suicide bomber on behalf of the IDF. That being said, there is ample evidence that the IDF is also using human shields in recent weeks,
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both in Gaza and in the West Bank (including one instance in which after using a Palestinian as a human shield the IDF apparently attempted to execute him: at the time reports indicated he survived the shooting).
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I would also note that in [Operation] Cast Lead [in 2008-2009] there was a somewhat similar case, which in Israel is dubbed the "Child Procedure" incident, in which a 9-year-old Palestinian child was forced to open bags which the IDF suspected were wired to explode.
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"Child Procedure" is a paraphrase of "Neighbor Procedure", the IDF-speak for using Palestinians as human shields (a practice notably used by newly popular "leftist" Yair Golan, who called it "very humane".
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It is widely assumed Golan will lead the leftist-Zionist camp in the upcoming elections). End of comment by acquaintance and END OF THREAD