Israel does not commit war crimes.
That is the message Israel needs to send the world, in
light of the recommendation on Friday by the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to investigate
Israel regarding alleged war crimes stemming from 2014’s Operation Protective
Edge in Gaza; settlement activity since then; and the IDF’s response to weekly
riots along the Gaza border fence.
Bensouda, in what seems like little more than a fig leaf, wrote
that there is also a “reasonable basis” to believe that Hamas and “Palestinian
armed groups” committed war crimes. As if there is any doubt that the
indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets on Sderot, Ashkelon and
communities nearby – or purposefully setting alight thousands of dunams of agricultural
land and forests – is anything but a war crime.
But it is obscene for Bensouda to place Israel and
terrorist organizations on equal footing. Unlike Hamas – and what Bensouda
called in sanitized language “Palestinian armed groups” – Israel does not
intentionally harm civilians in Gaza or anywhere else.
Yes, civilians are harmed in Gaza by IDF actions, but they
are not the target.
In 2015, a blue ribbon panel of former top military leaders
and generals from eight democratic countries wrote a report after conducting an
investigation into Operation Protective Edge. Their conclusion: Israel’s
conduct in the conflict “met and in some respects exceeded the highest
standards we set for our own nations’ militaries... The IDF not only met its
obligations under the Law of Armed Conflict, but often exceeded these on the
battlefield at significant tactical cost.”
Jews living at the site of the biblical Shiloh, or in the
shadow of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, are not committing war crimes.
One can argue the political wisdom of their living there, and one can say that
making peace with the Palestinians is more difficult because they live there,
but to say that a Jew living in Judea – the cradle of Jewish civilization – is
a war criminal, is ridiculous.
And that absurdity needs to be highlighted as Israel fights
Bensouda’s recommendation and works to get the court to not pursue this case.
Or, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday at the start of the
weekly cabinet meeting: “To turn the fact that Jews are living in their land
into a war crime is an absurdity of unimaginable proportions.”
There are many arguments Jerusalem will use to convince the
Western democracies – first and foremost the US – to put pressure on the ICC to
drop this case.
One argument will be that the court lacks jurisdiction in
the matter because it only has standing when a state that is a signatory to the
1998 Rome Statute – which established the court – turns to it to take action.
Israel’s position is that despite Palestinian claims to the contrary, and even
though the Palestinian Authority signed the Rome Statute, there is no
Palestinian state.
Jerusalem will also argue to the world’s democracies that
what starts with Israel will not end with Israel, and that if today Israeli
politicians and soldiers will be charged with war crimes for the unintentional
death of innocents during a military campaign, then tomorrow the politicians
and soldiers of other countries will also find themselves so accused.
Those arguments – which are strong and sound – are
legalistic. They need to be presented, and they will be presented. But as they
are being presented, a simple truth must be repeated over and over, because the
lies about Israel committing war crimes are repeated over and over: Syria
intentionally commits war crimes, Iran intentionally commits war crimes, Turkey
intentionally commits war crimes – Israel does not.
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