BREAKING: ICC Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu... Senate Weapons Vote... U.S. buys Pegasus for Colombia in cash... Israeli raid in Jenin...

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Nov 21, 2024

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in Israel’s ongoing military offensive in the Gaza Strip. In its ruling, the court explicitly rejected arguments made by Israel and the U.S. that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Israel. “The acceptance by Israel of the Court’s jurisdiction is not required, as the Court can exercise its jurisdiction on the basis of the territorial jurisdiction of Palestine,” the court said.

This is a developing story. Read our full coverage from Jeremy and Murtaza Hussain here or watch for updates on Twitter or Bluesky.

The court’s decision will create serious tension for the European Union, as it wages its own legal battle at the ICC against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin faces an ICC arrest warrant over his invasion of that country, which has increased legal pressure on the Russian leader over the conflict. That warrant is one of Ukraine and the EU’s most potent tools to wield against Putin, whose travel since its issuance has been severely limited. The coming effort by the U.S. and Israel to undermine the ICC will redound to the benefit of Putin if successful. In the meantime, it is a historic setback for Israel’s political leadership.

“This is a watershed event in the history of international justice. The ICC has never, in over 21 years, indicted a pro-Western official. Indeed, no international court since World War II has done so,” said human rights attorney and war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody. “Up until now, the instruments of international justice have been used almost exclusively to address crimes by defeated adversaries as in the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, powerless outcasts, or opponents of the West such as Vladimir Putin or Slobodan Milošević."

Alongside the two top Israeli officials, the ICC also issued an arrest warrant for the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, despite Israeli claims that he had been killed earlier this year in an airstrike in the Strip.

In May the ICC announced that the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan was seeking warrants for senior Israeli and Hamas officials. Among those originally sought for arrest was Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed while reportedly taking part in an ambush of Israeli troops last month.

Today’s statement said that the court had found reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” The warrants remain classified in part to protect witnesses and the integrity of the investigation, according to the ICC. “However, the Chamber decided to release the information … since conduct similar to that addressed in the warrant of arrest appears to be ongoing,” the court said in its announcement. “Moreover, the Chamber considers it to be in the interest of victims and their families that they are made aware of the warrants’ existence.”

The decision by the ICC to seek warrants against the two senior-most Israeli figures involved in the war in Gaza is certain to face furious pushback from the United States government, which already rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction over its own activities.

In 2002, the George W. Bush administration signed into law a bipartisan bill permitting the use of military force to liberate any U.S. or allied personnel charged with war crimes by the court. The bill, subsequently known in the human rights community as the “Hague Invasion Act,” covers military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO-member country, a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand), or Taiwan.”

This week, incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune called on Congress to pass bipartisan legislation sanctioning ICC prosecutors attempting to prosecute Israeli officials. The Biden administration has spent much of the past year undermining the legitimacy of international law and the jurisdiction of the ICC investigation of Israel. Some 42 Democrats voted for the House bill Thune is vowing to pass.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, he imposed sanctions on ICC prosecutors via executive order in retaliation for the court’s probes into Israel as well as U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan. President Joe Biden reversed that order in 2021, calling it "inappropriate and ineffective," while reiterating his "longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction" over Israel and the US.

There are currently 124 states around the world that have signed the Rome Statute ratifying the court. The U.S. and Israel are not among them, though the court has now rejected Israel’s claim that it holds no jurisdiction over its actions. Now that warrants have been issued, any member state where Netanyahu and Gallant may travel in the future would be obliged to arrest the Israeli officials if they enter their territory, drastically reducing their ability to travel globally.

Senior officials from a number of European Union states, including France, Belgium, and The Netherlands, have said that they will abide by the rulings of the court, likely making these nations off-limits for travel for Netanyahu for the foreseeable future. European Union commissioner Josep Borrell also said after the ICC announcement that “the court’s decision must be respected and implemented” by EU countries. While the Biden administration has already made clear it rejects the jurisdiction of the ICC over Israel, at least one U.S. mayor has pledged to comply with the warrants. “Dearborn will arrest Netanyahu & Gallant if they step within Dearborn city limits,” said Abudullah Hamoud, the mayor of the Michigan city with the largest percentage of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S, in a post on X. “Other cities should declare the same. Our president may not take action, but city leaders can ensure Netanyahu & other war criminals are not welcome to travel freely across these United States.”

FULL COVERAGE HERE

The fallout from this historic announcement remains to be determined and will produce pressure and cross-pressure on countries to enforce the law or make an exception for Netanyahu and Gallant. We’ll be covering it all closely, but need reader support to make it happen.

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The U.S. Bought Pegasus for Colombia With $11 Million in Cash. Now Colombians Are Asking Why

The White House has refused to disclose how much data it gathered in partnership with the country's intelligence agencies

The timeline of the purchase and use of Pegasus overlaps with a particularly turbulent time in Colombia. A social movement had begun protesting against former president Iván Duque, while in the countryside, Colombia’s security forces were killing or arresting major guerrilla and cartel leaders. At the time, Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president in the country’s recent history, was campaigning for the presidency.

In Colombia, there’s a long legacy of state intelligence agencies surveilling political opposition leaders. With the news that the U.S. secretly helped acquire and deploy powerful espionage software in their country, the government is furious at the gross violation of their sovereignty. They fear that Colombia’s history of politically motivated surveillance, backed by the U.S. government, lives on to this day.

Many questions remain about the Pegasus deal, including why the U.S. brokered the Pegasus acquisition, why it was paid for in cash, which U.S. and Colombian agencies used it, and the specific operations in which the technology was used. In addition, Duque was not informed of the U.S.’s involvement in the purchase, García-Peña said. Duque did not respond to a request for comment from Drop Site. “We were vehement in demanding total transparency and the release of information that could have been gathered in the 15 or 18 months during which the software was being used,” García-Peña said after the meeting.

“If the president did not know, and U.S. government and lower-level Colombian officials did not think the president had to know, then who controls that?” Colombian Senator Clara Lopez told Drop Site News. “It’s a problem of sovereignty. But it’s also a very grave problem regarding how security decisions are made in our country.”

Story by José Olivares. Read the rest here.

Israeli Forces Raid Jenin As Fears Mount of Accelerated West Bank Annexation Plan Under Trump

Troops, bulldozers, drones, helicopters, and warplanes attacked Jenin and neighboring towns for two days

The Israeli military conducted a large-scale raid on the West Bank city of Jenin and neighboring towns this week, killing at least eight Palestinians and arresting an unknown number of residents. Troops, bulldozers, drones, helicopters, and warplanes attacked the area for two days before withdrawing on Wednesday evening.

In the Jenin refugee camp, soldiers stormed homes, positioning snipers inside them and using them as military bases, according to local journalists on the ground. Palestinian residents, including women, were used as human shields by the Israeli army during the invasion of the camp, according to a statement from the governor of Jenin on Wednesday evening.

Residents were forced to remain inside their homes during the military assault and classes at all public and private schools were suspended for two days. A number of residents were arrested and subjected to various forms of ill-treatment, eyewitnesses said. Some residents were taken to Israeli detention centers including Jalameh prison, while others were held at gunpoint in the streets for extended periods before being released.

Mahmoud El-Saadi, the head of the emergency unit for the Red Crescent in Jenin, told Drop Site that Israeli troops have also targeted emergency workers. “The Israeli military banned medics from reaching two men in the eastern area, and then the army took the medics and used them as human shields at gunpoint,” El-Saadi said. “They used some to invade homes forcing them to open doors and turn on their lights.”

Story by Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Mariam Barghouti. Read the rest here.

New Intercepted: Gaza, Ukraine, and the Return of Trump

With just two months remaining in his presidency, President Joe Biden is moving forward with an aggressive U.S. posture toward the war in Ukraine. On Monday, the administration greenlit the use of U.S. made long-range missiles to hit targets in Russia, a move President Vladimir Putin has stated is a red line for Moscow. Ukraine then proceeded to use the missiles the next day. Israel is continuing its genocidal war in Gaza with daily attacks killing large numbers of civilians. While the administration claims to want an end to the wars against Gaza and Lebanon, it continues to facilitate those very wars.

All of President-elect Donald Trump's defense and national security nominees have backed Israel’s war against Gaza. Some have accused Biden of not giving enough support to Israel and several have advocated military action against Iran, as well as regime change.

Kelley Vlahos from the Quincy Institute joined Jeremy Scahill for a wide-ranging discussion on the kettle of hawks assembled by Trump, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and other issues.

Listen here or find it on the Drop Site News channel wherever you get your podcasts.

Al Jazeera English Gaza Documentary Premieres

Leyan Abu Al-Atta, a 13-year-old girl from Gaza, lost her leg in an Israeli airstrike last December. A recent report from Save the Children found that every single day in Gaza an average of ten children have at least one of their legs amputated, often without any anesthesia. ALL THAT REMAINS, the new film from our friends at the Emmy Award-winning program Fault Lines, tells Leyan’s story, from the attack that took her leg through her family’s battle to evacuate her from Gaza and her journey to the U.S. It is a heartbreaking, yet inspirational story. It premiered yesterday and is available to watch for free on Al Jazeera English and on Youtube. —Jeremy Scahill

Finally, here’s Ryan Grim’s take on why Democrats shouldn’t separate foreign and domestic policy, which he also discussed on Counter Points yesterday. You can watch that segment here.

It’s the Wars, Stupid

In mid-October, as Kamala Harris began to do interviews with friendly audiences, she visited the Breakfast Studio of radio host Charlamagne tha God, where she took questions from callers. The first to come through was one of those questions that is often top of mind for voters, but dismissed in Washington as a naive misunderstanding of how the world truly works.

Why, asked the caller, do we send so much money overseas but seem to have nothing to meet the needs of people here at home?

“That’s one of the reasons the America First rhetoric resonates,” Charlamagne added, putting the question to Harris.

“We can do it all—and we do,” Harris responded.

It was a callback to the debate in Washington the last time a Democratic president had pushed through a sweeping new social spending agenda, LBJ’s Great Society, but coupled it with ramped up spending on the Vietnam War. At a press conference in the summer of 1965, one reporter told President Lyndon Johnson, the day after the bombing of North Vietnam. “Mr. President, from what you have outlined as your program for now, it would seem that you feel that we can have guns and butter for the foreseeable future. Do you have any idea right now, though, that down the road a piece the American people may have to face the problem of guns or butter?”

LBJ said that the American people would be willing to bear the burden. “I have not the slightest doubt but whatever it is necessary to face, the American people will face,” he responded.

He was wrong, of course, and the runaway inflation produced by the war spending broke the back of the New Deal coalition, shattering organized labor and ushering in the Reagan Revolution.

But, according to Harris, not only could the American people have both guns and butter, they already had it, and it was good.

“I maintain very strongly America should never pull ourselves away from our responsibility as a world leader and that it is in the interest of our national security and each one of us as Americans and our standing in the world. That being said, we also have an obligation to American citizens, obviously, and people who are here to meet their everyday needs and challenges, which is why, for example, we have done the work in the last four years of bringing down the cost of prescription medications.”

She noted that with the expanded child tax credit, the Biden administration had cut child poverty in half in its first year. “We did that,” she said, but then awkwardly added, given that the credit expired and child poverty doubled again, “We can do that.”

Read the rest.