Christians Protest Hague Genocide Case Against Israel
Over 1,000 Christians gathered in The Hague on Thursday for a public march and rally to stand with Israel. The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ)announced the initiative on Facebook:
“Hearings opened in the International Court of Justice this morning in South Africa’s devious petition to have Israel charged with committing genocide in Gaza. Our Netherlands National Directors Jacob and Hennie Keegstra and other ICEJ supporters joined folks from Christians Voor Israel International, Christians in Defense of Israel, and other Christian and Jewish groups to stand with Israel against this false charge.”
David Parsons, ICEJ Vice President and Senior Spokesman, wrote about the case:
“There is an old adage in the legal profession that “bad cases make bad law,” Parsons wrote. “And the International Criminal Court in the Hague has recently proven once again that the world community is far too easily willing to stretch and twist international law beyond recognition to satiate Palestinian animus towards Israel, most assuredly to the detriment of us all.”
Parsons explained that the Hague was established as a “court of last resort” to try war crimes and crimes against humanity which shock the conscience of the world.
“What we are witnessing is an overzealous chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, convincing the Court to bend and mangle international law to empower her quest to indict Israelis on invalid and unsustainable charges,” PArsons wrote. “This is happening even while the ICC is overlooking daily war crimes being committed by brutal regimes like Iran and Syria against their own people. Yet the ICC wants to prosecute Jews for building homes in Jerusalem as if they were Nazi war criminals.”
Parsons explained that as an arm of the United Nations, the ICJ was pursuing a Palestinian/Anti-Israel agenda on the following points:
1) They seek to gain recognition of a Palestinian state outside direct bilateral talks with Israel.
“Palestine” is not a sovereign state, but it has managed to gain observer status in UN forums, and even achieved recognition as a state in some UN organs – including now the ICC.
2) They seek to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and in particular its right of self-defense.
This move would allow the ICC to try Israeli leaders and military figures for war crimes, and thus it is intended to strip Israeli authorities of the means to defend its citizens. In this regard, Bensouda has specifically referenced the 2014 Gaza conflict and the 2018 ‘March of Return’ riots as instances in which she has reason to believe Israel committed war crimes. In truth, Israel’s leaders simply sought to protect its civilian population from deliberate armed attacks against them by a widely-recognized radical Islamic terror militia.
3) They seek to uproot the Israeli communities in Judea/Samaria by discrediting and now even criminalizing Jewish settlement activity. In response to the Nazi genocide against the Jews and their diabolical efforts to make Europe Judenrein, the international community set up the Fourth Geneva Conventions to prohibit many of the specific war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany during World War Two. This includes a ban on the forced transfer of populations in or out of an occupied territory. But now, the Palestinians are hoping to turn this ban into a club against Israel.
“All of Israel’s friends need to band together over coming months to urge those states who are members of the ICC to reject and rescind this outrageous decision,” Parsons concluded.
The ICEJ launched a global petition of protest to present to the International Court of Justice. The ICEJ objected to the case against Israel on the following basis:
1) Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, has not consented to the Court’s jurisdiction in this matter, and has its own long-established and respected judicial system for investigating and trying such crimes.
2) The Palestinians do not qualify as a sovereign state under the Rome Statute, and under the Oslo Accords they have no authority to assert or confer criminal jurisdiction over Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza.
3) Therefore, the Court has no legal standing or authority to investigate and indict Israelis for war crimes in the ‘occupied territories’ – a view held by numerous Western democratic states and international legal scholars.
4) The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Ms. Fatou Bensouda, has exhibited bias against Israel through her extensive and secretive consultations with Palestinian Authority officials on this matter since 2015. This bias is further evidenced by her dating the period for the formal probe back to 13 June 2014 – the day after three Israeli teenage boys were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas – thus deliberately focusing on Israel’s response to a heinous crime and not the original crime itself committed by Palestinians.
5) In the Oslo Accords signed with Israel, the Palestinians expressly agreed that they have no criminal jurisdiction over Israelis in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, which also means they have no authority to delegate that criminal jurisdiction to another body. Thus, the ICC itself is flouting the Oslo agreements and undercutting this critical source of stability for the region.
6) The ICC is sullying its impartiality and prestige while also weakening the prospects for peace in the region by unlawfully intervening in a bilateral political dispute on the side of the Palestinians, right when Israel has made historic advances in peace and normalisation with several Arab nations.
In addition, the ICEJ launched a webinar to educate the public.
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