War Crimes and the International Criminal Court

It is the 'they can', and 'they can't' syndrome.  Low expectations and slovenly-minded acceptance of those held to have different values and standards, and high expectations of those known to practise a high level of principled, honest and fair standards.  Those who can be anticipated to behave on the lowest order of human intolerance, and those who consistently comport themselves by conviction and honour to the highest level of human aspiration.

Take, for example, the International Criminal Court in 2009 taking it upon themselves on ample evidence to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, the first sitting Head of State to be indicted by the Court, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur with the help of his military and the Arab janjaweed "devils on horseback", committing mass rapes, slaughter, and the mass evacuation of hundreds of thousands refugees from their homes.

As far as the Arab League is concerned this is an insignificant occurrence; those victims were not Arabs, they were black Sudanese, and not practising Muslims.  President Al-Bashir may travel with impunity wherever he wishes without fear of being apprehended for he is among friends and colleagues.  And his fearsome reputation for brutal repression and genocide hasn't stopped China from doing oil business with Khartoum.

China too is known to be abusive of human rights.  Tibet is a prime example.  China has a difficult task maintaining balance and order among its babel of languages, ethnicities, cultures and religions.  Civil disobedience is not honoured and it is not taken lightly.  Harmony above all.  Is it a breach of human rights to remove thousands upon thousands of peasants without recompense from their birthright so their farms can be flooded for a giant dam?

Can the deliberate destruction of a historical culture as in Tibet be considered a war crime, a genocidal attempt at extinguishing something irreplaceable?  Might the International Criminal Court be convinced to bring China to heel over its series of human rights omissions and commissions?  We think not; immeasurable size, influence, power and rigidity of purpose and a mighty military go far to influencing caution.

Take, for example, the Palestine Liberation Organization, it has a political and a military wing, just like Hamas.  Of course the PLO is now more familiarly called Fatah, and it heads the Palestinian Authority.  The PLO under Yasser Arafat was a terrorist organization, and it was organized specifically for that purpose.  For the single-minded purpose of restoring "Palestine" to the Palestinians. 

Palestine, the real Palestine, was a geography peopled by Jews within this century and long before.  It was appropriated, like so many other vestiges of Jewish heritage, from sacred sites like the Temple Mount and the name Palestine itself, to represent Arab heritage and rightful aspirations which painted the Jewish presence as that of latecomers, foreign invaders, not a people returning to its roots, rejoining those who had never left.

And in its zeal to demonstrate it meant business, the PLO recruited from among the virally disaffected Arab Palestinians its members pledged to uphold the PLO constitution riveted on the destruction of the State of Israel.  It embarked on an orgy of abductions, assassinations, bombing, and slaughter that horrified the world to a degree, but not so deeply that all would be later forgiven and the 'cause' of the Palestinians taken up with great gusto by the international community.

Those horrific crimes against humanity were directed at Jews so they can be taken fairly lightly.  Jews vow to look after themselves.  And every time Jews take it upon themselves to defend their own they are held to a far different criteria of justice and fairness and proportionality to sit easily with the principles and consciences of those looking on from afar with jaundiced eyeglasses that miraculously become pale pink turned in the direction of the Palestinian Territories.

Israel considers that it responds in a measured manner to the vicious provocations of the Palestinians.  Is there another country on the Globe that sustains regular rocket assaults on its territory?  Is there another country anywhere in the world that takes meticulous care not to harm ordinary citizens of a government that encourages its populations to "resist" the "Occupation", a situation that the resisters through their agenda of avenging their state of everlasting refugeedom visit slaughter on those who are then forced to defend themselves at the cost of being labelled "occupiers"?

The State of Israel was forced to defend itself from a series of collective military onslaughts by combined Arab armies determined to destroy the Jewish presence in the Middle East.  Having failed at that objective, an uneasy truce resulted.  But each time another assault occurred Israel was able to strike back in its defence even more strenuously, in the final analysis gaining territory including finally entry to its own sacred precincts in its historical homeland and its heritage capital, Jerusalem.

Arab-come-latelies claim the Old City containing Israel's biblical-era-and-beyond heritage as the site of their own capital.  The Palestinian Authority has always, and continues to applaud and honour those of their own who have successfully engaged in the murder of Jews; it pays them a regular honorarium, names streets, buildings and squares in their honour.  It teachers children through school curricula that their future duty is to oppose the Israeli presence to reclaim Palestine.

And the Palestinian Authority, lauded by the international community for its courage in resisting the occupation has been granted emerging state status in the hallowed halls of the United Nations.  Giving the PA the courage of its convictions to appeal to the ICC to convict Israel of war crimes in its pursuit of building homes on land the PA insists is their own.  Building homes within Israeli settlements represents a war crime. 

Sending countless deadly rockets into civilian enclaves is not a war crime, it is an expression of resistance.  Sending suicide bombers on missions to blow up city buses, restaurants, municipal squares crowded with people, is yet another expression of resistance, not qualifying as a war crime.  Murdering elite Olympic athletes is an unfortunate misunderstanding between opponents, not a war crime.

And there's the different in a nutshell between Jews and Arabs; perspective and proportionality, humanity and hatred.  And isn't it absolutely amazing that the civilized world has joined the still-tribal, semi-civilized world of barbarism and revenge in hailing the justice of rewarding the barbarians while denouncing and threatening the civilized?