Weekend long read

1) Writing at the Jewish Journal, Gerald Steinberg discusses ‘20 Years of NGO Lawfare’.

“The announcement by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that she was opening investigations against Israel for alleged war crimes should not have been a surprise. This was the culmination of a twenty-year political campaign that began even before the ICC opened its doors in The Hague in 2002. Leaders of this effort have long prepared to use the ICC and the façade of international law to extend the soft-power targeting of Israel.

The strategy was launched during the NGO Forum of the 2001 UN Durban conference, in which 5000 delegates condemned the “Israeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes, including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.” Reviving the language of the odious 1975 UN resolution that labeled Zionism as racism, the forum’s final declaration made numerous references to an entirely invented version of international law, such as a Palestinian “right of resistance” (often manifesting as terror), mixed with the language of the Rome Statute that is the foundational document of the International Criminal Court.”

2) The ITIC documents ‘Palestinian responses to the International Criminal Court’s opening an investigation of Israel’.

“The Palestinians were very pleased by International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s decision that the Court would investigate Israel on suspicion of having carried out war crimes. In Palestinian perspective, the decision was of historic proportions and a significant achievement in their struggle against Israel. The Palestinians credit the decision to the policies of Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Jibril Rajoub said Israel’s era of being defended by Trump had ended. Senior PA figures called on the ICC to conduct the investigation swiftly. Palestinians also noted that the PA was committed to providing all the aid demanded as a signatory of the Rome Statute. The Islamist terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip (Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad among them) expressed satisfaction despite the Court’s decision to conduct an investigation of Hamas and the “armed groups” accused of using the civilian population as human shields and of torturing opponents. A coalition of NGOs close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which participated in referring the complaint to the ICC, joined the general approval and stressed that members of the Israeli security forces have not been investigated independently by Israel.”

3) The Long War Journal reports on a study of Iranian textbooks.

“One theme that was actually updated in the 2020-21 textbooks is the curriculum’s longstanding emphasis on known terrorists as martyrs, which was revised in several places to include references to the late Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, as a “martyr” and a “model.”  Also glorified in this regard are the late terror chief of Lebanese Hezbollah Mustafa Badreddine and late commander of Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. 

Additionally, the Iranian curriculum continues to present child soldiers, primarily from the Iran-Iran War, as contemporary role models. For example, the texts show children wielding firearms and rocket launchers, encouraging recruitment and martyrdom in the service of the regime’s Basij paramilitary, and quoting a child soldier from the Iran-Iraq War who encouraged youths to protect the regime “until the last drop of blood.””

4) At the JCPA Yoni Ben Menachem explains why ‘Mahmoud Abbas Seeks to Neutralize Mohammed Dahlan’.

“Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is trying to prevent, in every way, the participation of the “Democratic Reform Bloc,” headed by Mohammad Dahlan in the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 22, 2021.

Other candidates, senior Fatah figures Marwan Barghouti and Nasser al-Kidwa, are distancing themselves from any connection to Dahlan for fear that it will undermine their political standing, but Dahlan’s allies say it is still too early to eulogize him.”

 

 

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1 Comment

  1. says: Grimey

    Presumably Israel will deny access by ICC investigators to Israel, including Samaria and Judea, on the grounds that Israel is not a member of the court and these people are biased simply pushing PA propaganda.

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