Day 404: “If Palestine wins, we all win”
Maureen Clare Murphy The Electronic Intifada Podcast 16 November 2024
According to international human rights lawyer and former senior UN official Craig Mokhiber, Israel and its allies are creating a disturbing blueprint for the future of humanity “by bulldozing the boundaries of acceptable state behavior.”
He added: “If systematic torture, summary executions, massacres, murder of children, doctors, journalists, humanitarians and all civilians are acceptable, if international law is no longer in effect, if apartheid and genocide are now ok, we are all in trouble.”
Mokhiber returned to The Electronic Intifada livestream this week to discuss what is at stake for all of humanity as the international human rights system is tested in Palestine. The full episode can be watched in the video at the top of this page.
After World War II, there was an effort to build a system to uphold the “rule of law at the international level” and to “put the human rights of people at the center,” Mokhiber explained.
He acknowledged that since the United Nations was founded in 1945, it has “been a weak, inchoate, inconsistent structure.” But it “proved to be very important for decolonization in the 1960s and ’70s” and for the end of apartheid in South Africa, he said.
That legacy and the letter of international law “is now at risk, and the front lines are in Palestine … and all of the forces of colonialism and racism and war are aligned in the West,” Mokhiber explained.
Parallel to the battles on the ground in Gaza and Lebanon is “an epic struggle” for “an international order in which human rights mean something, in which the rule of law means something, in which sovereign equality means something,” he added.
Should Israel get away with its crimes and impunity prevails, “then it’s every person for themselves.” Global conflicts in the future “will make World War II look like an argument between two neighbors over a fence.”
Forces of impunity
Right now it would appear to many that the forces of impunity are winning.
The International Criminal Court has yet to issue arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s prime minister and former defense minister, six months after they were requested by Karim Khan, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor.
In other cases, the court has issued arrest warrants in significantly less time. But immense pressure is being brought to bear on the International Criminal Court over its Palestine investigation, which is vehemently opposed by Israel and its allies – which include some of the court’s main funders.
In recent weeks, Romanian magistrate Iulia Motoc, the presiding judge of the pre-trial chamber reviewing the arrest warrant request, left the panel over unspecified health reasons. She was replaced by Beti Hohler, a judge from Slovenia, and Nicolas Guillou, a judge from France, now presides over the pre-trial chamber.
Mokhiber told The Electronic Intifada livestream that this is “a very significant personnel change” for the three-judge panel considering whether to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials amid public threats from the US against the court.
Undoubtedly, there “has been massive interference,” both “behind the scenes and publicly,” to derail the prosecution of Israeli officials.
The shakeup in the pre-trial chamber buys Israel time for “further machinations behind the scenes.” And there may be more to it than that.
Mokhiber explained that in 2015, before she joined the ICC, Hohler stated that “Israel in general has a well-functioning legal system headed by a respected Supreme Court” She therefore may be sympathetic to Israel’s rejection of court jurisdiction under the principle of complementarity, even though Israel’s self-investigation mechanisms have long been discredited by human rights groups and there is zero chance that Israel will prosecute Netanyahu or Gallant in its courts.
Meanwhile, Guillou’s “entire profile is as a counter-terrorism lawyer,” Mokhiber said, coming to the court from that experience rather than a background in human rights. The French judge has advocated for international tribunals to prosecute non-state terrorism.
This concerns human rights defenders “because there is no definition of terrorism in international law,” Mokhiber said. “It is, by definition, a political distinction, and it has played a very corrosive role in the protections that are afforded through” international law.
Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor, is meanwhile facing calls to temporarily step down over allegations of sexual misconduct that according to Mokhiber, first surfaced on an anonymous social media account with a tiny following and were then picked up by a disreputable tabloid.
Whether or not the court will “do the right thing” and issue arrest warrants remains to be seen, Mokhiber said. But “they know that the world is watching” and that the reputation of the ICC is on the line – and the voices demanding justice have to be greater than the pressure coming from Israel and its allies.
Bursting the bubble
Impunity is also being tested at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, which ruled in July that Israel’s occupation is illegal and the military and settlers must be withdrawn as rapidly as possible.
Israel has of course rejected this decision, as have its powerful allies.
They maintain Israel’s bubble of impunity through a “constant campaign of fear against international actors who would challenge that impunity,” according to Mokhiber.
“But it’s not impenetrable, and it has been penetrated more in the past year than in previous decades,” he said, adding that international actors would not take action without grassroots pressure.
In September, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to implement the comprehensive decision by the World Court, with 124 countries in favor and only 14 against.
People are working behind the scenes to build on this and by September next year, it may be the case that the General Assembly will vote to suspend Israel from the United Nations.
“None of this is an adequate response to a genocide that continues to unfold in Palestine and for which immediate relief is needed,” Mokhiber said.
But it “builds a process by which that impunity can be chipped away” and does away with the notion that “Palestinians have to negotiate for their rights with their Israeli oppressor and their American oppressor.”
With so much at stake, Mokhiber said that “we all have a responsibility to make sure that our voices are heard, that we don’t bow to this current status quo.”
“If Palestine wins, we all win, and we have to make sure that everybody realizes this,” he added. “Because if Palestine loses, that’s a dark world that’s coming. So we’re all in this fight, and we have to win.”
US election, resistance and Amsterdam
Also on The Electronic Intifada livestream, Nora Barrows-Friedman delivered a roundup of the main stories from the ground in Gaza – where famine looms, particularly in the north, where Israel is depopulating and destroying entire cities – and Lebanon.
Ali Abunimah presented an analysis of the impact that Arab and Muslim American voters – spurned by the Harris-Walz campaign – had on the US election, with outrage over Gaza and Lebanon potentially influencing the outcome.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump is packing his administration with fanatically pro-Israel neocons. But as past livestream guest Mohammad Morandi has pointed out, the world has changed a lot since 2016, when Trump was first elected.
“So it may be that real change is not going to come from any internal political factors in the United States,” Abunimah said, “but from regional resistance and global, geopolitical power shifts that are going to continue to erode the influence, power and freedom of action of the United States, regardless of who is in the White House.”
Also in the program, Jon Elmer delivered an update on the battle in northern Gaza, where the Israeli military is in its second month of its siege of Jabaliya and the neighboring refugee camp.
Videos from Hamas’ Qassam Brigades demonstrate their ongoing capacity to resist what is now the third major invasion of Gaza’s largest refugee camp since the war began – each time Israel falsely claiming they have dismantled the resistance.
Elmer also covered the battle between Hizballah and Israel along the demarcation line with Lebanon. More than 40 days into its ground operation, the Israeli military has yet to move beyond the outskirts of any Lebanese village. Videos released by Hizballah show the group defending southern Lebanon while also striking deep into Israel with rocket and missile barrages and one-way attack drones.
Rounding out the packed show, Asa Winstanley broke down the propaganda coverage of rampaging Israeli football hooligans in Amsterdam, who shouted genocidal slogans and attacked people in the city.
Western governments and media falsely spun the events against Israelis, inverting the reality on the ground.
Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program and this author contributed writing and production. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and Eli Gerzon contributed post-production assistance.
You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
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