Friday, November 22, 2024

i am no fan of netanyahu. if i thought there were grounds to arrest him for war crimes, i would support it.

i don't think there are grounds to charge netanyahu with war crimes, and i think this "warrant", which is from an extra-legal body, is clearly political rather than legal. the timing of the announcement, which was clearly delayed quite a long time to be announced after the election, is also clearly political.

i would like for their to be a serious world court but the reality is that this body is a politicized one and that every trial it's ever conducted has been strictly political in scope and this doesn't appear to be different. that this is unfolding in the context of anti-semitic mobs roaming through european capitals is cause of serious concern. the order itself is not anti-semitic in scope, it's just specious in content, which does give accusations of anti-semitism some validity, in context.

the united states has frequently been criticized for not participating in the court under grounds that it thinks it's above the law, and i have participated in those criticisms, but the conduct of this court over the last several decades has frequently been suspect and the united states' criticisms of the court, which once seemed hollow, have increasingly been upheld by the facts. it is still a better idea for the united states to try to influence the direction of the court than ignore it, but it's longstanding concerns that it's a political rather than a legal body have been exposed as fully valid.

given the court's actual jurisdiction and composition, the body should rename itself to the european court and seek to limit it's jurisdiction to the european union, of which israel is not yet a part and may never be a part, even if it should be a part for historical and cultural reasons. likewise, while the idea of palestinian statehood is widely (if incoherently) recognized, palestine is not recognized as a state by the un and is, empirically speaking, not a state under any rigorously applied definition of the term that makes any sense. the court does not have jurisdiction for this arrest.

the canadian government's position is incoherent. canada does not recognize palestine as a state, and should therefore not recognize the jurisdiction of the court in the state of the region it does recognize, which is israel, which is not a party to the rome statute. nor do most countries in europe recognize palestine as a state, and they should not be recognizing the jurisdiction of the court, either.