The moral and legal crusade of Karim Khan

Prosecutor Karim Khan's move at the International Criminal Court has ignited a firestorm of rage in the United States (US). He has sought warrants of arrest for some leading Hamas figures and --- this is important --- for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The reason is of course the conflict in Gaza, where Israeli forces have murdered 36,000-plus Palestinians in retributive action over the Hamas attacks on 7 October last year. Karim Khan had earlier warned that such warrants were under consideration, leading to worry particularly in Israel and among its friends in the West.

Now that Khan has formally sought action from the ICC regarding the warrants of arrest, Democrats and Republicans in the US, consistently opposed to one another in almost every area of politics, have rounded on him. He and his family have been warned by some angry Republicans that they could be barred from entering America for good should the ICC follow through on the prosecutor's action. Some others have begun badmouthing the ICC, to the terms and conditions of which the United States has not been a part. Remember, though, that when the ICC issued a warrant of arrest against Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine issue, political figures and commentators in the West could barely hide their glee.

And yet a similar sentiment is embarrassingly absent in the Netanyahu case. That is without question a clear case of hypocrisy. Western media and western leaders have gone on projecting Hamas as a terrorist group and the Russian government as an aggressor. One does not have any real argument over these two matters, Hamas and Ukraine. But for people to suggest that Karim Khan's action against Netanyahu was an 'outrage', as Joe Biden put it, is an instance of the double standards the West has always employed in its dealings with the rest of the world. These American politicians in Congress, with the exception of the very conscientious Senator Bernie Sanders, are upset that Khan has opted for action against a democratic country, meaning Israel.

That raises the question of how one defines a democratic country. Democracy is a lot more than a practice of unfettered politics within a country. It is also a measure of how a perceived democratic state relates to the world beyond its borders and especially to nations with whom it does not enjoy the best of ties. A democratic country defends its frontiers, indeed its people, through ensuring that aggression is checked and those governments which would cause harm to it are defeated in the diplomatic as well as military fields. Democratic countries do not hold on to territory they occupy in war but give it back to its owners as part of an agreement reached honourably. A democracy has no space that allows it to keep people not its own under occupation.

Which raises the question of whether the state of Israel fulfils these conditions of democracy. Of course it has regular elections which throw up governments through manifestations of the popular will. Of course it ensures freedom of expression and all other acts that are part of democratic pluralism. But now that Karim Khan has moved the ICC against Netanyahu, it is in order for political observers to delve seriously into the question of how democratically inclined Israel has been toward the outside world. The facts speak for themselves. Constituted in 1948 in territory that was Palestine, it forced the original inhabitants of the land into exile. That was no sign of democracy. It has blatantly ignored all UN resolutions calling on it to adhere to international law. That is not the behaviour of a democratic state cognisant of national self-esteem.

Consider this other point. Having triumphed in the June 1967 war, Israel has never given any hint that it will withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Democratic states do not become occupying powers, but this rule has regularly been bent and broken by successive Israeli governments. Israel has not only encouraged its citizens to build illegal settlements on occupied Arab land but has also remained opposed to a two-state solution, a formula that would have positively changed perspectives and the geographical landscape in the Middle East. Democratic states do not kill people not their citizens, but in the months since October 2023, the Israeli military has in its trigger-happy attitude ended up taking the lives of more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza. In the West Bank, young Palestinians have been taken into custody. Israeli security forces have located and killed Palestinian and Iranian military figures in aerial attack.

In Gaza, scores of journalists covering the conflict have been killed in deadly Israeli attacks. Not too long ago, an Israeli sniper shot Shirin Abu-Akleh dead. Israeli politicians have brazenly chosen to describe Palestinians as animals. Israeli soldiers have prevented people from praying at Al Aqsa mosque on Fridays. At the United Nations, Israeli diplomats have defied calls for a halt to the Gaza situation by having their friends veto any and all such measures.

All these facts are deliberately ignored by the friends of Israel. That democracies do not transgress, do not aggress, is a truth lost on them. But, yes, democracies sometimes cheerfully mutilate the lives of those they do not wish to be associated with. American sanctions against Cuba, the Blair-Bush invasion of Iraq, the prosecution of the Vietnam War by Washington, the murder of tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians by the Johnson and Nixon administrations are demonstrative of the malevolence western leaders have historically employed in their dealings with people not their own.

The lesson is as clear as spring water. Netanyahu's gruesome mission in Gaza has caused a bloodbath. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have run woefully short of medicines; they have had little or no food; and it is particularly the little children whom hunger has been reducing to skeletal existence that we need to talk about. It is a conflict that has left Gaza's charms reduced to cinders. The Netanyahu government has defied UN calls for a ceasefire, which is another hint of the mission of Palestinian obliteration it has been propagating and planning all these years.

The ICC must act swiftly whenever and wherever it spots criminality. Atrocities against Palestinians are not a game that will be taken lightly. Karim Khan has let it be known that the cause of justice, of the rule of law, does not kowtow before the unrestrained powers of states. By seeking arrest warrants against Netanyahu, by looking to do a similar act against the likes of Yoav Gallant, he has shamed the powerful figures who have over the months closed their eyes to the calamity unfolding and expanding in Gaza.

The conscience in Karim Khan has laid bare the ethical bankruptcy of men who have not had the moral courage to put the leash on an Israeli leader whose name has now become a byword for infamy.

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