Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 01.06.2024
Hadash, the front of the Stalinist party in Israel, has published a statement that says:
“Karim Khan, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, accused Netanyahu and Galant of “starving civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health or cruel treatment as a war crime, malicious killing or murder as a war crime, because Attacks against a civilian population as a war crime, extermination and/or murder including in the circumstances of deaths caused as a result of starvation as a crime against humanity, persecution as a crime against humanity, other inhumane acts against humanity.” Khan accused Sinwar, Daf and Haniya of “extermination as a crime against humanity, murder as a crime against humanity, taking hostages as a crime against humanity, rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, cruel treatment as a war crime and grave injury to personal dignity as a war crime….The insult and outrage at the position of Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Sinwar, Daf, and Haneya are unimaginable in Israel. The two sides are not equal except in the identical crimes for which they are responsible.
Even the claim that Israel investigates itself and that it has an independent and independent judicial system is now in doubt: the legal reform weakens the judicial system and subordinates it to the government. The avoidance of investigation and arrest of settlers and extreme right-wing groups proves in Israel, it is no longer possible to rely on internal judicial review, and an external party is needed. We support the international courts”[i].
The ICC and the ICJ are not the court of the working class and the oppressed nations like the Palestinians, but imperialist institutions, and to trust them is to trust the imperialists and in particular, the Western imperialists. They replaced the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ)
The PCIJ was established by the League of Nations in 1921. It was located in the Hague, the Netherlands. The PCIJ was composed of 15 judges and could decide contentious cases on a state level by pronouncing judgments or giving advisory opinions. Its compulsory jurisdiction applied only to those States that accepted Article 36 of the Court’s Statute. The PCIJ delivered 32 judgments and 27 advisory opinions during its existence. The court officially ceased to exist in 1946. However, the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – adopted with the Charter of the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 – reproduced the Statute of the PCIJ in almost identical form.
The League of Nations, according to Lenin, was a unification “on paper only; in reality, it is a group of beasts of prey, who only fight one another and do not at all trust one another.” (Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol.XXV, p.297) He branded the League as a Thieves’ Kitchen, a “piece of fakery from beginning to end; it is a deception from beginning to end; it is a lie from beginning to end” (Idem, p.97) Lenin’s position was also that of Leon Trotsky. It was the position of the Communist International in Lenin’s lifetime.
To claim that: “It is clear that the two sides are not equal except in the identical crimes for which they are responsible“[ii] is to equate the imperialist war with the war of national liberation. This should not surprise us as in the 1948 war “Kol Aham” the Hebrew newspaper of the Stalinist party called the Palestinian resistance criminal gangs while supporting the transfer of weapons from Stalin to the Zionists to be used for the Nakaba. Hadash is pro-Zionist party, and under the pressure of the recent war, has capitulated even more to the right wing.
No trust in the imperialists and their institutions!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
For Palestine
[i] https://hadash.org.il/%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%a8%d7%90%d7%9c-%d7%a4%d7%a9%d7%a2%d7%99-%d7%9e%d7%9c%d7%97%d7%9e%d7%94-%d7%95%d7%91%d7%aa%d7%99-%d7%94%d7%93%d7%99%d7%9f-%d7%94%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%9c%d7%90%d7%95%d7%9e%d7%99%d7%99/
[ii] Ibid