Al Jazeera is submitting a case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The request includes a dossier on the network’s six-month investigation into the death of their reporter along with new material.
Lina Abu Akleh, the niece of Shireen, made a public statement about the move during a press conference at The Hague. “It is clear that Israel has a history and a de facto state policy of targeting Palestinians journalists like my aunt in order to silence their reporting on Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians,” she told reporters. “Israeli soldiers are almost never held responsible for their war crimes, which creates a culture of impunity that allows these atrocities to continue. But enough is enough. We must end impunity for Israeli war crimes. It’s past time for justice for Shireen and for every Palestinian that’s been killed by the Israeli army.”
“We expect the prosecutor to work quickly to pursue the truth and justice, and we expect the court to deliver with accountability for the individuals and institutions responsible for this crime,” she continued. “The evidence is overwhelmingly clear. It’s time for the ICC to take action. Wouldn’t you expect the same if your aunt, sister, or best friend was killed?”
Israel has predictably criticized the move and have refused to cooperate with the probe. “No one will investigate IDF soldiers and no one will preach to us about morals in warfare, certainly not Al Jazeera,” said outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
The Biden administration also opposes the investigation. “When it comes to the ICC, we maintain our longstanding objections to the ICC’s investigation into the Palestinian situation and the – and the position the ICC should focus on its core mission, and that core mission of serving as a court of last resort in punishing and deterring atrocity crimes,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters this week.
When the ICC announced that it was launching a war crimes probe into Israel’s actions in occupied Palestine last year, the Biden administration also criticized the move. “The ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter,” said Secretary of State Tony Blinken at the time. “Israel is not a party to the ICC and has not consented to the Court’s jurisdiction, and we have serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel.”
“The Palestinians do not qualify as a sovereign state and therefore, are not qualified to obtain membership as a state in, participate as a state in, or delegate jurisdiction to the ICC,” he continued.
Biden administration reaction to killing
The Biden administration has consistently called for accountability and transparency in the case of Abu Akleh, but their public positions on the matter has quietly shifted. Shortly after she was killed Price told reporters that “those responsible for Shireen’s killing should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
However, the State Department also consistently implied that Israel was capable of investigating Abu Akleh’s death on its own. This claim seemingly contradicted the country’s early indications that it had would not look to press any criminal charges. Members of Abu Akleh’s family, and activists across the globe, insisted that an independent investigation was needed because the Israeli probe could not be taken seriously.
At some points the administration’s messaging was contradictory. When Blinken was confronted by journalist Abby Martin about the issue at a Los Angeles for a Summit of the Americas event earlier this year he told her, “We are looking for an independent, credible investigation. When that investigation happens, we will follow the facts, wherever they lead. It’s as straightforward as that.” However, during State Department briefings Price continued to imply that Israel could carry out its own probe.
In September Israel’s military released the results of its investigation to widespread outrage. The IDF admitted there was a “high possibility” that one of its soldiers killed Abu Akleh, but pointed out that it was accident. It also officially announced that it would not press any charges against the soldier. A senior IDF official who briefed journalists before the report’s release suggested that Abu Akleh had died amid dueling gunfire, a lie that has been disproven by video and eyewitness accounts.
The State Department issued a statement welcoming the Israeli report and accepting its conclusions at face value. It once again urged “accountability” and called for Israel “to closely review its policies and practices on rules of engagement,” a suggestion that Israeli government openly rejected.
Amid pressure from Abu Akleh’s family and Palestine activists, the FBI finally launched an investigation into the killing last month. Axios’ Barak Ravid reported that The White House and State Department were unaware of the probe, or at least have expressed as much to Israeli officials.
Israel’s government greeted that news in the same way it reacted to the ICC probe. “Our soldiers will not be investigated by the FBI or by any other foreign country or entity, however friendly it may be. We will not abandon our soldiers to foreign investigations,” said Lapid.
“…the ICC should focus on its core mission, and that core mission of serving as a court of last resort in punishing and deterring atrocity crimes.”
Ned Price is 100% correct on about this! Which is why the Abu Akleh family has rightfully approached the ICC.
Israel has refused to seriously investigate it’s own military. The White House has spent months parroting verbatim Israel’s lies, cover-ups, and propaganda, and then the lies about those lies, cover-ups, and propaganda. It has also refused to investigate or launch an independent investigation into Shireen’s killing. Going so far as to pretend to investigate the bullet that killed her, only to immediately hand it over to Israel, which literally everyone said should be the last people on earth to have access to that critical evidence. Israel has refused to cooperate with any FBI investigation and the White House has publicly sided with Israeli obstruction of justice and denounced that investigation too, effectively considering it cased closed!
Credibility of the US and Israel is effectively non-existent right now. Ned Price himself, being a key exhibit in the case against the US’s lack of credibility in regards to Abu Akleh’s murder, the sham investigations, and the subsequent cover-up. That leaves only the ICC as the literal last resort for any hope of an open and independent investigation of what appears to be a serious war crime.
So the ICC should very much heed Ned Price’s words and accept its unique responsibility in “deterring and punishing atrocity crimes”, because there sure as shit ain’t nobody else that’s gonna do it. Making the ICC quite literally “the court of last resort”.
Thanks for the excellent advice, Ned!
And on the other hand (delete Ha’aretz cookies):
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2022-12-11/ty-article/.premium/the-senator-pushing-action-on-abu-akleh-case-has-a-message-for-netanyahus-allies/00000185-00eb-d55c-a99f-80fbcf8e0000
No U.S. lawmaker has been more consistent or vocal in pressuring the Biden administration to pursue accountability over the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh than Sen. Chris Van Hollen….“It’s my view that if we don’t do that in a consistent fashion, then we will lose all credibility,” he says. “I thought it was important that we apply our principles to getting the facts about what happened to Shireen Abu Akleh. We need to pursue those facts when we’re dealing with governments that are adversaries, as well as allies like Israel.”…The senator has previously led legislation that would prohibit U.S. funds from supporting Israeli annexation of the West Bank, warning that “neither the U.S. government nor American taxpayers should finance or facilitate this unilateral move that goes against our shared democratic values.”
Look who we keep company with. Nations that are guilty of human rights violations, and many of them guilty of war crimes. We lost our moral high ground (or any we had left) when we did not join the ICC. However we seem to dictate to them too. The ICC must also get its act together, and have credible judges.
We have to accept the fact that Israel gets away with its crimes because the US enables it, protects it from world condemnation, making us complicit in their crimes even if the crime is against an American citizen by them.
“The United States is not a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute),[1] which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 as a permanent international criminal court to “bring to justice the perpetrators of the worst crimes known to humankind – war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide“, when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so.
As of January 2019, 123 states are members of the Court.[3] Other states that have not become parties to the Rome Statute include India, Indonesia, and China.[3] On May 6, 2002, the United States, in a position shared with Israel and Sudan, having previously signed the Rome Statute formally withdrew its signature and indicated that it did not intend to ratify the agreement.[3]
United States policy concerning the ICC has varied widely. The Clinton Administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The George W. Bush Administration, the U.S. administration at the time of the ICC’s founding, stated that it would not join the ICC. The Obama Administration subsequently re-established a working relationship with the Court as an observer.”
The entire world knows this.
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The times are most definitely a’changin’ and we can be certain Israel is worried:
At Arab Summit, China’s Xi calls for End to Israeli Settlements and Quick Establishment of Palestinian State With East Jerusalem as Capital (juancole.com)
“At Arab Summit, China’s Xi calls for End to Israeli Settlements & Quick Establishment of Palestinian State With East Jerusalem as Capital” Informed Comment by Juan Cole, 12/11/2022″China’s trade with the Arab world was over $330 billion in 2021, & will likely be a third larger this year, given the high price of petroleum. The largest single source of oil for China is Saudi Arabia. It imports significant amounts of petroleum, as well, from Oman, Kuwait & the United Arab Emirates. It also gets a lot from Iran (a non-Arab Middle Eastern country). “China is the most advanced country in the world in the adoption of electric vehicles, accounting for 56% of new EV sales this year globally, Some 26% of new car sales this year in China are EVs, and another 35% are plug-in hybrids. China has 10 million plug-in vehicles on the road. But it has 302 million cars all told, so it still needs a lot of gasoline, & gets a great deal of it from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries on the Arab side of the Gulf. “China is increasingly interested in Middle Eastern countries as routes through & nodes in its One Belt, One Road global trade & infrastructure project. The seaborne dimension of that project is depreciated by the U.S., Japan, S. Korea, & the Philippines, who wish to provide an alternative. The Arab states at the Riyadh summit, however, are enthusiastic about the possibility of being incorporated into Beijing’s plans. “One price for a close relationship with the Arab world is saying the right things about Palestine, a project central to modern Arab identity across the board. “China’s Arabic news service reports of Xi Jinping’s speech at the Arab summit attended by 21 countries in Riyadh on Friday: “’He said that the Palestinian issue is a consideration in the peace and stability of the Middle East. The historical injustice that the Palestinian people are suffering cannot continue indefinitely, there can be no compromise on legitimate national rights, and their aspirations for the establishment of an independent state are not subject to denial.'” (cont’d)
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“He said that the international community must reinforce faith in the ‘two-state solution’ and decisively uphold the principle of ‘land for peace,’ work steadfastly to make praiseworthy efforts to advance peace negotiations, and push for a just and quick solution to the Palestinian issue. He noted that China supports Palestine gaining full membership in the United Nations, and that it will continue to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians to support the implementation of projects aimed at improving living standards.’”