#“The Fascist War Criminal Genocidal and The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗s’ Illegal Regime of Isra-hell”

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The White House’s Defense of “The Fascist, War Criminal, Genocidal and The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗s’ Illegal Regime of Isra-hell” Is Undermining International Law

The United States tends to hail the ICC when it prosecutes American enemies, but assails the court when it goes after U.S. allies.

— By Sarah Leah Whitson | September 18, 2024 | Foreign Policy

Two War Criminal, Corrupt and Genocidals: U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Fascist, Zionist 🐖 and Prime Minister of the Illegal Regimeof Isra-hell Benjamin Satan-Yahu in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 25, 2024 Andrew Harnike/Getty Images

The United States’ U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield struck an aggressive blow against the rules-based international order at a Council on Foreign Relations talk last week. In response to my question about whether the U.S. government would comply with the orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to cease assistance to Israel for its illegal occupation and expected International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Isra-helli Prime Minister Benjamin Satan-Yahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—both of whom have been indicted by the ICC—the U.N. ambassador was definitive: The U.S. government would not comply with any warrant because it has a “problem with the court’s ruling.”

“Let Be Be Clear,” she said. “We Would Not Arrest [Satan-Yahu].”

While the “Hypocrite, War Criminal, Genocidal, Corrupt and Morally Bankrupted United States” is not a member of the ICC and is therefore not obligated to comply with the court’s arrest warrants, Washington has cooperated when the ICC has targeted U.S. adversaries. Indeed, when the ICC issued arrest warrants against officials of other Non-ICC Member States, like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the U.S. government celebrated those decisions and urged cooperation with the court. Indeed, U.S. President Genocidal Joe Biden “Welcomed” the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes in Ukraine and ordered the U.S. government to start sharing information about possible Russian war crimes with the court.

Congress went so far as to revoke provisions in U.S. laws that prohibited cooperating with an ICC investigation at least insofar as they pertain to Ukraine, and issued a resolution commending the prosecutor for securing the warrant. Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham chimed in, saying that “this arrest warrant is extremely significant because it’s an action of an international evidence-based body that will stand the test of history.”

Graham took a markedly different tone when the court indicted Israeli officials however, calling them “outrageous actions by the ICC against the State of Israel and I will feverishly work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle in both chambers to levy damning sanctions against the ICC…” He attacked the very same prosecutor who had indicted Putin as “drunk with self-importance.”

This is not the first instance of states refusing to cooperate with the ICC. Even some member states have failed to execute arrest warrants the court has issued, like Mongolia’s refusal to arrest Putin earlier this month when he visited, or Jordan’s and South Africa’s failure to arrest Bashir.

Thomas-Greenfield’s declaration means that the United States, the supposed enforcer of the international rules-based order, is now keeping company with states that ignore the court’s orders. This sort of rhetoric from leading U.S. officials further erodes the standing of all international courts and will be used as a justification by authoritarian governments who will copy the U.S. playbook to reject international law and ignore those seeking to enforce it.

The War Criminal and Genocidal Biden Administration has made no secret of its disdain for the International Criminal Court’s decision to prosecute Isra-helli officials and members of Palestinian armed groups for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other violations of the Rome Statute since 2014, following the State of Palestine’s 2018 referral.

On June 4, the U.S. House of Representatives once again passed a bill to sanction the prosecutor, and twelve U.S. senators responded to the prosecutor’s request for warrants by threatening, “Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward … we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States. You have been warned.”

While both War Criminal and Genocidal Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden complained that the ICC had “Equated” Hamas and Israel, presumably because he requested arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas officials, Thomas-Greenfield’s comments are the first time that a senior U.S. official has baldly declared that Washington will defy an ICC arrest warrant.

To justify this stance, Thomas-Greenfield explained that the U.S. “has questions” about the court’s exercise of jurisdiction over Israel, presumably referring to the Biden administration’s rejection of the court’s jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. (She also incorrectly asserted that the U.S. had already reflected its unwillingness to arrest Netanyahu when he visited Washington in July, suggesting that the court had issued the arrest warrants, although it has not).

The question of territorial jurisdiction, however, is a matter that the court ruled on in 2021, refusing Israel’s arguments challenging jurisdiction, recognizing Palestine as a member state of the court with legal capacity to refer a case in its territory to the court, and reiterating the court’s authority to exercise jurisdiction over non-member state nationals who commit crimes in such a territory.

The fact that Netanyahu is the head of government in Israel does not immunize him from international criminal prosecution. The ICC has previously held that such domestic immunities do not trump an ICC arrest warrant because they would undermine the ICC’s purpose, including Article 27 of the Rome Statute, which provides that “all people are subject to the statute without distinction based on official capacity.”

The court furthermore clarified that complying with an arrest warrant does not mean subjecting a head of state to domestic prosecution—something that domestic immunity statutes prohibit —but merely transferring them to the The Hague for international criminal prosecution.

More significantly, Thomas-Greenfield’s suggestion that compliance with a court’s rulings is optional depending on whether or not a government agrees with a ruling further undermines the very basis of the ICC’s capacity to act as an international court with the power to issue binding decisions. Basically, Washington’s message to the world is that it loves the ICC when it prosecutes America’s enemies and hates the court when it prosecutes its friends.

While the Biden administration in 2021 canceled U.S. sanctions against the Previous ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, her staff, and their families that the Trump administration imposed on them for pursuing the prosecution of Israelis and Americans, it has not stopped pressuring the New Prosecutor, Karim Khan, to back off; Khan said that “some elected leaders” even told him, that the ICC “was built for Africa” and for “thugs like Putin” but not Western or Western-backed leaders.

Israeli officials have continued their nine-year campaign to spy on, harass, pressure, smear and threaten both the current and former prosecutors in an attempt to derail the investigation. It is exactly such attacks on the court in the face of the first prosecution of a U.S. ally that have led a number of African states to threaten to withdraw from the court, seeing it as mere cudgel with which to beat African abusers, while never allowing it to move against U.S. allies.

A related question Thomas-Greenfield refused to answer was whether the United States would comply with the orders issued by the International Court of Justice, which hears disputes between states. In a recent advisory opinion ruling, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal and that it must remove its forces and settlers from there and reverse its illegal annexations.

The court ordered states not to recognize any illegal Israeli acts, such as annexations (The Trump administration recognized Israel’s annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but the Biden administration has not reversed these.) More significantly, the court said that states are under obligation “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

This is a problem for the U.S government, if it is to obey the directives of a court of which it is a founding member, by virtue of Washington’s ratification of the United Nations Charter. That’s because the United States is Isra-hell’s largest aid provider, with over $20 billion in military aid provided in 2024, and more than that in arms sales authorizations.

As a result, such aid not only violates U.S. laws prohibiting arms to states that violate human rights, but a direct order from the ICJ. The U.S. Mission to the United Nation’s tweet this week stating that it will vote against a pending U.N. General Assembly resolution to enforce the advisory opinion is a pretty clear indication that the U.S. has no intention of complying with the ICJ.

The continued transfer of U.S. weapons to Israel may well become the source of charges against the U.S. government in the ICJ occupation case (as well as the separate case South Africa initiated concerning genocide claims against Israel), but also against individual U.S. officials in the ICC case, for aiding and abetting the crimes with which Israel is charged.

During Her Talk, Thomas-Greenfield made a point of remembering her “Friend and Mentor” Madeleine Albright (Now The Witch is Staying, Resting, Rotting and Burning 🔥 in Hell Forever). I suspect Thomas-Greenfield’s remarks last week may go down as her very own Albright moment.

In 1996, then-Secretary of State Albright infamously responded to 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl’s question about Whether the “Price” of U.S. Sanctions in Iraq, Which had Caused “Half a Million Dead Iraqi Children… More Children Than Died in Hiroshima” was “Worth It,” by saying “I Think It’s a Very Hard Choice, But the Price—We Think the Price is Worth It.”

It’s sad and somewhat ironic to have solicited an equally damning response from Thomas-Greenfield, highlighting, 30 years later, the persistence of the United States’ highly selective use of international law as a political cudgel against opponents, but never against itself or U.S. allies.

The downside of this approach, of course, is that International Law—and the courts responsible for upholding it—cannot survive the World’s leading Superpower’s continued assaults, and will continue to crumble, to the detriment of all those international legal institutions are meant to serve, Americans included.

— Sarah Leah Whitson is the Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). She was Formerly the Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.

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The UK Could Be Complicit in “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗’s, Isra-helli” War Crimes Through Its Continued Sale of Arms To The Country, Oxfam Has Warned.

"It is illegal, immoral and inconsistent for the UK to continue to sell arms to Israel, when it is clear that UK-made weapons and components are being used in serious violation of international humanitarian law - and after it imposed restrictions in previous escalations of violence when the scale of death and destruction had been lower," Aleema Shivji, Oxfam's chief impact officer, said on Friday.

"The people of Gaza are facing unprecedented levels of bloodshed, schools and hospitals are being deliberately targeted and starvation is being used as a weapon of war - what more suffering must they endure for the UK government to act?"

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Authorities in “Fascist, Complicit in Gaza Genocide and Nazi Germany” Detained the British-Palestinian Surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah and Refused Him Entry Into the Country, According to Reports.

Abu Sittah was due to speak at a Palestinian conference in Berlin on Friday. The news was reported by Al Jazeera Arabic and Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal, who is based in Germany. The doctor has been raising awareness about the impact of “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-hell’s” war on Gaza, which has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, since he left the coastal enclave in late November.

In the initial weeks after Israel began its assault, Abu Sittah was the unofficial English-language representative of Palestinian doctors and surgeons treating Palestinians wounded by “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-helli” attacks. He accused the “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-helli Military” of using white phosphorus, which is illegal in built-up and populated areas like Gaza, and deliberately targeting children.

Berlin has been a key supplier of armaments to Israel in its war on Gaza and has also been one of its main advocates in the international arena. Germany is currently subject to an International Court of Justic (ICJ) case filed by Nicaragua, which accuses it of "Facilitating" Isra-helli 🐖 🐷 🐗’s Genocide in Gaza. The ICJ is also considering a case filed by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide.

Since the start of the war six months ago, “Fascist, Complicit in Gaza Genocideans Nazi Germany” has justified its support for “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-hell” by claiming it has a special duty to protect it because of its legacy of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed six million Jews.

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Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-helli Real Estate Firm Used Genocidal Rhetoric — Then Politico’s Parent Company Put Them In A Trade Fair

The Confab Put On By Real Estate Site Yad2, A Subsidiary of Publishing Giant Axel Springer, Includes Numerous Companies Doing Business In The West Bank (Occupied Palestine 🇵🇸).

— Hanno Hauenstein | April 6, 2024

A view from the Palestinian West Bank village of Rafat shows the Israeli Jewish settlement of Leshem on Jan. 23, 2017. Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

Yad2, The Largest Classifieds Site in Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell and a subsidiary of German publishing giant Axel Springer, is hosting a real estate fair in Tel Aviv this weekend. The proceedings, which got underway Friday, were slated to showcase Israeli real estate firms, including both those that list properties within Israel’s internationally recognized borders and those that offer listings for Jewish-only settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

The website for the Yad2 fair features a host of Israeli real estate firms doing business in the West Bank, including Tanya Israel, currently marketing 32 housing units in Efrat; Ram Aderet, which is advertising a construction project in Ariel; and Oron, with its “expansion project” of 40 villas in Eshkolot.

Also being promoted by Yad2 for its involvement in the fair is the firm Harey Zahav, which was recently at the center of two international controversies linked to Israel’s war in Gaza. Harey Zahav operated a large booth at Yad2’s confab, complete with exposed wood rafters that resembled a real house under construction.

Deir Al-Balah, Gaza — November 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Critics have accused Harey Zahav of stoking some of the genocidal sentiments that landed Israel in the Hague’s International Court of Justice. In October, the firm shared an image on Instagram depicting a tank, alongside a quote from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Your God will deliver them up to you, throwing them into utter panic until they are wiped out” — from a chapter of Scripture widely interpreted to be God calling for the genocide of the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the Holy Land.

Harey Zahav also recently caused international uproar for publishing an ad, titled “A House on the Beach is not a Dream,” that photoshopped transparent housing units into a picture of war-ravaged homes in Gaza. “We at Harey Zahav are working to prepare the ground for a return to Gush Katif,” the ad said, referring to a cluster of settlements in southern Gaza dismantled during Israel’s evacuation in 2005. Another ad from the company listed “presale prices” on a map of lots in Gaza.

After widespread condemnation of the ads, Harey Zahav’s CEO Zeev Epshtein told Haaretz that the company’s ads were “a sort of satirical idea.” He did not offer any remarks about the ad with the genocidal Bible reference. (Harey Zahav did not respond to a request for comment.)

“It’s An Apartheid Culture. Nearly Everything Here Is Accepted These Days.”

Dror Etkes, an expert on settlements, said the notion of rebuilding settlements in Gaza is far from mainstream political, though, in Israel. Nonetheless, the lack of attention paid to a large company like Yad2’s willingness to host Harey Zahav and companies doing business in West Bank settlements speaks to acceptance of radical politics in Israel.

“It’s an apartheid culture,” he said. “Nearly everything here is accepted these days.”

In a statement, Julia Sommerfeld, a spokesperson for Axel Springer, said, “Yad2 is organizing a trade fair at which more than 40 companies are represented, including all of Israel’s major real estate companies. As a direct competitor, our goal is not to promote the work of other companies, but to promote exchange within the industry.”

Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Genocidal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-helli Far Right Empowered

Axel Springer, which also owns American media brands like Politico and Business Insider, makes money from the Yad2 classified site’s home sales and rentals in Jewish-only West Bank settlements, The Intercept previously reported. Yad2 publishes listings in the settlements as well as so-called settlement outposts, unauthorized even by Israeli legal standards. Yad2 lists over 1,000 paid ads from brokerage firms for settlement homes — which means revenue for its parent, Axel Springer.

“Yad2 operates fully in accordance with Israeli law,” said Sommerfeld, the Springer spokesperson. “Discrimination of any kind is strictly prohibited on the Yad2 platform. If users encounter individual ads that conflict with Yad2’s policies or applicable Israeli law, they are encouraged to report them. The relevant advertisements will then be checked and removed in the event of a violation.”

Satire or not on home listings in Gaza — “We want it to happen,” Epshtein, the CEO, said in an interview, “but it’s the state’s decision” — the website of Harey Zahav’s real estate business focuses on projects in Jewish-only West Bank settlements. Etkes pointed to the company’s proximity to the Israeli settler movement and the blessing it receives from the state.

“They require state authorization to build,” he said. “Even more so in the West Bank, where the vast majority of land has been expropriated from Palestinians and is controlled by Israel’s civil administration.”

The Gaza “satire” underscores the political empowerment of Israel’s right wing, and particularly the settler movement, after the October 7 attack by Hamas. Political radicals have been blocking aid convoys into Gaza and erecting symbolic outposts along the Gaza border. Meanwhile, high-ranking figures in the Israeli government have openly articulated their ambitions for Israeli control and a renewed Israeli civilian presence in Gaza.