#Former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant

[wherepond]

Gaza

7 October 2023

Gallant has admitted, Israel lied about its version of events that took place on 7 October 2023

The surprise confession by former defence minister Yoav Gallant that Israel did enact the Hannibal Directive on 7 October has changed everything.

Right, so the events of 7 October have now been completely and utterly dismantled and it is one Israel own people to have done the dismantling and who better to tell the truth now, than the guy who ordered it.

Former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, now wanted on an international arrest warrant, has finally admitted that so-called Hannibal Directives were ordered on the night of 7 October, orders for the IDF as they are to target their own people, their own civilians in order to prevent them from being taken hostage.

There has been circulatory imagery and videos seeming to bear this explanation out previously, there have been statements from eyewitnesses claiming to have seen these directives being implemented, but now a government official, the guy in charge of defence has admitted they were used and that means every single death from that night can no longer be levied solely at Hamas and an independent investigation must now be carried out to ascertain the truth, because Israel’s entire justification for all of the atrocities they have been committing in Gaza, all justified off the back of what they have claimed to have been an indiscriminate attack by Hamas only on a night where Zionists across the world still to this day claim it to be the biggest slaughter of Jewish people since the holocaust. Well, how many of those Jewish people were actually killed by their own side, under their own nations orders? We must know.

Right, so the world’s biggest open secret has finally been confirmed by former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an interview he gave to Israel’s Channel 12, where he admitted to Hannibal Directives having been issued.

He was asked: ‘When you see the convoys crossing the border with Israeli hostages, what crosses your mind? Is the Hannibal Directive something you are thinking about in that moment?’ This term was then clarified by the co-host what said: ‘Just to explain, the Hannibal Directive says to shoot to kill when there is a vehicle containing an Israeli hostage.’

Gallant then went on to answer, saying: ‘I want you to understand that the ability of the defence minister to give timely, operational instructions when everything is happening is very limited.’

But when pressed on the matter of whether or not the Hannibal Directive was given, he went on to say: ‘I think that tactically in various places it was given, and in other places it was not given and that is a problem.’ No, the problem is giving such a barbaric order at all, but having admitted that it was given in some places, but not others, yet the implication of that being it was carried out anyway, the need for a thorough, impartial and independent investigation has bever been clearer and yet Israel have consistently blocked any attempts to do so and it’s pretty obvious why now isn’t it?

[zvaigzdelasas]

Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant were accused of “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024”, a statement from the court said on Thursday.

There are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Gallant and Netanyahu “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity”, it said.[...]

the ICC said on Thursday that it had unanimously decided to reject Israel’s appeal over the court’s jurisdiction.

21 Nov 24

[probablyasocialecologist]

Arrest warrants have been issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence secretary Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The warrants are for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the war in Gaza that Israel launched following the 7 October attacks by Hamas.

[...]

In its update, the ICC said it found "reasonable grounds to believe" that Netanyahu and Gallant "bear criminal responsibility" for alleged crimes. These, the court said, include "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts".

21st November 2024

[sayruq]

The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.

Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories. That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza. The prosecutor’s decision to apply to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, alongside three Hamas leaders, is an outcome Israel’s military and political establishment has long feared. Cohen’s personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took place when he was the director of the Mossad. His activities were authorised at a high level and justified on the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli source briefed on the operation against Bensouda said the Mossad’s objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who would cooperate with Israel’s demands. A third source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as Netanyahu’s “unofficial messenger”. Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu’s closest allies at the time and is emerging as a political force in his own right in Israel, personally led the Mossad’s involvement in an almost decade-long campaign by the country to undermine the court.

[allthegeopolitics]

The United States House of Representatives has voted in favour of a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) in retaliation for its arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Legislators in the lower chamber of the US Congress passed the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” by an overwhelming margin, 243 to 140, on Thursday in a signal of strong support for Israel.

Continue Reading.

[ayeforscotland]

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israel's President Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israel Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas Leader Mohamed Deif for alleged war crimes.

[soon-palestine]

The Palestine exception at CBC After October 7, I dreaded going into work: every shift, the impact of the biases went into overdrive. Even at this early stage, Israeli officials were making genocidal statements that were ignored in our coverage. On October 9, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel; everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” Even after this comment, my executive producer was still quibbling over uses in our scripts of the word “besieged” or references to the “plight of Palestinians.”

[..]

On October 20, I suggested having Hammam Farah, a Palestinian-Canadian psychotherapist, back on the network. In an earlier interview he had told us that his family were sheltering in Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. The following week, I learned from social media that his step-cousin had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the 12th-century building. My executive producer responded to my pitch via instant message: “Yeah, if he’s willing. We also may have to potentially say we can’t verify these things though—unless we can.” I was stunned. Never in my nearly 6 years at CBC had I ever been expected to verify the death of someone close to a guest, or to put a disclaimer in an interview that we couldn’t fact-check such claims. That’s not a standard that producers had been expected to uphold—except, apparently, for Palestinians. 

[..]

In early November, I was asked to oversee production of an interview with a former US official now working for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank. During the interview, he was allowed to repeat a number of verifiably false claims live on air—including that Hamas fighters had decapitated babies on October 7 and that Gazan civilians could avoid being bombed if only they listened to the Israeli military and headed south. This was after civilian convoys fleeing southward via “safe routes” had been bombed by the Israeli military before the eyes of the world. As soon as I heard this second falsehood, I messaged my team suggesting that the host push back—but received no response. Afterwards, the host said she had let the comment slide because time was limited, even though she could have taken the time from a less consequential story later on in the program. The majority of Palestinian guests I spoke to during the first six weeks of Israel’s assault on Gaza all said the same thing: they wanted to do live interviews to avoid the risk of their words being edited or their interview not being aired. These were well-founded concerns. Never before in my career had so many interviews been cancelled due to fear of what guests might say. Nor had there ever been direction from senior colleagues to push a certain group of people to do pre-taped interviews. (CBC told The Breach it “categorically rejects” the claim that interviews were “routinely cancelled”.)

[]

Editing out ‘genocide’    Most shows on the network seemed to avoid airing any mention of “genocide” in the context of Gaza.  On November 10, my senior producer pushed to cancel an interview I had set up with a Palestinian-Canadian entrepreneur, Khaled Al Sabawi. According to his “pre-interview”—a conversation that typically happens before the broadcastable interview—50 of his relatives had been killed by Israeli soldiers. The part of the transcript that concerned the senior producer was Al Sabawi’s claim that Netanyahu’s government had “publicly disclosed its intent to commit genocide.” He also took issue with the guest’s references to a “documented history of racism” and “apartheid” under Israeli occupation, as well as his suggestion that the Canadian government was complicit in the murder of Gazan civilians.

The senior producer raised his concerns via email to the executive producer, who then cc’ed one of the higher-up managers. The executive producer replied that it “sound[ed] like [his statement was] beyond opinion and factually incorrect.” The executive manager’s higher up chimed in, saying she thought the interview would be “too risky as a pre-tape or live [interview].” 

Despite the guest’s position aligning with many UN experts and Western human rights organizations, the interview was cancelled. (CBC told The Breach “the guest turned down our offer of a pre-taped interview,” but Al Sabawi had said to the producers from the start that he would only do a live interview.) Never in my nearly 6 years at CBC had I ever been expected to verify the death of someone close to a guest. That’s not a standard that producers had been expected to uphold—except, apparently, for Palestinians.

In another instance, a Palestinian-Canadian guest named Samah Al Sabbagh, whose elderly father was then trapped in Gaza, had part of her pre-taped interview edited out before it went to air. She had used the word “genocide” and talked about the deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. The senior producer told me the edit was because of time constraints. But that producer and the host were overheard agreeing that the guest’s unedited words were too controversial. (CBC told The Breach it “has not ‘cancelled’ interviews with Palestinians because they reference genocide and apartheid.”) By November 2023, it was getting harder to ignore the brazen rhetoric coming from senior Israeli officials and the rate of civilian death, which had few precedents in the 21st century. But you wouldn’t have heard about these things on our shows, despite a number of producers’ best efforts. (By early 2024, the International Court of Justice’s hearings—and later its ruling that Israel refrain from actions that could “plausibly constitute” genocide—forcibly changed the discussion, and the word “genocide” finally made some appearances on CBC.)

But back in late October, I booked an interview with Adel Iskandar, Associate Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University, to talk about language and propaganda from Israeli and Hamas officials. The host filling in that day was afraid of complaints, was concerned about the guest wanting to be interviewed live, and judged him to be biased. Yet again an interview was cancelled.

A secret blacklist?  One Saturday in mid-October, I arrived at work shortly after the airing of an interview with the prominent Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Diana Buttu.  There had been a commotion, I was told. A producer from The National—the CBC’s flagship nightly news and current affairs program—had apparently stormed into the newsroom during the interview saying that Buttu was on a list of banned Palestinian guests and that we weren’t supposed to book her.  I heard from multiple colleagues that the alleged list of banned Palestinian guests wasn’t official. Rather, a number of pro-Israel producers were rumoured to have drawn up their own list of guests to avoid. Later, I was told by the producer of the interview that, after the broadcast, Buttu’s details had mysteriously vanished from a shared CBC database. By then, I had also discovered that the name and contact details for the Palestinian Ambassador Mona Abuamara, who had previously been interviewed, had likewise been removed. It didn’t seem coincidental that both guests were articulate defenders of Palestinian rights. While producers distressed by the CBC’s coverage of Gaza were speaking in whispers, pro-Israeli colleagues felt comfortable making dehumanizing comments about Palestinians in the newsroom. In one case, I heard an associate producer speak disparagingly about a guest’s decision to wear a keffiyeh for an interview before commenting that “[the host] knows how to handle these people.” This guest had dozens of family members killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.  It seemed the only Palestinian guest CBC was interested in interviewing was the sad, docile Palestinian who talked about their suffering without offering any analysis or solutions to end it. What they did not want was an angry Palestinian full of righteous indignation towards governments complicit in their family’s displacement and murder.  At this stage, I was starting to feel nauseous at work. And then one Saturday night, that sickness turned into anger.  I had been asked to finish production on a pre-taped interview with a “constructive dialogue” researcher on incidents of campus hostilities over the war and how to bring people together—the sort of interview CBC loves, as it’s a way to be seen covering the story without actually talking about what’s happening in Gaza.  I carried out the task in good faith, writing an introduction leading with an example of antisemitism and then another of anti-Palestinian hate, taking care to be “balanced” in my approach. But my senior producer proceeded to remove the example of anti-Palestinian hate, replacing it with a wishy-washing “both sides” example, while leaving the specific serious incident of antisemitism intact. He also edited my wording to suggest that pro-Palestinian protesters on Canadian campuses were on the “side” of Hamas.  I overheard the host thank the senior producer for the edits, on the basis that incidents of antisemitism were supposedly worse. While the introduction of these biases into my script was relatively minor compared to some other double standards I witnessed, it was a tipping point.  I challenged the senior on why he had made my script journalistically worse. He made up a bad excuse. I told him I couldn’t do this anymore and walked out of the newsroom, crying. 

Truth-telling about CBC That evening at home, the nausea and the anger dissolved, and for the first time in six weeks I felt a sense of peace. I knew it was untenable to stay at CBC. At a team meeting the following week, in mid-November, I said the things I had wanted to say since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza. I prefaced the conversation by saying how much I loved my team and considered some coworkers friends. I said the problems weren’t unique to our team but across the CBC.  But the frequency of Palestinian guests getting cancelled, the pressure to pre-tape this one particular group, in addition to the unprecedented level of scrutiny being placed on them, demonstrated a pattern of double standards. I said there seemed to be an unspoken rule around words like “genocide.” I pointed out that Arab and Muslim coworkers, especially those who were precariously employed, were scared of raising concerns, and that I and others had heard dehumanizing comments about Palestinians in the newsroom. (The CBC told The Breach that there “have been no specific reports of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic comments in the newsroom for managers to respond to or follow up”.) 

I said that two decades since the US-led invasion of Iraq, it was widely-acknowledged that the media had failed to do their jobs to interrogate the lies used to justify a war and occupation that killed one million Iraqis—and that as journalists we had a special responsibility to tell the truth, even if it was uncomfortable. A couple of coworkers raised similar concerns. Others rolled their eyes. (CBC told The Breach that it doesn’t recall there was anyone else who raised concerns in the meeting, but audio recordings show otherwise.) The question of why there was nervousness around this issue came up. I said one reason why we were adverse to allowing Palestinian guests to use the “G-word” was because of the complaint campaigns of right-wing lobby groups like HonestReporting Canada.  Indeed, in just 6 weeks, there were already 19 separate instances of HonestReporting going after CBC journalists, including a host on our team. HonestReporting had also claimed responsibility for the firing at two other outlets of two Palestinian journalists, one of whom was on maternity leave at the time.  All this had a chilling effect. Hosts and senior colleagues would frequently cite the threat of complaints as a reason not to cover Israel-Palestine. During my time there, a senior writer was even called into management meetings to discuss her supposed biases after a HonestReporting campaign targeted her. Her contract was cut short.

This policing of media workers’ output reinforced existing institutional tendencies that ensured CBC rarely deviated from the narrow spectrum of “legitimate” opinions represented by Canada’s existing political class.  Certain CBC shows seemed to be more biased than others. The National was particularly bad: the network’s prime time show featured 42 per cent more Israeli voices than Palestinian in its first month of coverage after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, according to a survey by The Breach.  Although some podcasts and radio programs seemed to cover the war on Gaza in a more nuanced way, the problem of anti-Palestinian bias in language was pervasive across all platforms.  According to an investigation in The Breach, CBC even admitted to this disparity, arguing that only the killing of Israelis merited the term “murderous” or “brutal” since the killing of Palestinians happens “remotely.” Images of children being flattened to death in between floors of an apartment building and reports of premature babies left to starve in incubators suggested otherwise.

It seemed the only Palestinian guest CBC was interested in interviewing was the sad, docile Palestinian who talked about their suffering without offering any analysis or solutions to end it.

I spoke to many like-minded colleagues to see if there was any action we could all take to push back on the tenor of our coverage, but understandably others were reluctant to act—even collectively—out of fear doing so would endanger their jobs. Some of those colleagues would have loved to have walked out, but financial responsibilities stopped them. There had been previous attempts at CBC to improve the public broadcaster’s coverage of Israel-Palestine. In 2021, hundreds of Canadian journalists signed an open letter calling out biases in the mainstream media’s treatment of the subject. A number of CBC workers who signed the letter were hauled into meetings and told they either weren’t allowed to cover the subject or would have any future work on the issue vetted. A work friend later regretted signing the letter because she got the sense that she had been branded as biased, leading to her pitches on Palestine being more readily dismissed. 

Smeared as antisemitic In mid-November, after laying out my concerns to my colleagues, the regular weekly pitch meeting took place. It was then that I pitched the two genocide scholars, before having to attend that virtual meeting with my executive producer—where he suggested I go on mental health leave—and yet another meeting with two managers who raised concerns over my pitch the next day. But the most unpleasant meeting with management was about to come. A week later, I was accused of antisemitism on the basis of something I didn’t even say. According to a manager, someone had accused me of claiming that “the elephant in the room [was] the rich Jewish lobby.”  (CBC told The Breach that “employees expressed concerns” that what she said was “discriminatory”.) The accusation was deeply painful because of my Jewish heritage and how my dad’s life—and, as a consequence, my own—was profoundly damaged by antisemitism. But I also knew I could prove that it was baseless: I had recorded what I said, anxious that someone might twist my words to use them against me.  What I had actually said, verbatim, was this:  “I just want to address the elephant in the room. The reason why we’re scared to allow Palestinian guests on to use the word ‘genocide’ is because there’s a very, very well funded [sic], there’s lots of Israel lobbies, and every time we do this sort of interview, they will complain, and it’s a headache. That’s why we’re not doing it. But that’s not a good reason not to have these conversations.”  I stand by my statement. HonestReporting Canada is billionaire-funded. In December 2023, HonestReporting bragged about having “mobilized Canadians to send 50,000 letters to news outlets.” The group has also published a litany of attacks on journalists at CBC and other publications who’ve done accurate reporting on Palestine, and created email templates to make it easier for their followers to complain to publications about specific reporters. Other, similar pro-Israel groups like the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and the Canary Mission employ similar tactics to try to silence journalists, academics, and activists who tell the truth about Israel-Palestine. I told the manager it was telling that instead of following up on the racist comment I had heard from colleagues about Palestinians, I was the one being accused of antisemitism and discrimination—on the basis of words I hadn’t even uttered.

The banality of whitewashing war crimes When I handed in my resignation notice on November 30, I felt relieved that I was no longer complicit in the manufacturing of consent for a genocidal war of revenge. Despite my experience, I still believe in the importance of the national broadcaster to act in the public interest by reporting independently of both government and corporate interests, presenting the truth and offering a diverse range of perspectives.  However, I believe that CBC has not been fulfilling these duties when it comes to its coverage of Israel-Palestine. I believe that in the future, historians will examine the many ways that CBC, and the rest of mainstream media, have all failed to report truthfully on this unfolding genocide—and in doing so likely accelerated their delegitimization as trusted news sources. Before resigning, I raised the issue of double standards with various levels of the CBC hierarchy. While some members of management pledged to take my concerns seriously, the overall response left me disappointed with the state of the public broadcaster.  After my appeal to my coworkers in mid-November, I had a phone conversation with a sympathetic senior producer. He said he didn’t think my words at the meeting would interfere with my chances of getting the permanent staff job I had long dreamed of. Despite this assurance, I was certain that I wouldn’t get it now: I knew I’d crossed the line for saying out loud what many at CBC were thinking but couldn’t say openly. Indeed, I wouldn’t have spoken out if I hadn’t already decided to resign. As a kid, I had fantasies of shooting Hitler dead to stop the Holocaust. I couldn’t fathom how most Germans went along with it. Then, in my 20s, I was gifted a copy of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report On The Banality Of Evil by anti-Zionist Israeli friends. I’ve been thinking a lot about that piece of reportage when trying to make sense of the liberal media’s complicity in obfuscating the reality of what’s happening in the Holy Land. As Arendt theorized, those who go along with genocides aren’t innately evil; they’re often just boring careerists.  To be sure, while there are a number of senior CBC journalists who are clearly committed to defending Israel no matter its actions, many journalists just follow the path of least resistance. The fact that permanent, full-time CBC jobs are in such short supply, combined with threats of looming cuts, only reinforces this problem.  I still hear from former colleagues that pitch meetings are uphill battles. Some shows are barely covering Gaza anymore.  Being a journalist is a huge privilege and responsibility, especially in a time of war. You’re curating the news for the audience; deciding which facts to include and which to omit; choosing whose perspectives to present and whose to ignore. I believe that a good journalist should be able to turn their critical eye, not just on the news, but on their own reporting of the news. If you’re unable to do this, you shouldn’t be in the profession. I purposefully haven’t given away identifiable information about my former colleagues. Ultimately, this isn’t about them or me: it’s part of a much wider issue in newsrooms across the country and the Western world—and I believe it’s a moral duty to shed a light on it. If I didn’t, I’d never forgive myself. Just as I’m not naming my colleagues, I’m writing this using a pseudonym. Although the spectrum of acceptable discourse continues to shift, the career consequences for whistleblowers on this issue remains formidable. I encourage fellow journalists who refuse to participate in the whitewashing of war crimes, especially those with the security of staff jobs, to speak to like-minded coworkers about taking collective action; to approach your union steward and representative; and to document instances of double standards in your newsrooms and share them with other media workers.  It was scary, but I have no regrets about speaking out. My only regret is that I didn’t write this sooner. 

[originalleftist]

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Dief.

They apparently also sought to charge two other Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, but they were already dead.

There is approximately zero chance of these warrants ever being enforced, just like the one for Vladimir Putin. That said, there is at least a long list of countries where these scum will not be able to travel.

(I fully support Israel's right to exist, and both Jews' and Palestinians' right to self-determination in their homeland, but I regard Netanyahu as exactly what he is- a fascist criminal, as well as an incompetent fool. And as for any leader of Hamas, that should go without saying.)

[troythecatfish]

The ICC's arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was issued with the help of Holocaust survivor 94-year-old judge Theodore Meron is a Holocaust survivor and former Israeli diplomat who advised the ICC to issue it's arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The ruling was delivered by 3 judges in the pre-trial chamber.

Source: Mintpress

[athena5898]

(MPN) Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defence minister, admits Hezbollah defeated Israel in southern Lebanon

He explained that while Netanyahu had been presenting an image of Israeli superiority over Hezbollah, the reality on the ground tells a different story. Israel was unable to make significant advances and failed to reach the heart of Hezbollah's true power. Even following the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah responded by launching hundreds of missiles deep into Israeli territory, showing that the loss of its leader had not disrupted the group's operations.

Gallant also highlighted the complexity of Hezbollah's leadership structure, which is composed of various networks and individuals. Israel has only identified a small fraction of them.

Gallant dismissed much of the media commentary on the subject as misleading or outright false.

[hypnictwitch]

Didn't think it would actually happen

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Julian Borger and Andrew Roth at The Guardian:

The international criminal court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant and the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes relating to the Gaza war. It is the first time that leaders of a democracy and western-aligned state have been charged by the court, in the most momentous decision of its 22-year history. Netanyahu and Gallant are at risk of arrest if they travel to any of the 124 countries that signed the Rome statute establishing the court. Israel claims to have killed Deif in an airstrike in July, but the court’s pre-trial chamber said it would “continue to gather information” to confirm his death.

The chamber ruled that there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore criminal responsibility as co-perpetrators for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”. The three-judge panel also said it had found reasonable grounds to believe Deif was responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder, torture, rape and hostage taking relating to the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 in which fighters killed more than 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, and kidnapped 250. Netanyahu’s office denounced the chamber’s decision as “antisemitic”. “Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the international criminal court, a biased and discriminatory political body,” the office said in a statement, adding that “no war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza”. The statement pointed to an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct against the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan who sought the charges against the three men in May. Khan, 54, has denied the allegations and said he will cooperate with the investigation.

The US national security council issued a statement “fundamentally” rejecting the court’s decision. “We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” the statement said, without any detail of the alleged errors. “The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter. In coordination with partners, including Israel, we are discussing next steps.” The US has previously welcomed ICC war crimes warrants against Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials for atrocities committed in Ukraine, exposing the Biden administration to accusations of double standards from many UN members, particularly from the global south.

Netanyahu can expect more resounding support from the incoming Donald Trump administration. During his first term, in 2020, Trump imposed US sanctions on the ICC, aimed at court officials and their families. The then secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, made clear the sanctions were imposed because the ICC had begun investigating the actions of the US and its allies in Afghanistan, as well as Israeli military operations in the occupied territories. The panel said the full version of the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were secret “in order to protect witnesses and to safeguard the conduct of the investigations”, but the judges released much of their reasoning. This focused on the obstruction of the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza, which it judged to be deliberate.

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for genocidal maniacs Israel PM Benjamin Netanayhu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas’s military leader Mohammed Deif.

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrants For Netanyahu And Hamas Officials

[readingsquotes]

"When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.”

...Now, an investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli-based magazines +972 and Local Call can reveal how Israel has run an almost decade-long secret “war” against the court. The country deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries.

Israeli intelligence captured the communications of numerous ICC officials, including Khan and his predecessor as prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, intercepting phone calls, messages, emails and documents.

..

Since it was established in 2002, the ICC has served as a permanent court of last resort for the prosecution of individuals accused of some of the world’s worst atrocities. It has charged the former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, the late Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi and most recently, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Khan’s decision to seek warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leaders implicated in the 7 October attack, marks the first time an ICC prosecutor has sought arrest warrants against the leader of a close western ally.

The allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that Khan has levelled against Netanyahu and Gallant all relate to Israel’s eight-month war in Gaza, which according to the territory’s health authority has killed more than 35,000 people.

...

Hacked emails and monitored calls

Five sources familiar with Israel’s intelligence activities said it routinely spied on the phone calls made by Bensouda and her staff with Palestinians. Blocked by Israel from accessing Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the ICC was forced to conduct much of its research by telephone, which made it more susceptible to surveillance.

Thanks to their comprehensive access to Palestinian telecoms infrastructure, the sources said, intelligence operatives could capture the calls without installing spyware on the ICC official’s devices.

“If Fatou Bensouda spoke to any person in the West Bank or Gaza, then that phone call would enter [intercept] systems,” one source said. Another said there was no hesitation internally over spying on the prosecutor, adding: “With Bensouda, she’s black and African, so who cares?”. ......

One of the sources said the Shin Bet even installed Pegasus spyware, developed by the private-sector NSO Group, on the phones of multiple Palestinian NGO employees, as well as two senior Palestinian Authority officials.

Keeping tabs on the Palestinian submissions to the ICC’s inquiry was viewed as part of the Shin Bet’s mandate, but some army officials were concerned that spying on a foreign civilian entity crossed a line, as it had little to do with military operations.

“It has nothing to do with Hamas, it has nothing to do with stability in the West Bank,” one military source said of the ICC surveillance. Another added: “We used our resources to spy on Fatou Bensouda – this isn’t something legitimate to do as military intelligence.”

...

Three sources briefed on Cohen’s activities said they understood the spy chief had tried to recruit Bensouda into complying with Israel’s demands during the period in which she was waiting for a ruling from the pre-trial chamber.

They said he became more threatening after he began to realise the prosecutor would not be persuaded to abandon the investigation. At one stage, Cohen is said to have made comments about Bensouda’s security and thinly veiled threats about the consequences for her career if she proceeded.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal. Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories. That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza. The prosecutor’s decision to apply to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, alongside three Hamas leaders, is an outcome Israel’s military and political establishment has long feared.

[...]

Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu’s closest allies at the time and is emerging as a political force in his own right in Israel, personally led the Mossad’s involvement in an almost decade-long campaign by the country to undermine the court. Four sources confirmed that Bensouda had briefed a small group of senior ICC officials about Cohen’s attempts to sway her, amid concerns about the increasingly persistent and threatening nature of his behaviour. Three of those sources were familiar with Bensouda’s formal disclosures to the ICC about the matter. They said she revealed Cohen had put pressure on her on several occasions not to proceed with a criminal investigation in the ICC’s Palestine case. According to accounts shared with ICC officials, he is alleged to have told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.” One individual briefed on Cohen’s activities said he had used “despicable tactics” against Bensouda as part of an ultimately unsuccessful effort to intimidate and influence her. They likened his behaviour to “stalking”. The Mossad also took a keen interest in Bensouda’s family members and obtained transcripts of secret recordings of her husband, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Israeli officials then attempted to use the material to discredit the prosecutor. The revelations about Cohen’s operation form part of a forthcoming investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, revealing how multiple Israel intelligence agencies ran a covert “war” against the ICC for almost a decade.

28 May 2024

[good-old-gossip]

Evilness of Israeli Regime in Gaza

A group of far-right Israeli lawmakers has stirred outrage with a call for the military to escalate its already devastating campaign in Gaza. Eight members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee have demanded that Defence Minister Israel Katz order the destruction of all water, food and power supplies in northern Gaza, a move which would result in the starvation of thousands of Palestinians.

Their proposals include treating any man, woman and child remaining in the area without a white flag as a legitimate target to be killed.

The lawmakers, including figures from the ruling Likud party and its coalition allies Religious Zionism, Jewish Power and Shas, argued in a letter that the Israeli army had failed to achieve its objectives of dismantling Hamas’ governance and military operations.

They accused the military of not carrying out the forced expulsion of Palestinians “properly” from the besieged northern Gaza, where an estimated 70,000 Palestinians remain hungry and without shelter while Israel continues its onslaught.

The lawmakers insisted that the Israeli army should impose a total blockade, destroy essential infrastructure and carry out what they described as a “complete cleansing” of the region. They also suggested that such draconian tactics be applied across other parts of Gaza.

"This must be done not only in the northern Gaza Strip, but also in every other region," the letter said.

The group lambasted Israeli army officials for not providing clear explanations during committee sessions as to why such measures had not yet been adopted or what the army’s strategy entails. Israel faces charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and human rights organisations have published a vast body of evidence detailing ethnic cleansing and war crimes committed by its army.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is also pursuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Israel's war on Gaza.

The MPs' demands echo the "Generals' Plan", a proposal widely condemned for labelling all remaining civilians in northern Gaza as military targets while cutting off food, medicine and other supplies.

Israel has incrementally implemented the plan despite condemnations from human rights organisations.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza has reached catastrophic levels, the UN has reported.

The northern health system has completely collapsed, with the Indonesian Hospital, the last partially functioning facility, struggling without water or electricity. Residents are being forced to flee south under appalling conditions, with reports of the Israeli army preventing them from taking personal belongings or warm clothing despite freezing temperatures.

Six infants and an adult have reportedly succumbed to hypothermia in the past week, highlighting the dire conditions faced by Gaza’s population.

Meanwhile, humanitarian organisations have decried Israel’s tactics as collective punishment, with UN officials warning that the situation is causing unprecedented suffering for Gaza’s civilian population.

✍️: MEE/Elis Gjevori

Writer Avi Ashkenazi of Israeli Maariv newspaper wrote in an article that “the entire northern Gaza Strip looks like an island of ruins,” in what he defines as “IDF’s amazing tactical successes”.

The article, originally written in Hebrew, details how the IDF has deprived the people in Jabalia, northern Gaza of the underground infrastructures to cause the “terrorists to move above.”

In the article, Ashkenazi continues to say that the “entire northern Gaza is like an island of ruins. The destruction, without exaggeration, is greater than what the Americans left in Hiroshima or Vietnam”.

Ashkenazi further quotes an army officer who fought in Jabalia, who said that “when the residents return to what was once their homes, they will understand what price they paid because of Hamas.”

A 2024 analysis of hundreds of video clips released by the Israeli military has uncovered evidence that Israeli air strikes on Gaza over the past year have been far from precise, leading to “devastating levels of civilian harm”.In October 2024, British war monitor Airwars reviewed hours of footage of Israeli strikes on the enclave, geolocating them and matching them to incidents where Palestinians had publicly reported that civilians had been harmed.

In various airstrikes conducted in the besieged strip since Israel’s war on Gaza has begun, the Israeli army said that it was targeting a Hamas tunnel, but failed to provide evidence to support these claims.

[odinsblog]

The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.

Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.

That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza.

The prosecutor’s decision to apply to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, alongside three Hamas leaders, is an outcome Israel’s military and political establishment has long feared.

Cohen’s personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took place when he was the director of the Mossad. His activities were authorised at a high level and justified on the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official.

Another Israeli source briefed on the operation against Bensouda said the Mossad’s objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who would cooperate with Israel’s demands.

A third source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as Netanyahu’s “unofficial messenger”.

Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu’s closest allies at the time and is emerging as a political force in his own right in Israel, personally led the Mossad’s involvement in an almost decade-long campaign by the country to undermine the court.

(continue reading)