US Senators warn the ICC - hands off Israel!

Published in The National, May 12th, 2024.

On April 24^th, 12 US Republican senators sent a letter to International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan, warning him not to issue international arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli political leaders for committing a genocide, threatening him with ‘severe sanctions’ if he does.

Apart from the letter’s thuggish tone, this sentence is astonishing: “If you [Khan] issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli leadership, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”

Believe it or not, this threat actually has legal standing in the United States. The 2002 American Service Members’ Protection Act (aka ‘The Hague Invasion Act’) authorises the use of military force to liberate any American, or citizen of a US-allied country, being held by the ICC. Neither the US nor Israel are members of the ICC, perhaps because neither wishes to be held accountable by that court for their war crimes.

At least these senators are revealing what the US-Israel relationship is - an unprecedented fusion of two sovereign nations into a single demented entity. But it’s worse than that. This means the US government will go to any lengths to protect Israel, including the violent suppression of its own citizens’ protests against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Could it be because every US senator has taken money from the Israel lobby?

A single senator, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, criticised the letter, saying: “This thuggery is something befitting the mafia, not US senators.” Van Hollen is a democrat, but he voted for the $95.3 billion weapons bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The reality is that both US political parties are now full-blown imperialist war parties. They make the mafia look like a tea party.

We are here because the US no longer speaks the language of diplomacy but of war. Its chief ‘diplomat,’ Antony Blinken, has called Russia, China and Iran an ‘axis of evil.’ It has destroyed Ukraine and strengthened Russia. Now it’s arming Taiwan while Congress - bought and paid for by arms manufacturers and the Israel lobby - cheers mindlessly. The corporate media, like a performing seal, eagerly swallows the lies it’s fed and regurgitates them to a gullible public.  

And the US can count on its faithful UK lapdog and the EU as it marches the world towards Armageddon. Because that’s where we’re headed unless this madness can be halted.