International Court of Justice reject Germany’s attempts to strike out case but refuses by 15 votes to 1 to issue emergency measures banning weapons sales
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has refused Nicaragua’s request for a provisional order banning Germany from exporting weapons to Israel, despite its earlier ruling that Israel is ‘plausibly’ committing genocide in Gaza. Nicaragua had argued that Germany is enabling genocide. The court rejected Germany’s request to strike out the application.
Germany is Israel’s second-largest arms supplier. The court expressed continued concern about the situation in Gaza but has allowed Germany to continue supplying the slaughter, despite Israel’s complete disregard of the court’s existing orders to protect Palestinian lives and Germany’s repression of pro-Gaza protest. The genocide case continues and is expected to take more than a year to conclude.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Madness.
The ICJ has damned and discredited international law and itself. The globe has been made all the poorer for it. This may come back to bite.
By the time the case is ‘completed’ how many Palestinians, if any, will still be alive?
What passes for due process is clearly not working in the way it is supposed to work. It offers no protection; it provides no effective enforcement; it has no efficacy; it is not fit for purpose.
As Caitlin Johnson observes…..
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/04/29/it-is-everyones-responsibility-to-help-save-gaza/
…..”Those university students should not be responsible for standing against this genocide, and in truth the responsibility is NOT all theirs — it is ours as well. Each and every one of us are responsible for doing everything we can to end this horror.”
In this context the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and absolutely nothing should be off the table in achieving that objective.
In this regard Johnson is spot on in recognising that no Government – or for that matter Official ‘Loyal Opposition – complicit in this deserves to exist and needs to be completely dismantled from top to bottom by whatever means necessary with no personnel complicit in this should remain in any decision making role or position. No exceptions.
After this, what chance is there that Israel will be found guilty of genocide? Very little, I’d say. What a stitch-up!
Nicaragua is right: Germany is breaching the UN genocide convention by selling arms to Israel. Yet, the ICJ has ruled against issuing emergency orders to stop Germany’s arms sales to Israel. Why?
Germany is the world’s second-largest arms exporter to Israel. However, the US sells (and gifts) Israel more than three times more. Importantly, USA is not signed up to the ICJ.
Therein lies the reason for ICJ to not stop Germany’s arms trade with the mass-murdering Israelis: It would upset, threaten and embarrass Biden and the USA.
This is a “king’s new clothes” situation.
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza?
“Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
.Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.”
Meanwhile:
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/30/craig-murray-the-curious-case-of-the-freedom-flotilla/
Has anyone got a spare copy of the Collective West’s ‘International Rules Based Order” Handbook?
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/30/724635/US-Congress-retaliates-against-ICC-over-arrest-warrants-against-Israeli-officials
“US Congress threatens ICC with retaliation over arrest warrants for Israeli officials…..
…..American lawmakers are in the process of drafting a bill aimed at responding to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in case it decides to issue arrest warrants against high-ranking Israeli officials accused of committing war crimes in Gaza.
The legislation is being drafted in a retaliatory move against the ICC to prevent it from issuing arrest warrants against Israeli officials. It could also include sanctions against certain officials of the ICC, according to American news outlet Axios.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday that the US did not support the ICC investigation, questioning the competency of the tribunal. “We don’t believe that they have the jurisdiction,” Jean-Pierre said.
Michael McCaul, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also anticipated the unveiling of a House bill that mirrors Senator Tom Cotton’s proposal to impose sanctions on ICC officials who are part of inquiries targeting the US and its partners, he told Axios.
Representative Brad Sherman also said that the US should “think of whether we stay a signatory” to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. “We have to think about talking to some of the countries that have ratified [the treaty] as to whether they want to support the organization,” he said.”
————————————————————————–
Now such blatant hypocrisy and double standards is exactly how an authoritarian fascist dictatorship operating like the Mafia would operate. One rule for itself and another for everyone else.
And these people along with their ignorant cheerleaders have the gall to lecture the majority of the planet about how those designated as Official enemies under The Official Narrative are authoritarian fascist dictatorships.
Here is the ICC’s statement on the attempts to intimidate them. (follow the link)
The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor’s office called on Friday for an end to the “intimidation of its staff”, saying such threats could constitute an offense against the world’s permanent war crimes court.
In the statement posted on social media platform X, the ICC prosecutor’s office said all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials must cease immediately.
https://twitter.com/IntlCrimCourt/status/1786316229688414518
The question arising from this ICC statement is what power the ICC have to enforce this demand against those it sees making such attempts to impede, intimidate and improperly influence its officials and decisions in this specific matter?
The answer to that question – at least for anyone with the ability to seriously consider it – will, logically, determine whether any action by the ICC, in regard to the specific matter which has generated the actions criticised in the ICC statement, will be effective.
Because the evidence available – at least for those who do not pick and choose what evidence is valid in their eyes and what is not – is that those acting in the way the ICC statement is criticising have form in this kind of behaviour:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/14/us-sanctions-international-criminal-court
“On September 2, 2020, the United States government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and another senior prosecution official, Phakiso Mochochoko. In addition, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced that the United States had restricted the issuance of visas for certain unnamed individuals “involved in the ICC’s efforts to investigate US personnel.”
Although, for the sake of being complete, this is not the first time those criticised by the ICC on this occasion have threatened the ICC (or other International bodies*) in the same or similar ways.
In September 2018 the USA – that is to say the elites running the USA – threatened “to arrest ICC judges if they pursue Americans for Afghan war crimes. ” Similarly the ICC was also threatened with sanctions at the same time.
* eg: In September 2017 the same State actor, the USA, “began blocking all new appointments to the appellate body [of the WTO – World Trade Organisation] as the terms of its judges expired. Without a functional appellate body to hear cases, the country ruled against in a dispute can bypass a panel’s decision just by filing an appeal, which has major implications for the WTO’s ability to mediate disputes.”
Although it is interesting to note that the same State actor behaving in this way considers the ICC to be the ‘bees knees’ when the ICC is delivering verdicts it approves of on their behalf against designated ‘Official Enemies”.
The wider context here, in terms of the above original question, is the level of global jurisdiction that minority of exceptionalist actors believe they are entitled to and take upon themselves to enforce:
“To be designated for sanctions, a “foreign” individual or organization must also fall under one of the following “designation prongs” of the executive order:
(A) have directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any US personnel without the consent of the US;
(B) have directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any personnel of a country that is an ally of the US without the consent of that country’s government;
(C) have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any activity described in (A) or (B) or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order…..; or
(D) be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked under this order.”
A context which poses two further questions:
1. Whether or not any other State actor on the planet has similarly acted in the same way** towards International bodies which are generally considered (accurately or inaccurately?) to be independent?
**ie Enshrining into their legal code the right to impose that code globally by force against anyone those determining such policies in that State designates.
2. What descriptive term one might use to describe the kind of State which consistently, openly, and brazenly acts in this way?
Perhaps you can enlighten us all in regard to questions 1 and 2 above Billy?
Dave – Don’t the China, Russia and Iran (regimes that you support) treat the ICC with a similar (if not greater) level of contempt?
Billy –
1. If you have evidence that the States you list have sanctioned the ICC and its officials and threatened to arrest them or acted in a similar way towards any other international body as is the case with the USA then get on with presenting that evidence.
2. Similarly, if you have evidence that the States you list have enshrined in their Statute books the legal right to enforce such sanctions and arrest warrants planet wide then get on with presenting it.
The floor’s yours. Present your evidence. If you can.
Or do we have, and not for the first time, to wait for Hell to freeze over?
Dave – Where did I say all that?
Margaret Thatcher to give her her due
had NO Compunction in stopping the sale of arms to Israel in the
early 1980s.
She was quite firm about it too. I paraphrase ” We still love you and are
on your side but you cannot play fast and lose with the law and this is for
YOUR OWN GOOD ..”
Only Margaret Thatcher could put it like that ..