THE ICC AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF JEWS

Last week in Pakistan, renewed violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the country’s northwest claimed 82 lives and injured 156 others, bringing the death toll in this region bordering Afghanistan to 160 since summer.

Meanwhile, in Paris, the far-left political group LFI (La France Insoumise) proposed eliminating the offense of "glorifying terrorism" in the National Assembly. At the same time, the French Council of State authorized Rima Hassan—a Palestinian icon turned French Member of the European Parliament with LFI's backing—to lecture on Palestine at Sciences Po. Once my alma mater, this hub of debate has transformed into a breeding ground for antisemitic intolerance.

That same week, Boualem Sansal, a respected intellectual known for his fight against Islamist extremism, was arrested upon landing in Algiers. Despite being a French citizen, he was met only with embarrassed silence from the Macron-Barnier government. Yet this very administration announced, around the same time, its readiness to execute without hesitation on French soil the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, both charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians.

Villepin loudly approves, claiming he “cannot bear the massacres in Gaza.” Curious selective outrage! To my knowledge, 200,000 Algerians were massacred by fellow Algerians without a single ICC prosecutor deeming it worthy of investigation. Half a million Syrians were exterminated by Bashar al-Assad, including through chemical weapons, but here too, silence from the ICC. Even more striking, in Sudan, where two bloodthirsty generals have been vying for Omar al-Bashir’s legacy for months: 300,000 deaths in Darfur, with no international justice intervention.

Some may counter that Al-Bashir was indeed indicted by The Hague in March 2009. Yet the African Union, arguing that the ICC targeted too many African heads of state and served neo-colonial interests, dismissed the court’s decision. As a result, Al-Bashir freely traveled across the continent.

The concept of prosecuting states and their leaders for mass crimes against civilians was initiated in France in 1872 after the Franco-Prussian War. Discussed during the Treaty of Versailles, it was only implemented in 1945 at Nuremberg. Since the Cold War’s end, special tribunals have emerged for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, leading to global application in 1998 with the Rome Statute.

However, this "universal" international law quickly clashed with Russo-Sino-American tensions. In 2014, Russia and China blocked any action against Assad in Syria. In 2016, Russia vetoed Georgia's complaint after the South Ossetia war. The U.S. barred the ICC from intervening in Afghanistan. Mike Pompeo labeled the ICC an “irresponsible political institution,” and Trump imposed sanctions on its members in 2020. Biden, however, applauded Putin’s arrest in March 2023 for abducting Ukrainian children.

In this context, the criminalization of Israel—already initiated post-October 7 by South Africa at the International Court of Justice—now targets its leaders. Israel, born from the genocide of Jews, is accused of genocide, and its leaders indicted. By extension, all Jews are rendered complicit. LFI thus flaunts its antisemitism under the guise of anti-racism and support for the Palestinian cause, while Arab leaders rest easy.

As Kamel Daoud writes: "The invisibility of the Sudanese conflict is explained by the absence of criminalized Jewishness. Muslims killing other Muslims equals zero."

Pierre Lellouche
Tribune VA, 11/27/24