Volume 29, Number 334
Saturday, November 22, 2024
Caity Johnstone: Today in Imperial Recklessness & Insanity
Predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to this decision by shrieking about antisemitism. He’s doing this because he doesn’t have anything resembling a real argument in his defense, and neither does anyone else.
Rep. Tom Cotton of Arkansas speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
By Caitlin Johnstone
The International Criminal Court has formally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
No such arrest warrants were issued for President Biden or any of the other western officials who’ve been backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities, which is a bit like a judge issuing a warrant for a mass murderer but not for the guy who gave him the gun and stood next to him handing him ammunition and drove the getaway car and lied to the police to cover up the crime.
Nothing will come of this new development because it is completely unenforcible and international law is only as real as the U.S. empire agrees to pretend it is, but it is a significant step in the deterioration of international consensus on Israel as the entire world watches the Zionist regime commit atrocity after atrocity right out in the open.
https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1859607527412904186
Predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to this decision by shrieking about antisemitism and calling the ICC’s move “a modern Dreyfus trial”. He is doing this because he does not have anything resembling a real argument in his defense, and neither does anyone else.
We saw this illustrated in a statement from Senator Tom Cotton, who proclaimed that the U.S. would invade The Hague if the ICC tries to enforce its arrest warrants.
“The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic,” Cotton said. “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.”
This is as psychotic a public statement as anything you’ll see from the most far-right extremists in the Knesset. The United States is run by demented zealots with nukes, just like Israel.
The “Hague Invasion Act”, formally known as the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, is a U.S. federal law passed during the warmongering frenzy of the early Bush administration which authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”
That “or allied personnel” bit is why Cotton is able to cite this law in reference to an arrest warrant for Israelis.
https://x.com/SenTomCotton/status/1859608976389714045
Speaking of Israel and U.S. senators, a bill by Bernie Sanders to block a shipment of tank shells to Israel was just killed in the Senate by a vote of 18 to 79.
Sanders framed the bill as an effort to restrict “the sale of offensive arms to Israel”, making a distinction from “defensive” arms like the Iron Dome, which is absurd and obfuscatory to begin with.
All arms to Israel are offensive rather than defensive in nature, in that they are all used to help Israel murder people without experiencing the deterrence they would receive from a retaliatory response.
There’s a reason body armor is regulated in a way that’s similar to firearms; it’s because someone who wants to commit a violent crime can wear a bulletproof vest while doing so to ensure that they can perpetrate the crime without being stopped by police.
That’s exactly how Israel uses its so-called “defensive” weaponry.
And speaking of progressive US lawmakers taking feeble stands on Israel, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire for voting to support House Resolution 1449, a bill which purports to simply denounce antisemitism but in reality promotes the false conflation of antisemitic hate speech with speech that is critical of Israel.
https://x.com/intifada/status/1859751850364346579
Progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who voted against the bill, said in a statement that she did so because “the bill endorses the harmful definition of IHRA that dangerously conflates legitimate criticism of Israel to antisemitism and further harms our ability to address antisemitism.”
Everywhere you look it’s powerful criminals getting away with far too much while the people who are supposed to be resisting them do far too little.
This happens as Russia hits Ukraine with a new type of hypersonic missile, which Putin went out of his way to mention could easily have been equipped with a nuclear warhead. This attack was a warning to Ukraine for using long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. and U.K. to strike targets inside Russia, and occurs as Moscow revises its nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for when nuclear weapons may be used.
This is unsustainable. It cannot continue. One way or the other, all this madness is going to come to an end.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
Caity Johnstone: Today in Imperial Recklessness & Insanity
Predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to this decision by shrieking about antisemitism. He’s doing this because he doesn’t have anything resembling a real argument in his defense, and neither does anyone else.
Rep. Tom Cotton of Arkansas speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
By Caitlin Johnstone
The International Criminal Court has formally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
No such arrest warrants were issued for President Biden or any of the other western officials who’ve been backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities, which is a bit like a judge issuing a warrant for a mass murderer but not for the guy who gave him the gun and stood next to him handing him ammunition and drove the getaway car and lied to the police to cover up the crime.
Nothing will come of this new development because it is completely unenforcible and international law is only as real as the U.S. empire agrees to pretend it is, but it is a significant step in the deterioration of international consensus on Israel as the entire world watches the Zionist regime commit atrocity after atrocity right out in the open.
https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1859607527412904186Predictably, Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to this decision by shrieking about antisemitism and calling the ICC’s move “a modern Dreyfus trial”. He is doing this because he does not have anything resembling a real argument in his defense, and neither does anyone else.
We saw this illustrated in a statement from Senator Tom Cotton, who proclaimed that the U.S. would invade The Hague if the ICC tries to enforce its arrest warrants.
“The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic,” Cotton said. “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.”
This is as psychotic a public statement as anything you’ll see from the most far-right extremists in the Knesset. The United States is run by demented zealots with nukes, just like Israel.
The “Hague Invasion Act”, formally known as the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, is a U.S. federal law passed during the warmongering frenzy of the early Bush administration which authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”
That “or allied personnel” bit is why Cotton is able to cite this law in reference to an arrest warrant for Israelis.
https://x.com/SenTomCotton/status/1859608976389714045Speaking of Israel and U.S. senators, a bill by Bernie Sanders to block a shipment of tank shells to Israel was just killed in the Senate by a vote of 18 to 79.
Sanders framed the bill as an effort to restrict “the sale of offensive arms to Israel”, making a distinction from “defensive” arms like the Iron Dome, which is absurd and obfuscatory to begin with.
All arms to Israel are offensive rather than defensive in nature, in that they are all used to help Israel murder people without experiencing the deterrence they would receive from a retaliatory response.
There’s a reason body armor is regulated in a way that’s similar to firearms; it’s because someone who wants to commit a violent crime can wear a bulletproof vest while doing so to ensure that they can perpetrate the crime without being stopped by police.
That’s exactly how Israel uses its so-called “defensive” weaponry.
And speaking of progressive US lawmakers taking feeble stands on Israel, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire for voting to support House Resolution 1449, a bill which purports to simply denounce antisemitism but in reality promotes the false conflation of antisemitic hate speech with speech that is critical of Israel.
https://x.com/intifada/status/1859751850364346579Progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who voted against the bill, said in a statement that she did so because “the bill endorses the harmful definition of IHRA that dangerously conflates legitimate criticism of Israel to antisemitism and further harms our ability to address antisemitism.”
Everywhere you look it’s powerful criminals getting away with far too much while the people who are supposed to be resisting them do far too little.
This happens as Russia hits Ukraine with a new type of hypersonic missile, which Putin went out of his way to mention could easily have been equipped with a nuclear warhead. This attack was a warning to Ukraine for using long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. and U.K. to strike targets inside Russia, and occurs as Moscow revises its nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for when nuclear weapons may be used.
This is unsustainable. It cannot continue. One way or the other, all this madness is going to come to an end.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
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