ICC Seeks Arrest Warrants for IDF generals, Smotrich and Ben Gvir

Israeli media reports that the ICC prosecutor has applied for arrest warrants for three senior ministers and two IDF chiefs of staff.   It’s been widely reported that the ministers are genocide advocates Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, and defense minister, Israel Katz.  Though social media has reported the applications for the five Israeli individuals, Western media has only focussed on the two ministers who they are the most notorious.  They have  less prominently reported the identities of the other three.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir are the most strident and violent of all the cabinet members.  Most recently, the latter proudly uploaded a video of himself humiliating captives from the Sumud Gaza flotilla, as they lay prostrate on their knees with their foreheads touching the floor.  His police thugs tortured them, and some female victims claim they were raped.  This treatment is a deliberate aping of the dehumanizing treatment of prisoners in El Salvador’s CECOT maximum security prison.

The other three suspects are current defense minister, Katz; and former and current IDF chiefs of staff, Herzi Halevi and Eyal Zamir.  They join previous indicted suspects, Netanyahu and former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.  Their warrants were issued publicly, which enabled Israel to plan and launch a massive smear campaign against the Court. It included threatening phone calls from UK foreign minister, David Cameron and US sanctions against judges and senior staff. These prevented them from using banks and traveling abroad.

For the current group, the Court filed an application for warrants secretly.  As it did earlier, Israel broke the secrecy and publicized the warrants, probably through intelligence/surveillance of internal communications.  In retaliation, Smotrich ordered the establishment of scores of new settlements.  This is aside from the settler campaign which has violently expelled thousands of West Bank Palestinians from scores of villages.

The warrants for the arrest of Zamir and Halevi are unprecedented, because they are the first IDF officers to face accountability for the Gaza genocide. But will any of these face accountability?  Doubtful.  The last suspect it arrested and tried is Philippine ex-president, Rodrigo Duterte.  It was able to do so because the Philippine government cooperated, arrested and handed him to the Court.  No other individual has been arrested and tried in years.

This especially holds true with the Israelis mentioned above.  The Court has no enforcement mechanism.  It relies on member states to do so.  Some have done so in the past.  But in the case of the Israeli figures, none have performed this obligation.  Netanyahu, in particular, traveled to several signatory countries, including the UK, and did so with impunity.  Governments refused to arrest him. The ICC can do nothing about it.

The entire system of international law first established with the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, now faces dissolution.  If no one honors their obligation, it becomes irrelevant. Violators can proceed with their genocide and war crimes with impunity.  Israel in particular, has invaded and occupied sovereign territory of three neighboring countries.  It’s conducting a genocide in two of them. It has also launched a war of aggression against Iran, in which it assassinated Iran’s Grand Ayatollah and murdered 150 children in a school.  No one has been held accountable.  Very possibly no one will be held accountable.

Despite all this, the arrest warrants are an important symbolic act.  There is some small measure of global opprobrium against their crimes, even if the Treaty signatories refuse to honor their commitments.