A Palestinian boy stands between Hamas militants as they take part in an anti-Israel military parade in Gaza City.
NOTHING exposes the double-standards of the Western nations as starkly as this week’s shameless effort to scupper moves by the International Criminal Court (ICC) from executing a warrant of arrest for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The ICC had made it clear that it planned to issue the warrants of arrest for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes the Jewish state committed – and continues to commit – in Gaza.
The UK, US and Germany – Israel’s greatest enablers in the ongoing genocide in Gaza – have made some flimsy and irritating intervention to delay the ICC’s move on the identified kingpins behind Israel’s war crimes. The three countries are questioning the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israel, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that empowers the ICC to act.
Two factors reveal the sheer, unadulterated penchant of the UK, US and Germany to show the ICC and the international community the middle finger.
First is the fact that the ICC’s warrants of arrest for the Jewish state’s leaders are on the same page as the warrants for three of the leaders of Hamas. However, the West, represented by the three leading economies mentioned above, failed to extend the same “jurisdiction” protection they apportion to Israeli leaders to Palestine’s Hamas leaders in question.
See, in their much-maligned unipolar traits and habits, the West believes in the philosophy: What is good for the goose is not good for the gander.
It is a philosophy that is behind the West carving the global governance system it claims is premised on the ethos of a “rules-based world order”.
Noticeably, its rules – aimed at propping Western hegemony and maintaining the diabolical geopolitical status quo that has seen the US-led West blatantly ignore and undermine the UN Charter, with impunity.
The second example of the West’s double-standards is the ICC’s warrant of arrest issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was issued in March 2023, just over a year after the Ukraine conflict Moscow describes as a “Special Military Operation”.
The ICC accused President Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during the year-long Special Military Operation.
Of great interest is the speed with which the ICC hurried to conclude its investigation against Putin and Lvova-Belova. It took the ICC only a month to investigate and issue the arrest warrants for the Russians.
Conversely, the Israeli genocidal military onslaught against men, women and children in Gaza started in October 2023. Nearly two years later, the ICC has only now attempted to issue the warrants of arrest for the Israeli leaders after an international outcry.
The ICC had to be pushed to act against the Israelis and to “play it safe” in anticipation of a possible Western backlash – the ICC threw three Hamas leaders into the mix.
The three Hamas leaders are Yahya Sinwar, the group’s political bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the commander-in-cChief of Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigade.
In the eyes of the UK, US and Germany, Hamas leaders are presumed guilty until they can prove their innocence.
Contrarily, the Israeli leaders are presumed innocent until they can be proven guilty.
Interestingly, even the process to determine the guilt or innocence of the Israeli leaders must be subjected to the legal test of a possible judicial overreach by the ICC, as argued by the three Western power houses that are a backbone of Nato, the EU and the G7.
Additionally, two of the three “gang leaders” – the US and UK – are the permanent members of the UN Security Council with a veto power.
The West has the entire UN system and international order under its thumb!
The recent rise from slumber by the Majority World - at least, belatedly, attempt to challenge the global dominance through co-operative initiatives of their own, such as BRICS.
The unconditional material and military support for Israel, among others, is the best illustration of the lopsided international relations that are a recipe for conflict. Israel is an incredible case study of the pursuit and maintenance of Western hegemony at all costs.
Tel Aviv’s financial bottomless pit into which the US, UK, Germany and the entire West pump incalculable sums of money reveals, in crystal clear terms, where their geopolitical interests lie.
Israel’s economy in the Middle East and the military power laced with nuclear weapons that no one ever talks about is the total of the uncouth international system based on inequality and injustice.
Country by country across the West, unquestionable support for Israel, invariably led by any sitting party in the Oval Office, be it the Republicans or Democrats, support for apartheid Israel knows no bounds.
The universal suffering of the Palestinians, brutalised and robbed of their own land, income, infrastructure, rights and dignity, lays bare the depths to which the Western powers are prepared to go in order to remain the “rulers of the world”.
Yes it’s true indeed, not all Western nations offer blind support for Israel. Ireland, Spain, Norway and Slovenia come to mind.
They have been at the forefront of breaking away from the mob rule of the EU, declaring, in recent months, their recognition of the Palestine state.
A small fracture it may seem.
However, it reveals the truth about humans: We are not a monolithic species. For that reason, rebellion, by particularly the younger generations, will grow at a rapid rate against the “Establishment”.
The fallacy of democracy à la the West – “a government of the people by the people for the people” – will continue to expose the nefarious political elites for representing their interests, and not those of the people.
The advent of technology has assisted a great deal. Al Jazeera has captured the attention of the Majority World and many in the Global North, with its timeous reportage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Social media has replaced the mainstream media as the primary source of news.
Citizen journalism occupies a greater role and play huge importance in the gathering and dissemination of fresh news, reliable news as and when it happens.
In international affairs, some leaders are far more disappointing than others. For example, former US president Barrack Obama, lauded as the first black US president in history, was the one who attacked an African country – Libya – resulting in the gruesome rape and killing of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
In 2003, Labour leader and British prime minister Tony Blair, a supposed Leftist, played a prominent role when America’s then-president George W Bush attacked Iraq, killing the country’s leader, Saddam Hussein.
More recently Rishi Sunak, the UK’s first non-white prime minister in history, was a poodle-like blind loyalist in the US-led protection and support for Israel and Ukraine. Until he severely got real thrashed in the recent British elections, Sunak’s display of Russophobia was mind-boggling.
His successor, Sir Keir Starmer, a “new” Labour leader, is bidding his time, figuring out whether to continue with Sunak’s decision to challenge the ICC’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister.
I will not be surprised if Starmer betrays his voter base that largely supports a Free Palestine.
He seems to prevaricate on the Palestinian question. He seems too meek to reject the lure and trappings of Number 10, which will conquer him sooner than later.
Like many before him, I get a feeling Starmer will abandon the noisy “hoi polloi” who put him in office in the first place. The only thing Starmer got right at once was to scrap the crazy Rwanda Deportation Plan of the morally bankrupt, power-drunk Conservatives.
The international world order is littered with self-serving politicians disguised as servants in the interest of the “hoi polloi”.
This week’s address by Netanyahu to the US Congress, where he bellowed vitriol and blatantly lied about his genocide, revealed just what a sick world we live in.
The enthusiastic support and rounded applause for Netanyahu by Congress men and women in silky suits and costumes belied the nearly 40 000 death toll in Gaza caused by the blood-thirsty Israeli Defense Forces.
More than 15 000 children and nearly 16 000 women were also bombed to death by the IDF using the US-supplied weapons condoned by Germany and the UK.
They are a constant provider of material support and diplomatic cover for Tel Aviv.
At this juncture, the entire health system of Gaza has collapsed.
Homes, schools, UN refugee camps and other places of safety have been razed by a menacing Israeli army that has left Gaza in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe.
All the cruel acts of injustice by the world’s untouchables blatantly undermine the authority of the UN and the global governance system. The international law has been tampered with and manipulated to suit the powerful against the weak.
Ask any Palestinian. Ask.
*Abbey Makoe is the founder and editor-in-chief: Global South Media Network