Arrest warrants are being sought for Israeli and Hamas leaders

The ICC’s Call for the State of the Gaza Strip: Defense of the Israeli–Hamas Conjecture to the Prosecutor’s Action

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has asked for warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and two other senior Hamas officials.

But Hamas strongly condemned attempts by Khan to seek arrest warrants for its leaders, which it said “equate the victim with the executioner.” The argument was that Hamas leaders were operating in accordance with international treaties that give occupied peoples the right to resist.

The prosecutorial team that he worked for found evidence that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed by both sides of the Gaza conflict.

The statement from Hamas said that warrants for Netanyahu’s arrest had been “seven months late” and that he and his defense minister were involved in committing crimes against Palestinians.

Although Israel’s government does not recognize the ICC, responses to the prosecutor’s move suggest an acknowledgment of its significance, and there is anger that Israel’s democratically elected leadership had been placed on a par with Hamas officials.

But the court has previously ruled it maintains legal jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip, because Palestinian political leaders agreed to grant the court such jurisdiction.

The U.S. and the European Union have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. Khan says that Sinwar, as the group’s most senior leader in Gaza, should face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is seeking Sinwar’s arrest along with Hamas’ top military leader, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and the group’s top political figure, Ismail Haniyeh.

Diab — who is known as “the guest” for his habit of staying in a different home every night to avoid detection — and Sinwar are both believed by Israel to be in Gaza. Haniyeh lives in the capital city of the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, where all of his family were killed by an Israeli airstrike last month.

In a statement, President Biden called the application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders “outrageous,” saying, “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. Israel will always be supported against threats to its security.

If the judges at the international criminal court accept Khan’s requests for warrants, the five men could be arrested and shipped away for trial even if they are not located in any of the 120 countries that are party to the Rome Statute. Qatar isn’t a party to the statute. Neither is the U.S.

Khan and his prosecutorial team have faced significant pressure from Washington in recent months to avoid requesting warrants against Netanyahu and Israeli officials in particular. Some members of Congress have repeatedly threatened to punish the prosecutor and other court officials if they investigate the United States or its allies, with certain members proposing legislation recently to address this.

Yair Lapid, a political opponent and one of Netanyahu’s most vocal critics, says there is no comparison. He called the decision “a terrible political failure.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog called Khan’s announcement “beyond outrageous,” saying that it “shows the extent to which the international judicial system is in danger of collapsing.”

Previous heads of state to face ICC warrants have included Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicted for seizing Ukrainian children, the late Muammar Gaddafi from Libya, and former Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who was accused of genocide.

Thirty years ago this month, nearly one million people, most of them ethnic Tutsis, were killed in the genocide in Rwanda. Today, the country projects an image of post-genocide harmony. Life expectancy and tourism are up. The country has undergone great transformation, but it has also been very different. See photos of Rwanda’s evolution and read about what type of leader is needed for Rwanda to continue to grow and heal.

Jelani Cobb’s new documentary, The Riot Report, is about those days and what came to be known as The Kerner Commission. They had to say why, not just what happened. It is enlightening to consider what’s changed, and disturbing to consider what hasn’t.

Here’s what I do remember: My Dad, a firefighter, not being able to come home for days and when he did, being so tired he could barely get his uniform off before he fell asleep. The dents in his helmet; he said somebody had thrown bricks. Him calling my mom to tell her to fill up containers with water, something about the electricity maybe going out that might make it hard to get water to cook or bathe. To her credit, she made a game out of it.

Do you wanna be twisted? Scarlett Johansson’s voice is not the her voice: OpenAI protests against changing the constitution

Don’t get it twisted: They kept up with the news, belonged to their respective trade unions and never missed an election. But they were not the type to discuss what they considered grown folks’ business with us, except for the occasional “You’re as good as anybody, don’t let anybody tell you different,” “Push ahead, just keep pushing” and my personal favorite — when we saw the scary images of Black folks being set upon with fire hoses or dogs: “Don’t worry, they’ll all be gone when you grow up.”

I was a small child in the 60s and knew something was happening, but not old enough to understand it. My parents were not “activists,” so I don’t have any memories of being taken to marches.

More than 1,000 French police have arrived in the South Pacific nation of New Zealand, as unrest rages over a change to the constitution that would give voting rights to non-Indigenous residents. A pro-independence coalition made up of the indigenous Kanak people objected to the constitutional amendment, saying it would dilute their voice. Though the violence is over some tourists are still stuck at the airport.

Scarlett Johansson’s legal team is demanding that OpenAI disclose how it developed the voice for its AI personal assistant. The actress said that it sounded like herself. At a live demonstration last week, many observers compared the AI voice to Johansson’s character in Her, a science fiction film about a man who falls in love with the female voice of his computer’s operating system. OpenAI said the voice wasn’t patterned after Johansson but that it was disabling it.

Source: Biden decries ICC arrest warrant request for Israeli leaders; Target cuts prices

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