{"id":10261,"date":"2024-06-10T08:37:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T08:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/?post_type=article&p=10261"},"modified":"2024-06-10T08:49:50","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T08:49:50","slug":"the-icc-prosecutors-panel-of-anti-israel-consultants","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-icc-prosecutors-panel-of-anti-israel-consultants\/","title":{"rendered":"The ICC Prosecutor’s Panel of Anti-Israel Consultants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The House passed a bill<\/a> last week to impose sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court if it issues arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. The move came after ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for warrants in late May based on war-crimes allegations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The bipartisan outrage is justified. By targeting a country with a well-functioning legal system that is taking unprecedented humanitarian precautions in an urban war, the ICC is making it more difficult for Western democracies to defend themselves against lawless terror groups. Further, Israel, like the U.S., hasn\u2019t accepted ICC jurisdiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rot within The Hague runs deep. The prosecutor\u2019s decision to issue warrants was based in part on the advice of several consultants he had handpicked. Many of them already had a longstanding bias against the Jewish state; they\u2019ve been publicly condemning Israel and declaring it guilty of war crimes for years. By picking experts who had taken clear positions on the questions they were being asked to consider, Mr. Khan further undermined the credibility and neutrality of any prosecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A particularly egregious example is University of Copenhagen professor Kevin Jon Heller, a special adviser to the prosecutor whom Mr. Khan singled out for thanks<\/a> when announcing the charges. Mr. Heller\u2019s strong views on Israel are evident in his social-media and blog posts. In 2015 he wrote<\/a> in an article: \u201cI wholeheartedly support BDS\u201d\u2014the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement\u2014\u201cin its economic and cultural forms.\u201d He elaborated in a comment<\/a>, describing Israel as \u201ccommitted to systematically depriving the innocent of their most basic rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Heller\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in 2016: \u201cIsrael is truly the\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0of repressive states\u2014unable to tolerate any criticism that doesn\u2019t stay within the bounds of what it considers \u2018legitimate.\u2019\u00a0\u201d In 2020, when he shared a link to a news story about Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu\u2019s Middle East peace plan, he\u00a0tweeted<\/a>: \u201cTwo criminals conspiring to commit criminal acts against #Palestine and #Palestinians.\u201d Mr. Heller has also\u00a0given<\/a>\u00a0the presumption of credibility to groups that are consistently critical of Israel while\u00a0dismissing<\/a>\u00a0more pro-Israel nongovernmental organizations for spreading \u201cfake law and propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Khan took the unusual step of convening a \u201cpanel of experts\u201d in January \u201cto support the evidence review and legal analysis\u201d related to the Gaza case. He announced his pursuit of arrest warrants after the panelists\u2019 unanimous recommendation to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That outcome appears to have been a foregone conclusion. One panelist is Baroness Helena Kennedy, a left-leaning Labour member of the British House of Lords. In 2019 Ms. Kennedy urged<\/a> the ICC to investigate Israel\u2019s treatment of Palestinian civilians. In 2020 she signed a letter<\/a> that claimed\u2014mistakenly\u2014that the Israeli government was planning to annex parts of the West Bank and called for the U.K. to impose sanctions on Israel should it do so. In October Ms. Kennedy accused<\/a> Israel of cutting off Gaza\u2019s water, a charge that is deficient both factually (Israel provided only 9% of Gaza\u2019s supply prewar) and legally (siege is a recognized method of warfare). In March she wrote<\/a> in an article published by the Guardian: \u201cThe ICJ\u201d\u2014International Court of Justice\u2014\u201chas given a warning to Israel; now is the time for all of us to say: enough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another panel member is Jewish lawyer Danny Friedman. A letter<\/a> he signed on Oct. 17 last year claimed\u2014contrary to the U.S. Defense Department\u2019s Law of War Manual\u2014that a siege encompassing a civilian population is illegal. He further accused Israel of dehumanizing Palestinians. In November he wrote<\/a> that some of Israel\u2019s actions constitute war crimes and called for Israel to halt the war even while Hamas was holding hostages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel\u2019s only Arab\u2014Amal Clooney, actor George Clooney\u2019s wife\u2014said about the 2014 Gaza War that she was \u201chorrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the panel\u2019s token Israeli national, Theodore Meron, is best known for his criticism of the Israeli government\u2019s policy in the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legal credentials of the prosecutor\u2019s consultants aren\u2019t in question. The problem is that while they\u2019re entitled to their opinions, picking them to assist in a criminal prosecution is different from inviting them to speak at a conference. Mr. Khan chose them despite their strong, legally controversial stances on the issues they were supposed to examine neutrally. They expressed these opinions in political, not merely academic, contexts. Not one expert with a public record of serious skepticism about the court\u2019s jurisdiction or alleged Israeli criminality was included on the panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would have been easy for Mr. Khan to find experts with similar views who hadn\u2019t made their prejudices public. That Mr. Khan chose these advisers indicates that he valued certainty in the results above even the appearance of impartiality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The selection of the panel seems to violate the ICC Code of Conduct for the Office of the Prosecutor, which demands that its officials \u201crefrain from any activity which is likely to negatively affect the confidence of others in the independence or integrity of the Office.\u201d The Code of Conduct says the \u201cimpartiality\u201d section requires \u201crefraining from expressing an opinion that could, objectively, adversely affect the required impartiality, whether through communications media, in writing or public addresses.\u201d These rules don\u2019t apply to outside experts, but by selecting and relying on panel advisers who don\u2019t meet the ICC\u2019s own definition of impartiality, the prosecutor undermines his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Khan\u2019s selection of heavily prejudiced advisers calls into question the weighing of the evidence and credibility determinations that underlie the allegations. If despite these fundamental flaws in the process\u2014and all the underlying legal and substantive problems\u2014the ICC judges confirm the arrest warrants, sanctions against the ICC will be fully justified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First published in The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em> (“The ICC\u2019s Brazen Anti-Israel Bias” 9.6.2024)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The House passed a bill last week to impose sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court if it issues arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. The move came after ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for warrants in late May based on war-crimes allegations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The bipartisan outrage is justified. By targeting a country […]","protected":false},"featured_media":8072,"template":"","article-category":[],"custom-tags":[550,41,538],"ppma_author":[49],"class_list":["post-10261","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","custom-tags-icc","custom-tags-international-law","custom-tags-israeli-palestinian-conflict"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe ICC Prosecutor's Panel of Anti-Israel Consultants - kohelet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-icc-prosecutors-panel-of-anti-israel-consultants\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The ICC Prosecutor's Panel of Anti-Israel Consultants - kohelet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The House passed a bill last week to impose sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court if it issues arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. 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