The International Kangaroo Court
RABKIN, JEREMY
The International Kangaroo Court Get ready for the International Criminal Court to go after Israelis and Americans. BY JEREMY RABKIN IN THE MIDDLE EAST, reality intrudes rather quickly. The...
...The so-called Parliament of Europe is a place for summoning moral authority with nonbinding resolutions of impotent fury (like the threatened economic sanctions against Israel...
...But the hostility to Israel is so visceral that it must have deeper roots...
...We don't need to rest on speculation about where the trend is heading...
...headquarters as the global center of political fantasy...
...They are a bit beyond the power of European public opinion, even if it were running strongly against them (which it isn't...
...But we really must say something, and very soon...
...Put it this way...
...The first foreign leader to be subject to this process (and so far the only one) is Ariel Sharon—because, in 1982, he allowed 800 refugees to be killed by Christian militias when he should have known this would happen...
...Might we want to say something before Secretary Powell has to respond, impromptu, when the first Israeli is indicted...
...Why do Israelis keep bringing up what Arafat did or didn't do way back in the past— before he renounced terrorism, or before he did so most recently...
...In Germany—rather, in the largest member state of the European Union—history is something that began very recently, which is why that country is regarded so warmly by all its neighbors...
...We can't now say for sure what will happen at The Hague...
...This is especially so in the European Union, which has now displaced U.N...
...The main point of the permanent criminal tribunal is to establish a platform for political spectacle...
...The prosecutor will be financed by European states and given credibility and prestige by the approving comments of European leaders...
...At bottom, I think, Euro leaders resent Israel because it is everything the European Union is not...
...But perhaps we could tell them that if they indict one of our nationals, then we really will know they are against us...
...First, the ICC is not subject to a U.S...
...But the prosecutor will be based in Jeremy Rabkin teaches international law at Cornell University...
...There has already been a dry run...
...Will American military strikes involve "excessive" force, and so constitute war crimes...
...Might it even be advantageous to announce our position in advance, before it gets tangled up in disputed facts about what our first indicted officer actually did or didn't do...
...Will the resort to war itself be a criminal act of "aggression...
...Is the United States prepared for this...
...Euroland is organized to project moral authority, and people who rely on its military protection—like the hapless refugees of Srebrenica or the Tutsis of Rwanda—have a way of ending up massacred...
...Ostensibly, all decisions will be made by an independent prosecutor...
...Second, action by the ICC requires no direct involvement by European governments...
...Israel is a democracy...
...Will it do any good for the ICC to indict Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein...
...Will Secretary Powell get Kofi Annan to stand in as a character witness for his good intentions when Powell is hauled before the prosecutor for questioning...
...Might it be worthwhile to think about this before it happens so we have some serious plans ready...
...Not one government in Europe has pointed out how untimely it might seem at a moment when Europeans are offering themselves as diplomatic "partners" in negotiating a Mideast peace...
...The United States is also a democracy, also a nation organized to defend itself and willing to do so, also a nation with a strong sense of its own national history and identity...
...So guess who the prosecutor will put in his sights as he tries to prove his value to his European sponsors...
...The European Parliament then voted, by a substantial margin, to impose wider economic sanctions...
...Israel won't be the only target for Euro resentment, though...
...And the United States also very much annoys Europeans...
...Leftist fashion plays some role, as do geopolitical strategies...
...From the Euro perspective, it has two advantages over the Security Council...
...veto...
...But we know the court will be a major disappointment to its sponsors if it has not produced some resounding indictments by Christmas...
...If a country wants to punish its own war criminals, it can do so...
...Elsewhere, reality sometimes takes longer to penetrate...
...Then we need to make clear that we'll take the same hostile view of any state or postmodern "union" of states that harbors the international prosecutors who indict our people...
...We might even tell the Euros that we wouldn't blame other democratic nations with war-making ability for defending themselves in the same way...
...Why is there so much hostility to Israel among European leaders...
...Puffed with their own moral authority, the Europeans have now corralled enough confused or calculating client states to reach the required 60 ratifications of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court...
...Now American planners are thinking about war against Iraq, perhaps as soon as next fall...
...As a tool of law enforcement, the ICC is absurd...
...But they also say the way to calm angry passions in Europe is to find a "solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, thereby endorsing the premise that Jews are, after all, somewhat to blame for violence against them...
...We can't know whether Americans will be indicted as early as September or only in November...
...Europeans were in a frenzy of moral outrage when it became known that the United States was actually detaining al Qaeda prisoners at Guan-tanamo without according them all the privileges of POW status...
...Of course, that was long ago...
...So far the Bush White House has not even figured out whether to register our disapproval by withdrawing Bill Clinton's signature on the Rome treaty...
...Who do you think they would have chosen to hang...
...Then, too, Israel is a nation that is organized to defend itself and has shown the will to do so...
...Today, when synagogues are being burned in Europe, government leaders insist such events have nothing to do with government policy...
...Do we have a policy...
...It should accept a force of "international peacekeepers," the Europeans say...
...Europe (at The Hague, in the Netherlands...
...Haven't these Euro forces done well in the past...
...Germany was, in fact, the first to impose sanctions on Israel, followed quickly by France...
...Embarrassed at pulling their own troops from Rwanda in 1994, leaving 800,000 Tutsis to be slaughtered, the Belgians gave their courts "universal jurisdiction" to try any perpetrator, anywhere, of a "crime against humanity...
...Still, Europeans wonder why Israel thinks it's so special that it has to insist on defending itself with its own troops...
...The European Union would never allow anyone as crude as Ariel Sharon to be elected to a top position, because no official with any authority in the EU is actually elected by European voters...
...Finally, Israel is a nation with a strong sense of national identity, preserved by the historical memory of its people...
...If it wants to protect them now, it still can—because the ICC has no way of enforcing its subpoenas...
...Suppose a public gallows had been erected in a prominent place in a German town in 1941...
...Probably it's too late to tell the Euros that if they are not with us, they are against us...
...Perhaps we can mention that we regard such indictments as tantamount to unprovoked aggression...
...The court will open for business in July...
...Or suppose a gallows had been erected in a town square by the Nazi collaborationist governments of that era in France, Belgium, or Italy...
...And French prosecutors want to question Henry Kissinger in connection with possible war crimes 30 years ago...
...The independent ICC prosecutor will be on duty by then to tell us...
...Not one government in Europe has protested this attempted prosecution...
...The dreams of diplomats are regularly blown to pieces by bombings and bullets...
...For example, we can't know for sure whether the first indictments of Israelis will come down in July or August...
Vol. 7 • April 2002 • No. 32
