It is an event of high universal significance as the decision of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to request an arrest warrant against Netanyahu, Minister Gallant and Hamas leaders for war crimes. Then the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to demand an immediate end to military action in Rafah.
Already, the reactions of each party are so significant! The leaders of Hamas, also targeted, are appealing the decision. For their part, after threatening the judges personally and their families, Netanyahu and his leaders insult everyone, threaten, even call the UN a “terrorist organization”. But it’s still first and foremost a moment of happiness. The idea that the international order can bring justice to the most serious of war crimes, and that a power like the one led by Benjamin Netanyahu is constrained by this justice, is a high moment of humanity. The law against the law of the strongest.
A few months ago we celebrated Robert Badinter at Les Invalides after his death. A harsh, sectarian and insulting communitarianism for LFI surrounded the event. Meyer Habib, bloated, paraded without any respect either for the occasion, nor for Republican protocol, nor for his fellow deputies from all sides. Kissing Bardella, he still gave himself the right to publicly attack an impassioned Manuel Bompard. Already, I knew what the revenge of this story would be for me. This would be the day when international justice would knock on the doors of criminals. I never doubted that this day would come, such is the enormous duration of the ongoing crime and the ever-increasing isolation around the world of Netanyahu and his allies.
I can now say what was already on my tongue and which I refrained from speaking about so as not to transform the funeral of an admirable man into a fight, especially when there are madmen like this disgusting deputy hanging around the coffin. I knew that I would be able to say: “What is happening is what Robert Badinter wanted!” “. Because he was one of the founders of this International Criminal Court. And he considered its recognition by nations as an immense step forward in universal consciousness. Meditating on the subject and dealing with the meaning of the Shoah, he concluded in a speech: “ So that is (the) message, “Remember and learn from it.” This teaching is twofold and constant. It is twofold because, of course, there is the reminder of what must prohibit, forever, the crime against humanity, the awareness of what it means, the monstrous nature of the act, and also the terrible nature of the indifference which, too often, allows the act. » Indifference is the first cog in the banality of evil as Badinter demonstrates. Because he will say on this subject: “ indifference, in a certain way, is always complicit in crime, and vigilance and mobilization (and I am turning to the youngest) are a duty. It is also this call that our brothers and sisters from the shadows send us beyond the night. In this world too often full of indifference, we must no longer accept the impunity of criminals against humanity. It is now a duty of all humanity, and no political reason can hinder the International Criminal Court which was created to fight, through the punishment of criminals against humanity, Justice and memory, necessarily, come together. » Badinter did not limit the word genocide to the Shoah. On the contrary ! “ Genocides, he said, did not stop with the liberation of the Auschwitz camp 60 years ago. The world continued, beyond Europe, to experience genocides and I need not remind you, if we played the tragic chimes of the 20th century so soiled with crimes against humanity, we would find the Cambodian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide a few years ago.”
This apology for the International Criminal Court, I had heard it stated by Badinter himself in person in the Senate conference room. He explained to us directly the meaning of the event that was the creation of this tribunal as we were preparing to vote on its creation at the parliamentary congress in Versailles. The lesson has inspired me in every decision and choice I have made on October 7 and since. Because in the meantime there was the “Cast Lead” operation against Gaza in 2009. I had the opportunity to learn lessons from it. I was fully committed to Palestinian rights because the accusation of war crimes was already there, made by a report by UN observers. But there was no follow-up. Already, it targeted both Hamas leaders and already the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Olmert. Before there had been reports of Human Rights Watch, ofAmnesty Internationaland Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem And Breaking the Silence. But the UN report went a long way in detailing the investigation. This United Nations fact-finding mission was led by Judge Richard Goldstone. He was a former member of the South African Constitutional Court and prosecutor of the two special tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. A specialist. His mission spent six weeks in the Gaza Strip following the conflict. A serious report therefore.
It already showed highly criminal conduct of Ehud Olmert’s army. Because it demonstrated the deliberate targeting already of civilian infrastructure, including mosques, hospitals, schools and sewage treatment plants. Already the illegal use of banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs. Already the blocking and targeting of the delivery of humanitarian aid, the deliberate destruction of food production and livestock. The Goldstone report particularly pointed to the targeting of areas of dense, defenseless populations by planes, tanks, helicopters and artillery. Already, night and day for a week, Gaza had been bombarded. Throughout the conflict, Olmert’s soldiers had, in a manner “deliberate and premeditated”, caused the deaths of aid workers and destroyed ambulances. But there was also something else. According to this UN report, they were guilty “systematic and continuous abuse, outrages on personal dignity, humiliating and degrading treatment contrary to the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and human rights.” It was already clear that “the way to treat these civilians is to inflict collective punishment […] and amounts to measures of intimidation and terror […]serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions and [constitue] a war crime.” There was then no prosecution. But I cite all this to say why we feared the worst from the announcement of the “armed action” (ICJ term) by Hamas this morning of October 7. Not only about what had just happened but also about what would happen next. Nothing was known other than that the Hamas groups had penetrated five kilometers outside of Gaza. Huge. It was easy to guess what the reprisals would be, given what “Cast Lead” had taught us. The approach that remained without follow-up after “Cast Lead” nevertheless showed a way.
In “unaligned” logic which is ours, it was necessary to immediately deploy a combat strategy consistent with this principle. Otherwise, as we knew, war talk would be a high-pressure requirement for no-strings-attached alignment. The lesson of “Cast Lead” is that a credible and active path could exist on a legal level. We therefore immediately decided to place ourselves in the wake of law against that of force. Fight against war crimes rather than entering into the discussion of the delusions of the discourse of ” clash of civilizations » and his struggle of “good against evil” or “civilization against barbarians” and so on. As soon as I arrived in France after returning from Morocco, I detailed the arguments for this line of action in Bordeaux. Indeed, we knew the expected effect of alignment on the vocabulary and grammar of the clash of civilizations. This would be the direct importation of the Middle Eastern conflict into secular countries in the form of Islamophobia. And the division of the people on the insurmountable basis of a religious conflict. Our strategy of struggle quickly joined the movement initiated by South Africa with the referral to the International Court of Justice. Now the mobilization of opinions following South Africa’s initiative has enabled the international criminal court to take action. It targets people. That is to say the leaders directly responsible for the situation. From then on, we see how in the citizen struggle, the points of support on international law function as the lever of an effective concrete strategy. This time proves it.
Beware of skeptics and the usual “blah-blah” jaded people. No, right against might and justice against rulers are not without force. They are not purely symbolic. We see the effect. The International Criminal Court targets people. They can no longer leave their country and even there, they are also at risk of expulsion to the judges. The force of law is then contagious. Thus, we see it when the other court, that of international justice (ICJ), which targets States, now orders Netanyahu to immediately cease the action in Rafah. The latter’s immediate response consists of bombing a refugee camp. Aggravating circumstance. Because the result of the ICJ injunction is clear: everything the army does in Rafah can now be considered a war crime. And so does every individual who participates in it. So all dual nationals from all countries, enlisted in the criminal army, can therefore be arrested and indicted upon their return to the country from which they left to commit these crimes. It’s not nothing. And those who campaign for the action of criminals are themselves likely to be prosecuted for “apology of crimes”. For example Meyer Habib against whom it is now possible to file a complaint after each of his media performances where his genocidal sympathies will be expressed. On a moral level, our century and each of us is being tested: who will have the last word: the criminals or the justice system that pursues them? I give the floor again to Robert Badinter (2008) to situate the issue. “Fighting against the impunity of perpetrators of crimes against humanity, whose victims number in the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and sometimes even more, is the categorical moral imperative of all those who believe in the fundamental values of democracy and human rights.
