[SCOT goes POP!] Keir Starmer openly supported one of the crimes against humanity that the Israeli Prime Minister now faces an arrest warrant for

[ALBA-Bot]

Keir Starmer openly supported one of the crimes against humanity that the Israeli Prime Minister now faces an arrest warrant for

The reason the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has jurisidiction to apply for arrest warrants against leaders of both Hamas and Israel is that the State of Palestine is a sovereign state, albeit one whose territory is illegally occupied by a neighbouring state.  It has observer member status at the United Nations, it is recognised by almost three-quarters of the world's countries, and it is a state party to the ICC treaty.  Therefore, any criminal action carried out by its citizens, wherever that action occurs, falls under ICC jurisidiction (hence the Hamas warrants), and any criminal action carried out on its territory, regardless of whether the perpetrators are citizens of an ICC state or not, also falls under ICC jurisdiction (hence the Israel warrants).

There was a farcical exchange between a US government spokesman and a journalist yesterday, with the latter asking for clarification on which authority has criminal jurisdiction in Palestine if the US does not accept the ICC's jurisidiction.  The reply was that Israel has jurisidiction to investigate its own crimes, and bizarrely that the US has jurisidiction because it supplies the weapons to Israel.  That clearly made no sense, so when pressed, the spokesman rowed back and insisted that he wasn't suggesting the US had criminal jurisdiction.  He added that "long term" he wanted the Palestinians to become a state and "have the ability to make these determinations", which strongly implies that in the meantime they have no such ability and that the occupying power can act with impunity on their territory.  Biden referred to the ICC prosecutor's decision as "outrageous", but it's hard to think of anything much more outrageous than what the US wants to replace ICC jurisdiction with - ie. nothing but the Wild West.

The application for warrants is a moment of danger for Keir Starmer, because the very first crime cited in relation to Israel's leaders was the deliberate starvation of the population of Gaza.  Starmer was specifically asked in his infamous interview in October whether Israel had the right to cut off food, water and electricity to the Gazan civilian population, and he replied that "Israel does have that right", in other words he egged on Netanyahu in committing a crime against humanity.  

There's also a problem now for Luke Akehurst, Margaret Hodge and the rest of the Labour Friends of Israel mob.  We know how they operate - any person or organisation that is critical of Israel is instantly demonised as anti-semitic and Hamas-in-disguise.  But they're going to look increasingly ridiculous and beyond progressive norms if they apply that language to more and more international institutions like the ICC.  The media portrayed Margaret Hodge as the voice of the mainstream when she was abusive towards Jeremy Corbyn a few years ago, but it would be increasingly hard to do that plausibly now.

It's just ten days since Israel was allowed to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest as if everything was normal.  The way the audio was dulled to protect a genocide-committing state from being heard to be booed almost felt sinister.  Would the participation really have been sustainable if the ICC prosecutor's decision to file for a warrant against Israel's head of government had been taken before the contest?  Israel is now placed even more on the same footing as Russia, whose head of government is also the subject of an ICC warrant.  Surely now Israel must be removed from the 2025 contest, unless the Netanyahu administration leaves office and the attacks on Gaza end?

Source: Keir Starmer openly supported one of the crimes against humanity that the Israeli Prime Minister now faces an arrest warrant for