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A Case To Go To Court

By Clark Nida

Today Amnesty International reminded me of what, to my shame, I had largely forgotten about: the Gaza War of 2008-2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_conflict

Let me quote from the single survivor of a young family:

“Four were dead at once. My brother’s body was all in pieces. We want to understand something: why did they hit our house? We are civilians. None of us did anything. My father was opposed to firing rockets against the Israelis: he wanted peace and they killed him... Why did they kill our parents, our family?”

Can’t you just hear the response of the drone operator, sitting at his console hundreds of miles away with a coffee by his elbow? “Did I mean to kill a young family? I didn’t even know them! We had to stop the rockets: it’s a crowded city and people got in the way.”

Sheer collateral damage. So depressing.

In September 2009 the UN sent a special mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone. The Goldstone report was categorical: war crimes had been committed. Those responsible must be brought to justice and reparation must be made to the victims. If they (Israel and the Palestinian authorities) failed to act in a credible and effective manner within the ensuing six months, they should be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC). But over 16 months after the Goldstone report, no such investigation has been undertaken by either party – and no referral has been made.

What’s the proper response? To shrug and say: TIP – This Is Palestine?

Winston Churchill was notorious for his opinion that the Great War of 1914-18 had been necessary and unavoidable (though not the 4 years of “senseless slaughter” on the Western Front, which he put down to lack of imagination). But, when writing his history of the Second World War, he named it the Unnecessary War. One of the biggest contributory factors, he says, was a much-publicised debate of the world-famous Oxford Union, which in 1933 passed the motion that “This House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country”. This outcome was carefully digested by people who meant us harm, and acted upon. By the time they realised we’d been kidding it was too late: some 73 million people had died worldwide – twice as many civilians as combatants, among them many young families.

To prevent it ever happening again, an organisation called the United Nations was set up, and the twin concepts developed of International Law and inalienable Human Rights. The ICC is the last Court of Appeal in this necessary, if imperfect, legal structure.

But how resilient are even the most perfected of legal structures? Consider this as an awful warning. Sebastian Haffner, a law student in 1933, recounts in Defying Hitler the chilling story of a brown-shirted thug strolling into the German Law School library and asking everybody in turn, “Are you Aryan?” – those unable to answer “yes” being thrown out of the building. But to answer this question, even truthfully “no”, was to surrender to people who stood for chaos.

From that very moment, Haffner argues, the German Law School ceased to exist.

If we and the other members of the United Nations neglect to refer the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to the ICC, then it plus International Law itself morally cease to exist.

This will in due course lead to another Unnecessary War, by emboldening those whose hallucination of God seems to delight in the smoke arising from burnt offerings of young families.