Opinion | Farrukh Abadi
On Thursday (11/21), the International Criminal Court announced that it had put out arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, whom Israel claims they killed in July without presenting evidence. The announcement comes months after the court had originally motioned that it would apply for the warrants. At the time, the warrants also included Yahya Sinwar, who has since been martyred by Israel in October.
As stated previously on The Worker, the arrest warrants are both a concession won by the Palestinian resistance and international solidarity movement, primarily the resistance, and also a means to preserve Israel, the ICC, and the imperialist system under the domination of US imperialism as a whole. This is the nature of concessions under imperialism: the imperialists and their lackeys concede a part to preserve the whole. The duty of revolutionaries and progressive forces internationally is to utilize the concession to further develop the movement to win more while strengthening its revolutionary and progressive organizations.
The fact that the ruling is a concession is recognized in the statements released by the various resistance organizations in Palestine and across the Middle East. Hamas called it an “important historical precedent and a correction of a long history of injustice against our people, and a disturbing neglect of the heinous violations they have endured for 76 years under fascist occupation.” The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) recognized the importance of the decision while also stating that it is “minor compared to the extensive crimes they have committed”.
As a concession, the ruling limits the maneuvering of the Zionist chiefs and can be utilized to increasingly unite the world against Zionism, serving the trend of Israel’s isolation and thus hastening its downfall. It also indirectly condemns US imperialism as the main backer of Israel, in line with the masses’ hatred for it internationally. This is reflected in President Biden’s repudiation of the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, and US Senator Tom Cotton mentioning the “Hague Invasion Act”, an act whereby the US grants itself the right to use military force to release detainees of the ICC.
Its role as counterinsurgency manifests in several ways. For one thing, the aim is to weaken the current government of Israel through legal and popular pressure so that a more “centrist”—albeit still fascist—government will come to power and reduce the intensity of the genocide to improve the image of the state. Israel cannot exist without committing genocide, because genocide is a fundamental feature of imperialism to counter revolutionary movements that are based in popular support. Therefore, the preservation of Israel is aimed at only slowing the process of the genocide and forced displacement of Palestinians so as to slow down the anti-imperialist movement within Palestine and internationally. This is also revealed in the fact that the warrants include leaders of Hamas—and by extension, the leadership of the armed resistance against Israel—which equates the national war for liberation with the genocide, essentially repeating the adage of the imperialists, that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Secondly, the ruling aims to preserve the ICC and, as an extension, the international apparatuses of “legitimacy” under the control of US imperialism. It should be remembered that ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan himself is a lackey of US imperialism, who swept aside an ongoing investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan as soon as he came into power. The institution not only serves to propagate the illusion that imperialism can solve its own contradictions among the masses, but also as a tool within the intensifying inter-imperialist conflict in which Chinese and Russian imperialism are aiming to challenge US imperialism and its institutions for hegemony.
Finally, it has been widely recognized that the ruling is mainly symbolic, as the ICC does not have any jurisdiction over Israel or the US. The warrants are a pitiable apology for the deaths and torture of hundreds of thousands—which continues today, unabated—and is too little, too late, as Palestinian resistance factions have pointed out. Nevertheless, it has been wrested from the imperialists mainly through the heroic armed struggle, and should serve to energize the process of isolating Israel.
Photo: ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, ICC Website
