(The Age, 27/5/2024)
Dutton et al will find any way to excuse the Israeli Genocide and murder – Mark
Last week, Joe Biden, criticising the decision of the International Criminal Court prosecutor to apply for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders (as well as Hamas leaders), stated, “Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”
This talking point – that the prosecutor had implied equivalence – was widely adopted. Declaring, with Biden, that there was no equivalence quickly became one of the coded phrases that have come to dominate this debate – those tests one must pass before proceeding.
On Thursday, Anthony Albanese delivered the phrase, while declining to comment directly on the prosecutor. He no doubt meant what he said, but he also had to say it because this was the criticism being levelled at him: that by not condemning the court, he was submitting to this “equivalence”. That “equivalence”, Peter Dutton said on Tuesday, was “utterly repugnant”. He suggested someone, presumably the prosecutor, had compared “the Israeli prime minister to a terrorist organisation leader”.
One wonders how many of those making this equivalence point, including quite a few in the press, had taken 10 minutes to read the ICC prosecutor’s statement.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, applied for arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders on the basis of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, rape, taking hostages, and extermination. He described visiting the “devastating scenes of these attacks … Speaking with survivors, I heard how the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child, were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness.” This is a statement of emotional and moral force that again makes vivid the horrors of October 7.
In the same statement, he applied for arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, also on the basis of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Importantly, the prosecutor wrote that Israel has a right to defend itself. “That right, however, does not absolve Israel or any state of its obligation to comply with international humanitarian law.”
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