The year I was born, the former prime minister of Japan, Hideki Tojo, was executed, by hanging, by the U.S. military occupation. When I was growing up, there were a series of heads of state and heads of government who were executed. I was in grade school when the prime ministers of Turkey (Adnan Menderes) and Hungary (Imre Nagy) were executed and in college when Congo’s prime minister Patrice Lumumba was executed by a firing squad. Later, Pakistan’s military dictatorship hung prime minister (and former president) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Romanian freedom fighters executed dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Iranian theocracy executed prime minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda (for “waging war against God” and “spreading corruption on earth”)… and in 2006 the U.S. summarily executed Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq.
In 2002, the Treaty of Rome established the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the first and only permanent international al court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals— particularly political leaders— for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. When the General Assembly convened in Rome to vote on establishing the ICC, 120 countries voted for it, 21 abstained and 7 voted no— countries that commit crimes against humanity on a regular basis: the U.S., China, Israel, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and the Qatar. It finally passed in December 2000, with the U.S. voting aye, but never ratifying the treaty and eventually officially withdrawing the aye vote.
The first judgement came in 2012 against Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Diylo, who was sentenced to 14 years for recruiting and using children as soldiers. Since then, dozens of leaders have been indicted— from Joseph Kony (Uganda) and Omar al-Bashir (Sudan) to Muammar Gaddafi (Libya) and Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya). Neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney was indicted. On March 17, 2023 the ICC judges issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. Last week the ICC’s chief prosector, Karim Khan, announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh).
The former president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi-- a top leader of the Albanian mafia and a heroin don with crooked business ties to Jared Kushner and Rick Grenell— is in custody and being tried for a variety of crimes against humanity and war crimes, from organ trafficking and contract murder to persecution of minorities and torture. What a guy— MAGA all the way! Last year, as his trial was beginning, Reuters did a rundown of former heads of state who were prosecuted.
Former Yugoslav and Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic became the first ex-head of state to stand trial before an international court since World War Two when his trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) started in The Hague in 2002. Milosevic was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide for his leading role in the 1990s Balkan wars that followed the break-up of federal Yugoslavia. Before a judgment could be rendered, Milosevic died in his cell in a Hague detention centre in 2006.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has seen two heads of state appear before it in proceedings against them. In 2014 then-Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta became the first sitting head of state to appear before the ICC in a pre-trial hearing. The charges against him were related to alleged stoking of ethnic tensions before the 2007 presidential election and committed before be became head of state. Later in 2014, the prosecution withdrew the charges and blamed the decision on political interference with witnesses, especially after Kenyatta was elected president. In 2015 the ICC dropped the case.
In 2016 former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo became the first former head of state to go on trial before the ICC. Gbagbo faced charges of crimes against humanity related to post-election violence over his refusal to accept defeat at the polls in 2010 following a decade in power. After a three-year trial, Gbagbo was acquitted in 2019. Judges ruled the prosecution's case linking him to the post-election bloodshed that killed some 3,000 people was "exceptionally weak.” Gbagbo returned to Ivory Coast in 2021 and vowed to remain involved in politics until his death.
Congressional Democrats are in a fierce internal battle over whether or not to join the Republicans in condemning the International Criminal Court for indicting Netanyahu. The Democrats who have been bribed by AIPAC— corrupt slime-bags like Josh Gottheimer (NJ- $1,697,263), Shontel Brown (OH- $1,091,836), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL- $907,284), Haley Stevens (MI- $990,064), Brad Sherman (CA- $771,883), Don Davis (NC- $608,010), Abigail Spanberger (VA- $569,876), Greg Meeks (NY- $523,141), Brendan Boyle (PA- $413,243), Adam Schiff (CA- $1,023,967), Jared Golden (ME- $502,830), Angie Craig (MN- $307,763), Lucy McBath (GA- $333,578), Elissa Slotkin (MI- $539,905), Colin Allred (TX- $625,472), Jimmy Panetta (CA- $338,304), Steny Hoyer (MD- $736,244), Jake Auchincloss (MA- $507,865), Jared Moskowitz (FL- $172,010), Ritchie Torres (NY- $1,571,087), Brad Schneider (IL- $1,346,167), Pete Aguilar (CA- $734,428), Rob Menendez (the son- NJ- $206,000), Kathy Manning (NC- $553,356), Lois Frankel (FL- $475,442), Nancy Pelosi (CA- $620,732) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY- $1,367,247) are eager to join with the GOP on this, while Democrats who have never taken any AIPAC bribes, generally speaking, progressives, are opposed.
Under the leadership of Hakeen Jeffries— who was groomed by AIPAC from an early age when he was just starting a career in the NY state legislature— most House Democrats are all for supporting the GOP bid to sanction the International Criminal Court. No one was surprised last week to hear Jeffries say “The United States is not part of the International Criminal Court at this particular moment in time and I think that’s appropriate… There are international norms, and America sets those norms, ironically.” He’s living in a world that no longer exists. Another AIPAC puppet, Brad Schneider was even more truculent and unhinged: “The actions by the prosecutor— we’ll see what happens with these judges— really threatens the credibility of the court. This kind of gives you the explanation of why we haven’t [endorsed the ICC].”
Among members who have decided to not take AIPAC bribes, AOL told reporters that “It’s profoundly disturbing… an alarming precedent to set to attack institutions of international business who are responsible for really litigating international law and considering international law.” Pramila Jayapal, who hasn’t hidden her disdain for AIPAC noted that “The ICC is an independent court, and they’re going to come to their independent decisions, and they also have an expert panel that they consulted with. And I think that it is something that we have to take very, very seriously.”
Have you visited Give AIPAC The Finger? Please contributing to any of the candidates, mostly incumbents, on that page. Also consider this on-line fundraiser for Jamaal Bowman on Tuesday evening.
I have to disagree with your characterization of Benjamin Netanyahu as a, "Genocidal Maniac."
He is no more a Genocidal Maniac than George Wallace was a Segregationist Maniac.
Netanyahu cares nothing for the Palestinians, but he also cares nothing for the Israelis.
He only cares about his own power, and staying out of jail on corruption charges.
Netanyahu is not insane, he is evil, and he is the greatest threat to the state of Israel in the eorld today.
Please note that I am not calling him a רוֹדֵף (rodef), literally a pursuer, which would mean that we are required under Halacha (Jewish law) that a רוֹדֵף (rodef) be stopped by any means necessary, including lethal force.
It would be…