Why there must be accountability for Israel’s genocide
At the end of World War 2, the Nuremberg Trials were held, a key aim being to address the failings after WW1 and to hold to individuals to account. We need a similar process.
Someone I know wrote, a while back, that Israel was a great place, they just had to get rid of the apartheid system there and everything would be fine. While it is true that the apartheid needs to be dismantled, there is a sickness far greater than this that needs to be addressed. Israel has always been a state virtually free from any accountability. A state where its actions – no matter how grotesque, how much in breach of international law, how much suffering they caused, how much deception they involved – were permitted with nothing more than the mildest of rebukes. This almost total absence of accountability has lead us inexorably to where we are today, witnessing one of the worst genocides in modern history – possibly the worst – with virtually zero international action against the perpetrators.
It would be naive to believe that the responsibility for this genocide lies within the borders of Israel alone, a great number of Western politicians, military personnel, corporate CEOs, businessmen and media personnel have also been facilitators or participants. It could not have happened without their active support and involvement.
World War 1 resulted in between 10 and 20 million deaths. Despite this, there was only limited accountability for those considered responsible once the war ended. In part this was due to a lack of legal mechanisms to hold individuals (rather than states) responsible. Twenty one years later World War 2 began. This resulted in 70 – 85 million deaths and a much higher percentage of civilian deaths.
At the end of World War 2, the Nuremberg Trials were held, a key aim being to address the failings after WW1 and to hold to individuals to account; to prosecute those considered guilty of war crimes and ‘crimes against humanity’. This process actually began in 1943, well before the end of the war, with warnings of prosecution issued to Nazi leaders. The formal process of determining the form and legal framework for prosecutions took place in London in late June 1945, barely seven weeks after Germany surrendered. The Nuremberg Trials began in November the same year. Twenty four of those who were considered the most important Nazis were prosecuted. Of these, 12 were sentenced to be executed, five given sentences between 10 years and life, and three were acquitted; the remainder either committed suicide or were deemed unfit to stand trial.
Although it received much less publicity, similar prosecutions were also held in Japan. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) was modelled on the Nuremberg Trials of the previous year.
Both sets of trials were far from perfect. Inevitably, political considerations weighed heavily in determining the format, the charges and who was charged. The U.S.A. had emerged as the largest economic and military power after WW2, so inevitably they sent the largest teams and had the dominant voice. But the UK, France and the USSR also had agendas to push. That said, it can be argued that the far greater carnage of WW2 occurred because very few individuals were held to account for the deaths of WW1, and that these trials, prosecuting those deemed personally responsible for atrocities, was a major step forward.
The key finding of the Nuremberg Trials, stated in the verdict, was that crime of plotting and waging aggressive war was the‘supreme international crime’ because “it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
The Nuremberg Trials established the legal framework for holding individuals accountable for war crimes; it also created the criminal offense of ‘crimes against humanity’ for the targeting and killing of civilians. This was a worthy achievement, but the biggest flaw was that the power to prosecute lay (and still remains) in the hands of the victors, powerful Western countries, principally the USA.
Despite the slaughter of around 10 million (12-15% of the North Korean population) there were no war crimes trials following the Korean War. One can argue that the undoubted war crimes of the Vietnam War happened because no-one was held accountable for Korea. Iraq happened because no-one was held accountable for the war crimes of Vietnam, and Afganistan one was held accountable for Vietnam (or Laos and Cambodia).
Afghanistan happened because no-one was held accountable for Iraq. And now we have genocide and ethnic cleansing openly conducted in Gaza, because those responsible do not fear that they will ever go to jail. Indeed, quite the opposite, Henry Kissinger, the architect of the heavy bombing campaign of Cambodia (then a neutral country) that caused around 100,000 deaths, was given a Nobel peace Prize, Tony Blair became fabulously rich, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Chaney both died wealthy men never having spent a day in jail. Almost the only people who ever went to jail were whistleblowers who exposed war crimes by the West. Famously, founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange, who released the Afghan War Logs and the Collateral Murder video, spent a decade confined to the Ecuadorean Embassy or in a maximum security prison in London. CIA agent John Kiriakou was jailed after exposing that the U.S. was using waterboarding and other forms of torture on prisoners; former U.S. drone pilot Daniel Hale was jailed after exposing the fact that Obama administration lied to the American people concerning the accuracy of drone strikes and how targets were selected, including the official policy requiring “near certainty that non-combatants [civilians] would not be injured or killed.” This was far from the truth, in the year 2012-13 it was found that 90% of victims were not the intended target (The Drone Papers).
Internal ‘investigations’ are nearly always a whitewashing exercise designed to exonerate the prime culprits and – maybe – scapegoat some low level criminals. The My Lai massacre of between 345 - 504 women, children and elderly men by US troops during the Vietnam War is a good example. Women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, children as young as 12 were raped. The US military attempted a cover up, claiming the massacre was a battle against Viet Cong soldiers, the Stars and Stripes reported that ‘U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists in a bloody day-long battle’. The truth was broken by helicopter gunner and whistleblower Ronald Ridenhour and investigative journalist Seymour Hersch. The initial military investigation was a whitewash. The investigating officer concluded in his report ‘there was no basis for the allegations’ and ‘In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent’. The investigating officer who wrote this was one Major Colin Powell. The same Colin Powell who, decades later, would present fake evidence of Saddam Hussein’s ‘chemical weapons’ to justify invasion of Iraq. Powell would, much later, claim both incidents were honest ‘mistakes’.
A key problem here is the lack of power of the international courts to conduct truly independent investigations. The U.S. refuses to recognise the International Criminal Court, it threatens and sanctions ICC judges and prosecutors. In 2002 Presedent Bush passed the euphemistically named “American Service members Protection Act’, better known as the Hague Invasion Act. This U.S. law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the international criminal court, which is located in The Hague. The UK Government pretends to support and uphold the ICC, but in practice it regularly flouts ICC rulings and international legal obligations in deference to the US and Israel.
There comes a point where we have to say ‘enough’! Those responsible for crimes against humanity must be held accountable and they must suffer real consequences. This is, of course, much easier to say that to achieve. Those ultimately responsible have vast amount of wealth and power at their disposal. As Daniel Hale pointed out in his pre-sentencing letter “the war had very little to do with preventing terror from coming into the United States and a lot more to do with protecting the profits of weapons manufacturers and so-called defense contractors.”
Those ultimately responsible for the horrors occurring in Gaza have immense power. They control the military, the control the vast majority of the mainstream media, they buy (or blackmail) politicians. And they view themselves as untouchable. As a senior official reportedly told ICC prosecutor Karim Khan ‘This Court was built for Africa and for thugs like Putin’ not people like them.
But they don’t control the people. Ultimate power rests not with large opaque corporations but with individuals. As history has shown, time and again, when the majority of people decide they have had enough, and that things must change – then things change. It requires grassroots organisation and it requires sticking to our principles, it requires all of us speaking up. It will be very hard to hold senior officials, Prime Ministers and Presidents to account but, to quote Nelson Mandela ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done’.
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