Israel Committed 'War Crimes' Says International Criminal Court But It Won't Do Anything: It's Too Busy Accusing Third World Leaders

According to lawyers, the court's decision confirms that Israel has a 'special status' in regards to international law.

Photo by Alkan Boudewijn de Beaumont Chaglar.

By telesurtv
International Criminal Court (ICC) lawyers believe that Israel is guilty of “war crimes” for the raid on an aid ship bound for Gaza in 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists. However, they have also decided that the case does not meet their criteria for prosecution, according to court papers seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

RELATED STORY: Mass Media Blacks Out Reports Of Israeli Crimes -- The International Criminal Court Charges Kenyatta Instead of Netanyahu and Israel's
Gaza Massacre is Forgotten

On May 31, 2010, the Israeli military forcefully boarded six civilian ships from the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” that were traveling from Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid and construction materials to the besieged region. The army boarded the ships in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea.

The activists on board say they did not put up a fight, however the Israeli army insists that they were met with resistance – which led to several activists being killed, including eight Turkish nationals and an American of Turkish origin on the Mavi Marmara boat.

The ICC does not have jurisdiction over crimes committed in either Turkey, where most the boats were registered, or Israel, since neither are members of the ICC. However, the Mavi Marmara was registered to the Comoros Islands, which is a member, making the crimes on board eligible for ICC investigation.

"The information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes under the Court's jurisdiction have been committed in the context of interception and takeover of the Mavi Marmara by IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers on 31 May 2010," read the papers.

But the papers also added that prosecutors had decided the crimes “were not of sufficient gravity to fall under the court's jurisdiction,” reported Reuters. Their evidence and criteria for making this decision however, remained vague.

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The 2010 Gaza Flotilla: New Documents Show US Siding With Israel in Murder of Its Own Citizen — Teenager Furkan Dogan

Furkan Dogan: The American citizen was just a teen when he was wounded and
then executed in cold blood by Israeli commandos while on the Gaza Flotilla in
2010.

By Jessica Lee
When it comes to this summer's Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the slaughter of more than 2,000 Palestinians, including 500 children, it's easy to wonder if American apologists for Israeli atrocities are living in an alternate reality. But those supporting the apartheid occupation and oppression of Palestinians and those of us opposing it do agree on one point: Israel's occupation could not continue without the US government's support, funding and weapons.

Yet the depth of US complicity in Israeli human rights abuses can be shocking to even the fiercest critics of US aid to Israel. A rare glimpse into how the United States has protected Israel from accountability for its crimes is seen in a set of government documents obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights in response to a FOIA lawsuit concerning Israel's raid of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla; the Center recently released comprehensive guides to the documents, along with several hundred pages of newly released documents.

The 2010 flotilla was a humanitarian effort to bring desperately needed supplies like medicines, wheelchairs, generators and rebuilding supplies to Gazans who live cut off from the world by an illegal Israeli blockade. Israeli forces killed nine people aboard the flotilla, including United States teenager Furkan Doğan.

[...]

This may be just the tip of the iceberg: The full nature of US support remains secret due to the lack of transparency regarding where US training and funding to Israel is ending up. The State Department itself has admitted that when it comes to Israel, there is no mechanism to track which units receive US funding. It's critical to be able to track and share this information, in part because such aid may be in direct violation of the Leahy Laws, which bar US assistance to foreign forces where there is credible information that a unit or individual has engaged in gross human rights violations.

Instead of providing this training, the US should have been seeking accountability for the attack in which a US teenager was shot in the face at point blank range after he already lay wounded. But when it came to the only independent international inquiry into the attack, the UN Human Rights Council's Fact-Finding Mission, not only did the United States vote against the resolution to investigate, but the country tried to derail it. One cable noted that the US Mission in Geneva, where the council is located, had "explored ways to 'turn off ' the flotilla fact finding mission" and that "we very strongly favor having this fact finding mission (FFM) fall away."

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