THE Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Wednesday called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch an investigation into recent confessions by Israeli soldiers that they had committed systematic war crimes against Palestinians during the genocidal war in Gaza.
The confessions appeared in two Israeli news outlets, +972 Magazine and Local Cal, which published detailed accounts by former Israeli soldiers describing how they shot Palestinians out of ‘boredom’ and that any Palestinian in sight was designated as a threat.
In a statement Hamas said: ‘The confessions of the Zionist occupation soldiers … and their confirmation that they were given a green light by the leaders of the terrorist occupation army to commit the most heinous crimes such as shooting at unarmed civilians, burning and destroying homes’ in Gaza require ‘serious follow-up by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court’.
One of the six Israeli soldiers, identified only as B, said in the interview that if troops see a person approaching: ‘It is permissible to shoot at their centre mass, (the body) not in the air … It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.’
Hamas said these admissions that unarmed civilians were ‘targets for amusement’ remain a ‘stain on humanity’.
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan applied for an application for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minster Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant for ‘alleged war crimes’.
Neither Israel or the US are member states of the ICC and have long argued that Palestinians have no right to bring cases against Israel to the international court as Palestinian authorities do not have jurisdiction over Israeli nationals.
This argument, that basically Palestinians had no rights and could be murdered and tortured with impunity with no recourse to international justice, was thrown out by the ICC in February 2021.
With the US and Israel not recognising the authority of the ICC it was impossible for the US to put a stop to the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant – a warrant that required every member state of the ICC, which includes all the EU and UK, to arrest them as soon as they enter their countries’ jurisdiction.
Instead, the Biden administration relied on its tame Tory government in the UK to block the warrant.
Faithful to the end, the then Tory government filed a request on June 10th to provide in writing an argument that Palestinians have no right to justice from the ICC or any international body – exactly the same argument that the ICC rejected three years ago.
This request was also filed by a Tory government that was on its last legs before being wiped out in the general election. Clearly, a delaying tactic to prepare for an incoming Labour government led by Keir Starmer who had previously stated that Labour would withdraw this application.
However, Starmer has a long record of reneging on promises and on Sunday, Downing Street announced that in a phone conversation with Netanyahu, Starmer had said he ‘looked forward to further deepening the close relationship’ between Britain and Israel.
This deepening of the close relationship with the genocidal Zionist regime, that has so far killed at least 38,295 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza and injured a further 88,241 – while The Lancet medical journal estimated this figure could be over 186,000 as Palestinians die from the indirect impact of the war – is the policy of the Labour government.
This week, Starmer was at the NATO summit in the US where he was given his orders from ‘genocide Joe’ Biden on ramping up the imperialist war against Russia in the Ukraine and continuing the complicity in genocide in Gaza.
Hamas, this week, called for angry marches all over the world to condemn Israel’s massacre and war crimes in Gaza.
With the working class and youth in their millions prepared to march for Gaza, the time has come to turn these mass protests into action by demanding the TUC call general strike to force an end to Labour’s collaboration with the Zionist occupier, by replacing Starmer’s Labour government with a workers government that will stop arming Israel and start arming the Palestinian revolution.
