Prosecuting Crimes against Humanity
By Lawrence Davidson
May 23, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" -
The promulgation of
International law addressing crimes against humanity was one of the major legal
achievements resulting from World War II. As Robert Jackson, the lead American
prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials put it, the crimes bred by that conflict were
“so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being
ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
Crimes against humanity include government-initiated or -assisted
policies or practices resulting in massacre, dehumanization, unjust
imprisonment, extrajudicial punishments, torture, racial/ethnic persecution, and
other such acts. In reference to the last-cited crime, in 1976 the United
Nations General Assembly declared the systematic persecution of one racial group
by another (for instance, the practice of apartheid) to be a crime against
humanity.
Part II – Undermining the Law
Given the origins of this body of law, it comes as a shock that
there are now a number of countries that would like to weaken, and perhaps even
do away with, this category of law. These states claim that terrorism, and the
so-called war against it, have changed the international environment so greatly
that laws designed to protect us all from crimes against humanity are now tying
the hands of those who regard terrorism as the present greatest threat to
civilization.
While this argument may have some headway with certain
governments and populations, it is a distortion of facts and a mangling of
history. The vast majority of crimes against humanity require a level of
organization and force only found with the state. This fact was brought out
during World War II to such a degree that it could no longer be ignored. On the
other hand, the crimes of small groups of terrorists may indeed be heinous, but
even at their worse, they do not come close, in terms of numbers affected, to
the crimes of states. For governments to decry laws attempting to rein in their
own major crimes as impediments against their efforts to battle those
perpetrating, in comparison, relatively lesser crimes, is more propaganda than
truth.
Part III – The Israeli Contribution
Take for example the State of Israel. The fact that Israel is
among those states, perhaps the main state, attempting to do away with the laws
protecting us all from crimes against humanity should come as yet another shock.
How can a state that loudly proclaims that its reason for being is the
protection of all Jews, seek to undermine laws that were, in good part,
promulgated in response to the brutal persecution of Jews?
Part of the answer to this question may have to do with the fact
that Israel does not represent all Jews, but only those who adhere to the
Zionist ideology – the ideology of the Israeli state – and it is with the
well-being of these Jews that the state appears most concerned. As for the
alleged danger to all Jews (for instance, the resurgence of anti-Semitism), one
suspects that Israel’s leaders use this as a pretense to pursue policies and
practices relevant only to the State of Israel and its guiding ideology. And
these policies and practices happen to consistently contravene the laws
proscribing crimes against humanity.
The Israelis are not very secretive about this. Take, for
instance, Moshe Yaalon, the present Israeli Defense Minister and one of those
actively working against international law referencing crimes against humanity.
At a recent conference entitled “Towards a New Law of War,” sponsored by Shurat
HaDin (an organization of Israeli lawyers operating internationally to defend
Israeli military and civilian practices which violate international law), Yaalon
declared that in any future with conflict with Lebanon, Israel “will hurt
Lebanese civilians including kids of the family … . We did it in the Gaza Strip,
we are going to do it in any round of hostilities in the future.” His excuse for
this criminal position is that organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas
allegedly hide their soldiers and weapons in densely populated urban areas.
However, journalists on the ground have found this to be false. Yaalon also held
out the prospect of using nuclear weapons against Iran sometime in the future.
The fact that present international law holds such actions to be crimes against
humanity is the reason Israel seeks to undermine such law and create a “new law
of war.”
Another indicator that Israel will continue to defy this aspect
of international law is the recent appointment of Ayelet Shaked as Minister of
Justice in the newly formed government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Shaked has
declared that Israel is at war with the entire Palestinian people and therefore
they all should be destroyed, “including its elderly and its women, its cities
and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.” Shaked is a deceptively
innocent-looking woman. Her behavior, however, calls to mind Oscar Wilde’s The
Portrait of Dorian Gray.
Part IV – The West Gives a Green Light
Major Western nations seem ready to support Israel in this
effort, even though it clearly encourages a new era of state-sponsored
barbarism. For instance, the U.S. government has consistently protected Israel’s
criminal behavior from United Nations condemnation by using its veto in the
Security Council. The British government has restricted the use of “universal
jurisdiction,” an aspect of international law that allows victims of war crimes
to initiate prosecution against responsible individuals in any country that is a
signatory of the Geneva Conventions. In order to exempt indictable Israelis, the
UK has declared that only its Director of Public Prosecutions (always a
politically malleable individual), rather than trial judges confronted with
strong evidence, can issue universal jurisdiction arrest warrants. The
governments of Canada and several European states are attempting to criminalize
the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which seeks to pressure a
change in Israeli policies toward Palestinians. And on it goes.
Part V – Conclusion
The average citizen is either ignorant of or misinformed about
the growing danger to an aspect of international law that protects us all. And
that is too bad, because it is the average citizen who will always suffer the
most from the commission of crimes against humanity.
Beyond the dangers of ignorance and misinformation, there is the
ongoing problem of nationalism. The laws allowing for the prosecution of those
who commit crimes against humanity were instituted at a time when most nations
were so mindful of the barbarism of World War II that their leaders were willing
to let go of a bit of their national sovereignty to create potentially
meaningful international law. However, they would not go so far as to create an
international police force with truly independent operating powers.
It has been seventy years since the end of World War II and
nationalism is as strong as ever, while the memory of its barbaric capabilities
has faded – despite isolated reminders offered by the multitude of small wars
that come and go almost yearly.
So we are embedded in a cycle of violence, led astray by our
faulty memories and national hatreds. By now we should know better, but we
don’t.
Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history from
West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic research focused on the
history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He taught courses in
Middle East history, the history of science and modern European intellectual
history.
Copyright © 2010 tothepointanalyses
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