Shoks Mnisi Mzolo – Cii News | 12 Muharram 1436/06 November 2014

The International Criminal Court (ICC) stunned those who have faith in it when it said it would not probe Israel’s raid on Turkish flotilla that took nine lives in May 2010. Turkey described as mass murder the actions of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). The Turks whose lives were taken by the IDF were on their way to bring aid to the blockaded and subjugated Gaza. But Israel, which enforced this illegal blockade in 2007, argued its Navy was responding to a danger threat posed by 40 passengers, on Mavi Marmara, the ship, who were armed with iron bars and knives.

The ICC, which never hesitates to try Africans accused of committing war crimes, determined that the crimes were not grave enough to warrant its attention. It is the Comoros, an African island nation, which took the case against Israel to the ICC last May because the Mavi Marmara, with civil-based IHH activists on board, was carrying its flag. This, explained Ali Emrah Bozbayindir in an interview with Sabahul Khair, gives the Comoros an option to apply for a review of the prosecutor’s decision within 90 days.

Is there political maneuvering? Why, when international prosecutors say they believe Israel may be guilty of war crimes, did it not pursue the matter to its logical and definite conclusion?

“There’s always a rumour or belief that Israel has a special status in international law or international system, so to say. And, this decision confirms (that) and is disappointing. And, it’s ironic that they’re expecting Comoros or Turkey to try the Israelis,” Bozbayindir observed. “The ICC is the only forum which can bring Israeli criminals to justice. The [court] denying this somehow implies that: ‘ok, you can kill on the high seas, unarmed humanitarian aid-carrying people. Ok, you have committed a crime but we won’t try you.’ This is basically (what this means).”

Bozbayindir, whose law firm represents IHH – The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief Humanitarian Relief Foundation – opined that the prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, limited her analysis to the events that place on Mavi Marmara but ignored the context of the blockade imposed by Israel on Palestine’s Gaza. It was such misery that spurred IHH activists to set off for Gaza where they sought to take humanitarian aid and construction material. “Mavi Marmara is only one part of this big story,” Bozbayindir said, also alluding to Israel’s desecration of Al-Aqsa Masjid in the occupied Palestine’s East Jerusalem.

Gaza, home to around 1.8 million, has become the world’s largest open-air prison and concentration camp where the IDF murders scores of people as a matter of course. All of this forms part of Israel’s ethnic policies to rid (through extermination or expulsion) indigenous Palestinians, a Semitic grouping, from their land to make way for Zionists.

Speaking to Cii, the attorney noted “an important African element” that non-Africans (including Israel and others) find inappropriate. The Hague-based ICC, now pursuing Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and Omar al-Bashir, his Sudanese peer, never shows interest in atrocities committed in other parts of the world. So, when an African country refers a matter that involves non-Africans, IDF soldiers, Bensouda says the crimes were not grave enough.

“For the first time, the ICC rejects a state referral, this is an important point. This is not a simple referral. A state, the Union of Comoros, refers the case to the ICC but the ICC rejects that,” Bozbayindir observed, also pointing to the cold relations between The Hague and the African Union, whose members are the court’s only targets. Talk about some animals being more equal than others. Sadly, notes the lawyer, the globe, through United Nations platforms, does nothing to hold the self-righteous Israel to account for the crimes it commits against Palestine and the region.

Apart from Binyamin Netanyahu’s apology, Ankara has demanded compensation for its citizens who fell victim to the IDF terror. Further, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime wants justice for the Palestinians, now oppressed by the Tel Aviv regime which, according to Richard Goldstone, Bozbayindir reminded Cii, has committed war crimes. Turkey insists that Israel lifts the blockade imposed on Gaza. “Turkey wants to channel humanitarian aid freely,” he said.

The point is that the Mavi Marmara tragedy was sparked by the Zionist-inspired subjugation and oppression that has left the Palestinians in dire poverty. That said, this lawyer asserted, the Turkish position is that there is no reason why the status quo of misery and starvation should continue. And so, maybe, the blood of the activists whose lives were taken by the IDF would nourish the tree of freedom that the subjugated Semites have been dreamt of for decades. But, to be real, in this world, not all humans, or Semites, are equal even in the 21stcentury.

 

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