Charles Hirschkind: The Invisible Slaughter of Palestinian Children

Charles Hirschkind discusses The Invisible Slaughter of Palestinian Children.

From the standpoint of Western media, Palestinian lives are relevant precisely in proportion to their ability to resist Israel’s crushing grip upon them. Insomuch as Hamas is the primary institution of organized resistance in Gaza, it is they -— not dead children -— who are the only significant Palestinian casualties in this war. It is this perceptual regime that lays behind comments such as the following, made by a US government official, just a few days ago: “We believe that a ceasefire right now benefits Hamas, and Hamas is the only one that would gain from that right now.” The thought that thousands of Palestinian children might also derive some benefit from a ceasefire, namely by not being blown to pieces, is not even to be entertained.

The erasure of enemy deaths is an established practice within war, and the deaths of children are no exception. Thousands of children were killed by the US in the “War on Terror.” These deaths never achieved significant visibility within American public discourse, never weighed heavily on the American political conscience.

Our mainstream media present us today with two events that cannot be squared, the war on Palestinian children and the war on Hamas, and then proceed to coach us in how not to see one of them. This is the task in perception management that today sets their agenda.

Emphasis Mine

Americans and Israelis then ask themselves, "Why do they hate us?" Their enemies see the torn bodies of children amid the rubble of bombs dropped from the sky, and their rage is born. There is no international court to bring the perpetrators to justice. Both the USA and Israel are not members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as they have not ratified the Rome Statute.

The reasons Israel gives for not ratifying are:

Israel states that it has "deep sympathy" with the goals of the Court. However, it has concerns that political pressure on the Court would lead it to reinterpret international law or to "invent new crimes". It cites the inclusion of "the transfer of parts of the civilian population of an occupying power into occupied territory" as a war crime as an example of this, whilst at the same time disagrees with the exclusion of terrorism and drug trafficking. Israel sees the powers given to the prosecutor as excessive and the geographical appointment of judges as disadvantaging Israel which was prevented from joining any of the UN Regional Groups.

In other words, the ICC is a good idea except for the war crimes that Israel is committing through creating settlements in the occupied territories.

The attitude of the USA towards the ICC is even more belligent:

The United States "adopted a hostile stance towards the Court throughout most of the Bush presidency." In 2002, Congress enacted the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), which was signed into law on August 2, 2002; the "overriding purpose of the ASPA was to inhibit the U.S. government from supporting the ICC." Major provisions of the ASPA blocked U.S. funding of the ICC and required the U.S. "to enter into agreements with all ICC signatory states to shield American citizens abroad from ICC jurisdiction, under the auspices of Article 98 of the Rome Statute," which bars the ICC "from prosecuting individuals located on the territory of an ICC member state, where such action by the Court would cause the member state to violate the terms of any other bilateral or multilateral treaty to which it is a party." Traditionally, Article 98 was used in relation to traditional status of forces agreements (SOFAs) and status of mission agreements (SOMAs), in which nations hosting U.S. military personnel by invitation agreed to immunize them from prosecution in foreign courts. The Bush administration, supported by opponents of the ICC in Congress, adopted a new strategy of aggressively pursuing Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs), "which guarantee immunity from ICC prosecution for all American citizens in the country with which the agreement is concluded" rather than just U.S. military forces. "Under the original ASPA, nations who refused to conclude BIAs with the United States were subject to sanctions, including the loss of military aid (though these provisions have since been repealed)." As of December 2006, the U.S. State Department reported that it had signed 102 BIAs. In 2002, the United States threatened to veto the renewal of all United Nations peacekeeping missions unless its troops were granted immunity from prosecution by the Court. In a compromise move, the Security Council passed Resolution 1422 on 12 July 2002, granting immunity to personnel from ICC non-states parties involved in United Nations established or authorized missions for a renewable twelve-month period. This was renewed for twelve months in 2003 but the Security Council refused to renew the exemption again in 2004, after pictures emerged of US troops abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and the US withdrew its demand.

The problem is how to bring two (2) terrorist states to justice? The USA protects Israel, and the USA is currently the global hegemon. The boot of the USA is upon all of our necks.