I was not upset at all by the verdict find former president Donald Trump guilty. I have wondered what to note this weekend though. I think I will just go with this DEMOCRACY NOW! segment from Friday's show.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Former President Donald Trump will be sentenced July 11th, four days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, after a New York jury found him guilty Thursday on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up payments made to Stormy Daniels in order to protect his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has vowed to appeal, also faces three more criminal cases.
For more, we’re joined by professor Manisha Sinha, historian of U.S. politics, slavery, abolition, the legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, professor at the University of Connecticut and author of several books, including The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.
Professor, you last joined us on the day after the January 6th insurrection. Welcome back to Democracy Now! First, respond to this historic moment in U.S. history, not just U.S. politics, the first former president to become a felon.
MANISHA SINHA: Thank you for having me, Amy.
Yes, it is extremely unprecedented, because we have never had a case in United States history when a former president has been not only impeached twice, but also is now a convicted felon. Of course, there have been instances of corruption amongst presidents and vice presidents, but mostly they have resigned, before they could be convicted, and they have been pardoned. What’s unusual about Trump’s case is the extent of the criminality, the various cases against him, and now this unanimous jury decision convicting him for falsifying business records, but also, most importantly, for trying to corrupt the 2016 elections.
All this is unprecedented in the history of American republicanism. As so much that concerns Trump, he wears this as a badge of honor. He seems unrepentant even in the face of all these convictions. So, yes, I think we are, in fact, at a crossroads in the history of American republicanism. And a man like Trump could very much upend this over-200-year historical experiment in representative government.
AMY GOODMAN: So, it’s not clear what will happen July 11th, except that he will be sentenced by Judge Merchan. He could sentence him to up to four years in prison. It’s highly unlikely he would do that. He could sentence him to house arrest. He could be out on probation. But if you can talk about the political significance of right before the Republican convention, what this means? You have a president now, a presidential candidate, who represents a lot of firsts in U.S. history: the first former president to be indicted, criminally tried, convicted, impeached twice. Talk about his legacy and what this means as the Republican front-runner.
MANISHA SINHA: Yes. I think one of the most dangerous things about Trump is that he’s not a one-man show. He is the presumptive nominee of a political party in a two-party system. That in itself poses an immense danger, I think, to American democracy.
He’s also now a convicted felon, as you mentioned. It’s a Class E felony. He may not go to prison, but he is in the same category as those people who do carjackings or those who are accused of aggravated domestic assault. Now, this is a category of criminality that he is a part of.
And I cannot help but think that any right-thinking American citizen, even a moderate Republican, would have to think about that. I don’t think that this conviction, as many have argued, will actually increase his support. Those — a minority that supported him will always support him, because there have been so many acts of criminality and wrongdoing that have preceded this. I do think, though, that this will make an enormous difference to moderates, independents, will make them think twice — do they want to actually vote for a felon? — especially a party that pretends to stand for law and order.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we spoke to you the day after the January 6th insurrection in 2021, Professor Sinha. In fact, you were among the historians included in one of the biggest briefs in Trump v. Colorado. Your work was also quoted. Can you talk about this case in the context of your new book, which focuses on the Reconstruction era and when the 14th Amendment was ratified? And explain it all.
MANISHA SINHA: Yes. You know, I, as a historian, really do feel that our present is shaped by the past. We are not exactly repeating history, but we live with those legacies. And in my book, when I look at this period, Reconstruction, that immediately followed the Civil War, I talk a lot about how ex-Confederates, insurrectionists, got away, literally, with murder, right? They launched a program of domestic terrorism. They have committed treason against the government of the United States. And very soon, because of an amnesty law, they’re back in power. They may have lost the war, but they win the peace.
And that represents what I call a nadir in American democracy. I don’t think many American citizens may be even aware that we have lost our democracy for decades, certainly in the South, where it was open season on freed people, and you had a regime of racial terror, segregation and disfranchisement for Black men, and later on Black women. And I don’t think we can today go down a path where we similarly have a completely emasculated democracy. We live with the legacies of that period, as I mentioned to you.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is a Reconstruction-era amendment, is a sleeping giant. It does prevent someone who has participated in or aided and abetted an insurrection from ever running for federal office, someone who has sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. And the only way that person can do that is to be pardoned by Congress by a two-thirds vote.
Now, it was very disappointing to me that the Supreme Court, in the Trump v. Colorado case, decided — including the liberal judges — that Trump in fact is not liable under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. In fact, he is. It’s a very clear disqualification. Now, Congress could take away the disqualification for him. The idea that this would create a patchwork system, where different states would then take Biden off the ballot, actually does not work, because Biden has not led an insurrection against the government of the United States or proven false to his oath of office. This would be actually a national disqualification, even though the case stemmed from Colorado. So, our Supreme Court did not have, I think, the moral courage or judicial courage to do this. They thought only expediently about the political fallout from their decision.
Instead, 12 ordinary American citizens defended our democracy. And this is exactly what Abraham Lincoln said on the eve of the Civil War, that the fate of our democracy actually lies in the hands not of the rich and powerful, but in the hands of ordinary American citizens. And if you look at the jurors, a lot of them didn’t seem to me particularly anti-Trump. In fact, I thought maybe there’s going to be a hung jury, even though the prosecution had an airtight case. So, for this decision to come down sort of renews my faith in democracy, that if ordinary people, ordinary citizens, get the chance to really deliberate on Trump’s many crimes and misdemeanors, then perhaps we will get a right decision.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end by asking you about a related story in the Supreme Court. Of course, President Trump appointed three of the nine Supreme Court justices. And I wanted to ask you about this latest controversy around Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who told Congress he will not recuse himself from cases involving Donald Trump and the January 6th Capitol insurrection, after photos emerged of two flags associated with election deniers flying in front of Alito’s homes in Virginia and New Jersey. He said his wife did it. One of those, an upside-down American flag. So there are many who are demanding that he recuse himself from these cases. He says no. Your response, Professor Sinha?
MANISHA SINHA: Yes. You know, the Supreme Court, in U.S. history, has not distinguished itself as a defender of democracy. Think of Dred Scott. Think of Plessy v. Ferguson. The Warren Court, during the civil rights era, emerges as an exception.
We’ve had partisan judges before, but we have not had corrupt judges. We have not had judges sympathetic to insurrection against the government of the United States, whether it was Alito and his wife, whether it is Thomas or his wife. These two judges are clearly involved in planned insurrection against the government of the United States, or at least displaying their sympathy for it very openly by flying an upside-down American flag, which is a sign of disrespect, and the “Appeal to the Heavens” flag. The idea of simply, you know, passing the buck on —
AMY GOODMAN: The “Appeal to Heavens” flag is that pine tree flag.
MANISHA SINHA: Exactly. The passing the buck onto his wife seems really ironic for somebody like Alito, who has taken away women’s fundamental right to decide for themselves how and what they do with their bodies. He has taken away reproductive freedom from a majority of women, and now he tells us that he bowed to the decision of his wife to display flags that were sympathetic to the January 6th insurrectionists.
You mentioned that you had interviewed me immediately the day after. And even though I am a historian who has studied American history and knows that there have been instances of grave danger to democracy in U.S. history, I was shocked. And you could see the shock in my face.
To have a justice of the Supreme Court, who is supposed to uphold the highest laws of the country, be an active participant in this sort of behavior is just astounding. And the shamelessness of it is similarly astounding, that he would — after being sort of outed by the press, that he would refuse to recuse himself. Frankly, I think both Thomas and Alito are completely compromised, besides being very corrupt. They should either resign or, at the very least, recuse themselves.
And I think it’s about time for the Democrats to take a more aggressive position on this. At this point, we are not talking about some slight convention that has been upturned. This is a real threat to American rights and freedom. And we need to — you know, Biden likes to compare himself to FDR. Well, then, think about packing the court. Think about judicial reform. We need to act against this. We cannot just let Alito decide for himself, because he’s clearly incapable of making the right decision.
AMY GOODMAN: Manisha Sinha, we want to thank you for being with us, historian of U.S. politics, slavery, abolition, the legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, professor at the University of Connecticut.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
The jury, composed of 12 Manhattan residents, found that Trump illegally falsified business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. They found him guilty on all counts on their second day of deliberations.
The presumptive Republican nominee for president is now also a convicted felon, a label that could reverberate across the electorate in the months between now and Election Day in November.
The verdict was handed down in the same Manhattan courtroom where Trump has been on trial for the past six weeks. Trump stared at each juror as they confirmed their vote to convict and angrily denounced the decision in the hallway outside the courtroom, vowing to fight the conviction.
Jurors sided with prosecutors who said that Trump authorized the plan to falsify checks and related records in an effort to prevent voters from learning of an alleged sexual encounter with Daniels. Prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office said the conspiracy spanned his 2016 campaign and continued well into his first year in the White House. Trump denied having sex with Daniels and pleaded not guilty.
Alito is crooked and he's disgusting. John Fritze (CNN) reports:
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told lawmakers in a letter Wednesday that he will not recuse from cases involving the 2020 presidential election or the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot despite concerns about two controversial flags that have flown on his properties.
“The two incidents you cite do not meet the conditions for recusal,” Alito wrote in a letter distributed by the Supreme Court. “As I have stated publicly, I had nothing whatsoever to do with the flying of that flag. I was not even aware of the upside-down flag until it was called to my attention.”
The letter is a highly unusual response, underscoring how the revelations about the flags have dogged Alito for days. Supreme Court justices rarely get into a back-and-forth with lawmakers and many members of the court do not explain their reasons for recusing – or not.
No, you stupid sack of s**t. Your thoughts don't matter. It's how it appears to the public. If there's the appearance of a possible conflict of interest, it is your job to recuse yourself. Failure to do so damages the Court's reputation and destroys the trust in the institution.
You're are full of garbage and you are a crook.
Alito started his letter by sharing portions of the Code of Conduct for the Supreme Court, which states that justices should disqualify or recuse themselves if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” or if there was “doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”
Alito then claimed that news about controversial flags outside his homes didn’t rise to that standard. He went on to write that “an unbiased and reasonable person” would come to the same conclusion he did, and blamed his wife for flying the emblems. Notably, Alito’s explanations are hearsay — he doesn’t offer any proof for his claims other than his own words.
[Senator Dick] Durbin, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, responded to Alito’s letter by stating that it “clearly demonstrates why the Supreme Court needs an enforceable code of conduct.”
“Flying the American flag upside down at his home is a signal of defiance, which raises reasonable questions about bias and fairness in cases pending before the Court,” Durbin said, adding that Chief Justice John Roberts could “end this spiraling decline in America’s confidence in our highest Court by taking decisive action to establish a credible code of conduct.”
Alito’s excuses contradict comments he’s made on ethics standards in the past — during his 2006 confirmation hearings, Alito tried to sell himself to senators as going “beyond the letter of the ethics rules,” implying that he would “avoid any situation where there might be an ethical question raised.”
Others said that Alito’s excuses were unconvincing.
“It absolutely defies common sense and credibility,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said in response to Alito’s letter, describing his words as a “flimsy excuse.”
“This is not a persuasive voice of the ‘reasonable person.’ No justice should be the judge in his own recusal case,” Wendy Weiser, vice president for Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, said on social media.
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, asserted
that "this case was always about hiding key information from voters, and
now a jury of the former president's peers have confirmed that he lied
to the public by falsifying business records in order to influence the
outcome of the 2016 election."
"This is a felony punishable with jail time or probation, and just like anyone else convicted of the same crime, we expect him to be sentenced accordingly," Lerner added. "We thank the jury—whom Mr. Trump and his lawyers helped to select—for doing their civic duty, and trust that the public will accept their decision as well as their right to privacy. Respect for the rule of law is the foundation of our democracy, but so is public trust in the process."
Sean Eldridge, founder and president of Stand Up America, said in a statement that "today's verdict reaffirms that no one is above the law in the United States of America, including a former president."
"Falsification of business records is a serious crime, and Trump is finally being held accountable like any other American would," he continued. "This verdict is not just about 'hush money payments.' It's about an illegal attempt to hide the truth from voters just days before the 2016 election, and it's part of Trump's clear pattern of doing anything—including breaking the law—in order to cling to power."
"Despite this monumental verdict, one trial isn't going to keep Trump out of the White House," Eldridge added. "The jurors have done their duty, and now it's up to the American people to protect our democracy by holding Trump accountable at the ballot box and ensuring that a convicted fraudster never steps foot in the Oval Office again."
People were saying their evening prayers when the IDF attacked the refuge camp at Tel al-Sultan in southern Gaza, where thousands had fled from the Israeli invasion of Rafah. They were told by the Israelis this was a safe zone, a secure place to shelter their children and grandparents.
“For your safety, the Israeli Defense Force is asking you to leave these areas immediately and to go to known shelters in Deir el Balah or the humanitarian area in Tel al-Sultan through Beach Road,” read one of the leaflets dropped in Rafah a few days before. “Don’t blame us after we warned you.”
The safe zone was a tent city amid the dunes–one of dozens scattered along more than 16 kilometers up the Gaza coast. The tents were made of plastic, which whipped and frayed in the coastal winds–a thin layer of protection against the sun and sand that soon turned into a death trap.
The lure of safety was the only thing Tel al-Sultan had going for it. The conditions in the camp were wretched. Thousands of starving people crammed together with little fresh water, meager rations, few toilets and nothing much to do except scavenge the beach for scraps of food, dig pit toilets in the sand and pray that someone will intervene to put an end to the war.
When the Israeli bombs strafed the safe zone, the plastic tents caught fire, sending flames leaping two meters high, before the melting, blazing structures collapsed on the people inside, many of them children who’d just been tucked in for the evening.
There was no water to put the flames out. No firetrucks to stop the inferno. No ambulances to rush the wounded to the hospital. No functioning hospital to treat the burned and the maimed.
At least 45 people, most of them women and children, were killed and nearly 300 injured with shrapnel wounds, burns, fractures and traumatic brain injuries.
“No single health facility in Gaza can handle a mass casualty event such as this one,” said Samuel Johann of Médecins Sans Frontières. “The health system has been decimated and cannot cope any longer.”
The attack came two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza, open the border crossings so food, water and medicine could reach the starving Palestinians and allow human rights investigators into the Strip. This malicious act of defiance against the edicts of international law occurred on the same day Israeli tanks entered the central region of Rafah in what the Israelis had basely billed as a “limited military operation.” In the first 48 hours after the ICJ ruling, Israel bombed Rafah at least 60 times.
Tel al-Sultan in western Rafah is an official displacement camp, so designated by the Israelis. The Israelis called it: “Block 2371.” It is located next to UN aid warehouses. Desperate Palestinian families were told they would be safe here. Then the Israelis set it on fire, claiming they were targeting two Hamas operatives. The IDF said it didn’t think civilians would be harmed when it bombed the refuge camp it had told civilians to flee to.
Disingenuousness is the IDF’s calling card these days. Yet after one massacre after another, perhaps only the Biden administration believes it. Most Israelis don’t. Some prominent Israelis cheered the burning of civilians. The Israeli TV journalist and newspaper columnist Yinon Magal posted a video of the burning refugee camp with the caption: “The central bonfire this year in Rafah”–a reference to the traditional bonfires for the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’Ome.
“I lost five family members,” said Majed al-Attar of the “bonfire.” “We were sitting in tents when suddenly the camp was bombed. I lost five family members, all burned completely. Among the victims were pregnant women. They kept telling us this area was safe until we were bombed.”
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Early last week, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court made headlines around the world when he announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges over the assault on Gaza. In his official announcement, Karim Khan also issued a warning.
KARIM KHAN: It is critical, in this moment, that my office and all parts of the court continue to conduct our work with full independence and impartiality. And I insist that all attempts to impede, to intimidate or to improperly influence the officials of this court cease immediately.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Khan did not specify what he was referring to regarding attempts to intimidate the court or interfere with its work. But a joint investigation by _The Guardian and the Israeli news outlet +972 this week reveals how Israel has run an almost decadelong secret war against the ICC in an attempt to derail the court from filing war crimes charges against Israeli officials.
The report details how Israel surveilled, hacked, smeared and threatened top ICC officials, including Khan and his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda. The investigation reveals that the former head of the Israeli Mossad, Yossi Cohen, personally threatened Bensouda, telling her, quote, “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family,” end-quote.
The news outlets also report that Netanyahu took a close interest in the intelligence operations against the ICC and was described by one intelligence source as being, quote, “obsessed” with the intercepts about the case.
AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli newspaper Haaretz today reports they were about to publish details about the Israeli intelligence operations against the ICC two years ago, but an Israeli security official blocked publication. The Haaretz reporter Gur Megiddo writes he was summoned to the office of an Israeli security official and was told if he published the story, he would, quote, “suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside,” end-quote.
The arrest warrants sought by the ICC against Netanyahu and Gallant include “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and “extermination” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Our first guest, Kenneth Roth, has a column in The Guardian newspaper published yesterday that begins, “I should not be surprised at the lawlessness of a government that bombs and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but I was still shocked by the shamelessness of Israel’s efforts to subvert the international criminal court’s investigation of its war crimes.”
Ken Roth joins us here in our New York studio. He’s a visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, served for nearly three decades as the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Ken, welcome back to Democracy Now!
KENNETH ROTH: Good to be back.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about the significance of this exposé. Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad, the intelligence agency, extremely close to Netanyahu, for 10 years leading this campaign to stop the ICC from bringing charges, can you talk about the significance of this and how it affected what Fatou Bensouda did, the previous ICC chief, and then Karim Khan?
KENNETH ROTH: Well, first, this is a crime. Karim Khan made that clear. I mean, when he issued that notice that any effort to intimidate or retaliate against prosecutorial staff will be an obstruction of justice, in essence, I thought he was referring to Republican senators who had threatened severe sanctions if Israeli officials are charged. But he clearly also had in mind what the Israeli Mossad had been doing, mainly to his predecessor.
Now, what’s interesting is the Israelis clearly misjudged Fatou Bensouda. One person is quoted as saying they thought of her as, you know, basically, merely Black and African, so who cares? — as they put it. But she is a tough woman. And she resisted, you know, these threats to her family, a sting operation against her husband. And she didn’t have to after that point, because the court authorized the investigation to go forward in February 2021, near the end of Bensouda’s term in June 2021. So, she could have just sat on it and let Karim Khan, her successor, take over. She didn’t. She actually opened the investigation a month later. And so, this really speaks to her bravery. And this effort backfired.
Now, I think the most significant ongoing effect of this, if we think back last week, Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, his main argument against Karim Khan charging Netanyahu and Gallant is what’s known as the principle of complementarity. That’s a rule under the court statute that the court should defer to genuine, good-faith national prosecutions. And Blinken basically said, “Israel’s got a, you know, sophisticated legal system. Let them handle it.”
What this shows is that this whole thing is a sham, that the Israeli investigations are not about securing justice, they’re about obstructing justice. And we’ve heard about this for years from B’Tselem, for example, the leading Israeli human rights group, that calls these whitewash investigations. You know, whenever there’s some incident and there’s international outrage, Israel announces an investigation. You then never hear anything further. But the announcement of the investigation pushes things off. They did something very similar with the ICC. They would listen in to what Bensouda or Khan were looking at, and they would say, “Aha, they’re interested in that incident? That’s” —
AMY GOODMAN: You mean they would eavesdrop.
KENNETH ROTH: Yes, they would eavesdrop. They would, you know, hack. And they would — so, they learned that the ICC prosecutor was interested in an incident, and they would start an investigation. And they would then send somebody in to The Hague, to the prosecutor’s office, and say, “You don’t need to look at this. We’ve got an investigation going.” And it sounded as if they were on top of it all. But, in fact, these were purely reactive investigations. They were not good-faith investigations. And I think that this whole hacking and surveillance and threatening incident gives the lie to Blinken’s argument that Karim Khan should defer to Israeli justice efforts. These are not good-faith justice efforts. These are cover-up efforts.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ken, if you could just put this in the context of — I mean, why would Israel go to such extraordinary lengths to compromise the International Criminal Court? If you could give us some background, because does the International Criminal Court have any enforcement mechanism? What is the symbolic weight of decisions taken by the court? If you could place this in the broader context of what decisions and investigations and prosecutions the ICC has launched and made before, and explain in that context why Israel has done this decadelong attempt to subvert the court’s work?
KENNETH ROTH: Well, the International Criminal Court is the world’s leading war crimes tribunal, in essence. And nobody wants to be charged with war crimes or crimes against humanity, you know, as both Netanyahu and Gallant are about to be done, because the prosecutor has requested arrest warrants based on, basically, starvation charges in Gaza. And, you know, no one wants that, first of all, because it means that if you travel to any ICC country, including all of Europe, including in more than a hundred governments around the world, they have a duty to arrest you and send you to The Hague for trial. So, you know, there are real consequences, and you can end up in prison. So, nobody wants that.
And that’s why Netanyahu was seen as obsessed with this, because, you know, it’s not as if what goes on in Gaza, or even in the West Bank, are low-level operations. These are very much directed from the top. You know, Netanyahu is commander-in-chief. And so, he understood his criminal liability. And he seemed determined, you know, not to change the conduct, not to say, “Oh my goodness, are we committing war crimes in Gaza? Let me stop that right away.” No, he just, you know, let it keep going and tried to obstruct the investigation that might lead to his prosecution for war crimes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could say — I mean, it was in 1998, July 1998, that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted. The vote was 120 to 7. Twenty-one countries abstained. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the U.S. and Yemen. And Israel’s opposition was reportedly stemming from the inclusion in the list of war crimes of, quote, “the action of transferring population into occupied territory.” And that’s effectively what’s happened.
KENNETH ROTH: Well, what we’re speaking to now is something that has been going on long before this Gaza war. The settlements are war crimes. They violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its population to occupied territory. And the ICC statute, the Rome Statute, codifies that crime. So, you know, Israel has been vulnerable to this charge. It still is vulnerable to this charge. I would like to see Karim Khan bring that charge at some stage, because it’s a straightforward case. You know, there’s no complicated facts behind it. It’s just happening out in the open. So, that is a vulnerability.
The U.S. opposed partly because of that, but also the U.S. was concerned with what’s known as territorial jurisdiction, the fact that the court has the power to prosecute somebody for crimes committed on the territory of a court member, even if the person’s own country has never ratified the court’s treaty. Now, the U.S. hated that because it could mean Americans are vulnerable. And indeed, there was an investigation that Fatou Bensouda opened in Afghanistan that threatened Bush-era torturers. But the U.S. gave up on that objection, because it was territorial jurisdiction that the court used to prosecute Putin in Ukraine, and Biden said that was justified. In fact, you know, Lindsey Graham, the leading Republican senator, led a unanimous resolution in the Senate that affirmed this use of territorial jurisdiction. So, that objection is gone.
They still say, “Oh, well, Palestine is not really a state.” But the court has addressed that already and said, you know, the U.N. General Assembly found it to be a nonmember observer state. That’s sufficient for it to ratify a whole host of human rights treaties that we should welcome, as well as the Rome Statute of the ICC. So, that objection is pretty much gone.
And that’s why Antony Blinken fell back on this principle of complementarity: You should defer to good-faith Israeli investigations. And what this latest Guardian/+972 investigation shows is there is no good-faith Israeli investigation. There is a concerted, high-level effort to undermine justice to protect Netanyahu, Gallant and others from war crime charges.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Karim Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, who announced in 2019 that she intended to investigate alleged atrocities during Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza. She said at the time there was a, quote, “reasonable basis” to argue Israeli authorities are guilty of war crimes for relocating Israeli civilians into the West Bank to live in settlements.
FATOU BENSOUDA: I am satisfied, one, that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip; two, that potential cases arising from the situation would be admissible; and, hree, that there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interest of justice.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Fatou Bensouda back in 2019. She opened this case in 2021. And I wanted to ask you more about her. The Guardian writes, quote, “As a Gambian national, she did not enjoy the political protection that other ICC colleagues from western countries had by virtue of their citizenship. A former ICC source said this left her 'vulnerable and isolated'.” They went after her husband. They went after her. And then I want to ask you about the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, that The Guardian reported on, Joseph Kabila, and how they used him. This is an amazing meeting.
KENNETH ROTH: Well, first, Fatou Bensouda is a tough woman. I met with her numerous times. She is super professional. She is dedicated to justice. She knew she was facing threats. And she just persisted. And that’s really to her credit. I think the Israelis totally underestimated her. They thought that she could be pushed over with these threats, and it totally didn’t happen.
Now, Joseph Kabila, the Congolese president, is an interesting case. I’ve met with him multiple times. On the one hand, he handed over more suspects to the ICC than any other president in the world. So, he is somebody who Bensouda legitimately was meeting with. But the Mossad head, wanting to meet with Bensouda, knowing that she would not accept a meeting just like that, probably paid off Kabila. I mean, who knows? But Kabila is notoriously corrupt. And so, Bensouda is meeting with Kabila, and in pops the head of the Mossad, which Kabila authorized. They called it an “ambush.” And that was, you know, how the head of the Mossad set up an opportunity to communicate with Bensouda. And, you know, am I surprised that Kabila would do this? No. But that was the kind of underhanded methods that the Israeli Mossad chief used to try to begin the process of threatening Bensouda.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Wasn’t Kabila himself being investigated for war crimes or atrocities in war?
KENNETH ROTH: Well, I mean, Kabila was vulnerable for, you know, for example, his forces shooting at demonstrators when he was trying to hang on to the presidency beyond the end of his term. But, in fact, he was never the subject of a major ICC investigation. Those were mostly focused on groups in eastern Congo, where, you know, he was having — doing what he could to stop it. So, I don’t think he felt threatened by the ICC, and had a cooperative relationship with Bensouda.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, talk about what happened to Al-Haq and how they were eavesdropped on when they would relate to — this is the Ramallah-based human rights group —
KENNETH ROTH: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — and ultimately being called a terrorist organization.
KENNETH ROTH: Yeah. Well, Al-Haq is a super respected Palestinian human rights group. I’ve worked with them for decades. In fact, I just did a webinar yesterday with its head. And they were communicating regularly with the ICC, because they have field operatives throughout the West Bank and Gaza. They would collect solid evidence, and they would pass it on to the ICC, because they wanted to see Israeli war crimes prosecuted.
The Israelis learned about this because they were monitoring Bensouda’s communications with all Palestinians. And essentially, in retaliation, the Israelis called Al-Haq and five of its colleague organizations terrorist organizations, a label that remains there to this day. Now, they haven’t actually shut them down, but it was the effort to say, “These are illegitimate groups. You know, don’t rely on them.” And it was a punishment of them, in essence, for cooperating with the ICC.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Israel is intensifying its attack — so, if we could just go to what’s unfolding at the moment? Israel is intensifying its attack on the southern city of Rafah. On Tuesday, the White House said that Israel’s devastating airstrike on a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah does not cross President Biden’s so-called red line in Gaza. Sunday’s attack, which set off a fire in the camp, killed 45 Palestinians and injured over 200, mostly women and children. An investigation by CNN found Israel attacked the camp using munitions made in the United States by Boeing. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby was questioned Tuesday by Ed O’Keefe of CBS News.
ED O’KEEFE: How does this not violate the red line that the president laid out?
JOHN KIRBY: As I said, we don’t want to see a major ground operation. We haven’t seen that at this point.
ED O’KEEFE: How many more charred corpses does he have to see before the president considers a change in policy?
JOHN KIRBY: We don’t want to see a single more innocent life taken. And I kind of take a little offense at the question. No civilian casualties is the right number of civilian casualties. And this is not something that we’ve turned a blind eye to, nor has it been something we’ve ignored or neglected to raise with our Israeli counterparts, including, Ed, this weekend as a result of this particular strike. Now, they’re investigating it, so let’s let them investigate it and see what they come up with.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Ken, if you could respond to Kirby’s response, and then, overall, the Biden administration’s position on this and, in fact, on the ICC, which you referred to earlier?
KENNETH ROTH: Well, Biden seems to have an endlessly movable red line. And he, you know, rightly, at the rhetorical level, keeps pushing the Israeli government to allow in food and other humanitarian supplies, to take greater care not to harm Israeli civilians — it’s all the right thing to say. He never backs it up. The only consequence he’s imposed so far has been he did stop delivery of these huge 2,000-pound bombs that Israel was using to decimate entire neighborhoods, and he didn’t want that to happen in Rafah. So, that’s to his credit. But then he turned around and authorized $1 billion in additional arms sales to Israel. So, that really kind of undercut the message there.
They’ve been saying, you know, “We don’t want this Rafah operation to harm civilians.” But Israel has now chased 1 million, out of the 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah, out of the city. And most of them are trying to survive on this beachfront camp with no food, no sanitation facilities, no medical aid, nothing. And it was near that area that this latest bomb that killed 45 people took place. But, you know, the International Court of Justice last week said these are horrendous conditions. You know, this is not a safe response to this Rafah military operation. But Biden is closing his eyes to that and says, “We haven’t seen any real problems yet.” You know, it’s proceeding. So the red line keeps moving.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do you think — finally, Ken, what do you think is going to come out of this investigation, The Guardian and +972 investigation, and revelations about what Israel did to subvert the work of the ICC?
KENNETH ROTH: Well, it will be interesting to see whether Karim Khan does in fact use Article 70 of the Rome Statute to prosecute, in essence, obstruction of justice. You know, the sense I got from his statement a week and a half ago was that he was not going to apply that retroactively, but if anything like this happens again, he would use it. I think the most significant effect will be that Israel is going to try to defend itself using this principle of complementarity, saying, “We’re investigating ourselves,” and I think the real effect of this investigation is to really undermine the credibility of any self-investigation claim.
AMY GOODMAN: Kenneth Roth, we want to thank you for being with us, visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, served for nearly three decades as executive director of Human Rights Watch. We’ll link to your piece in The Guardian. It’s headlined “The ICC spying revelations show the Israeli government to be a lawless regime.”
The World Health Organisation has paid tribute two Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics who were killed in an Israeli air strike in Rafah on Wednesday.
Healthcare is "not a target", the WHO said on X, formerly known as twitter.
"Health workers are protected under international humanitarian law and must always be able to safely perform their duties," it added.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that paramedics Haitham Tubasi and Suhail Hasouna were killed as a result of "the deliberate targeting" by Israeli forces of ambulance vehicles in the Tel Sultan area west of Rafah.
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