Basic Strategy: Leveraging Law & ICJ Advisory Opinion
A simple 3 point plan that citizens can take part in.
Here follows my idea for a strategy that could be developed for use by citizens around the globe against the criminal, rogue state of Israel.
I ask all readers for feedback and whether you would consider being involved to support its development, deployment and implementation.
There are three basic arms of the strategy:
Use of the ICC's crime reporting form to report Israel's specific sponsors for complicity etc, starting with states that ratified the Rome Statute
Convincing more UN member states to open ICJ cases against complicit sponsor states, in order to weaponise law against them and Israel, to ultimately cut off and kill all support for Israel
Multi-level (citizen grass roots to institutional) campaign to suspend or eject Israel from United Nations
Each arm can involve citizen lobby and direct citizen action e.g. petition/letter writing/crime reporting. Point 1 hinges significantly on this by submitting crime reports to the ICC as formal submissions to force the ICC to investigate Israel's sponsors. The UK, CAN & EU are prime targets.
In Nov ‘23 I created the campaign at reportwarcrimes.substack.com to report the UK to the ICC for complicity in war crimes and genocide, got hundreds of people involved and made a UK news site, declassifieduk.org aware, who then created their own campaign based on the same principles.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/information-for-activism/
Point 1 also features a sub action that focuses on contacting key pro-Palestine figures, activists etc and encouraging them to actively use the ICC crime reporting form themselves and publicly promote it in their audiences. There is actually a lower level weaponisation of this strategy which I could explain further.
Point 2 is a form of legitimate lawfare at the nation state level. If Yemen and Lebanon are legitimately assisting Palestine to fight an illegal occupation, any or all three could and should follow the SAF example in the ICJ and themselves submit cases to the ICJ targeting UK, USA etc as sponsors and co-beligerents of Israel all guilty of complicity, joint venture etc in war crimes and genocide. Those nations could be aided by people who can quickly generate the necessary case paperwork and work efficiently, at high speed to get cases lodged in the ICJ to ramp up pressure against the sponsors and then drive the media cycle to work against them as well.
Point 3 has two angles. First, Israel is a member of the UN but fails to obey any of the fundamental tenets and structures of it, rather like being a member of Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Association but turning up to play in football boots and kicking every serve straight out and claiming it won the point. All other members must question the validity of Israel's membership if it doesn't recognise or conform to the institution. Also, in 2016 Israel reformed its anti-terror laws in ways that are unsurprising. When Israel recently declared the UN a “terrorist entity” and “terrorist organisation” it instantly put itself in an untenable position: to remain in the UN is to contravene its own anti-terror laws. It should therefore be encouraged to choose to either retract its statement and conform to the UN or lead the world in leaving the UN terror organisation and carving a path true to its internal laws. No doubt such a righteous stance will inspire others to act accordingly. Or it will be humiliated and further isolated.
I have put the above to a variety of citizens in different media and they all get the concepts and agree, once they are helped to understand that the issues around UNSC veto are simply neither important nor a reason to not follow this strategy, because its gross value lies in all of the political capital and theatre that occurs just in the public sphere, the UNGA and UN processes that might eventually arrive at the UNSC. The damage to Israel gets done through all of this and therefore the leverage on these criminal parties comes from these early stages. Anything at the UNSC is a bonus, no matter the outcome. This strategy is not contingent on finally achieving Israel's expulsion from the UN, but in the journey trying to get to that point.
Personally, I believe in genuinely pursuing actual criminal trials for the nation of Israel and its sponsors, and in Israel's UN expulsion. I have no qualms about it. I also believe that the USA needs to have its bluff called with regard to its “invade The Hague” act, which is largely impractical nonsense, especially if several nations are reported at once. The ridiculousness of the USA actually invading, politically or physically, the Netherlands, to protect criminals would further damage its standing in a time of empire decline and high vulnerability. This can be politically exploited by those with the will and skill.
I am a realist. I believe the value of this strategy is in its fundamental simplicity, applicability to the common man to understand and do aspects of it, its legitimate use of legal tools (ICC crime reporting form, ICJ process, BDS connection etc) that are totally justified by the ICJ Advisory Opinion and the very existence of the relevant Conventions, and the way to empower and direct already prominent persons and/or states already in conflict/at war to act in these ways to more aggressively shut down the US hegemony and its toxic, illegal, colonial strategy in the Middle East.
I recognise that there are serious implications around pushing a rogue state to the brink, especially when fanatics with illegal nukes are involved, but we are some way away from that point on a purely military basis, let alone a political and legal basis.
In the medium to long term, I believe concerted, strategic and global speech and organisation using something like the above could accelerate positive change throughout the UN (law- versus rules-based order, US unilateral abuse of the institution), finally confront Israel's illegal nuclear program and, most pressingly hold Israel and its sponsors to account for its current genocidal crimes while putting the likely corrupt ICC and crucial ICJ on the spot to fulfil their true roles.
Please feel free to provide feedback on the above in the comments or on email (semmelweisz@protonmail.com) or substack message.
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf