Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The civil society human rights NGO DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now) has submitted a detailed filing to the International Criminal Court in the Hague urging that Joe Biden, Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin be indicted for war crimes for their deep involvement in prosecuting the genocide in Gaza.
The 172-page filing argues that “President Biden has made a “significant contribution” to the commission of the Israeli Crimes by providing Israel with massive military aid, in the form of funds, weapons, intelligence sharing and active involvement in Israel’s military operations outside of the Gaza Strip.”
DAWN points out that Biden increased military assistance to Israel by at least 381% in the year and a quarter after the October 7 attacks.
Biden went around Congress, which is supposed to conduct a review of weapons sales abroad, unilaterally selling to Israel $250 million in weapons on December 2023. This allowed for the “transfers of 120mm tank shells and 155mm artillery shells,” as well as “approving and overseeing 100 FMS [Foreign Military Sales] to Israel since October 2023, the existence of which was only disclosed thanks to “a recent classified briefing” in March 2024 by U.S. officials before Congress.”
DAWN points out, “The exact same weapons were subsequently used in January, February and May 2024, with Israeli forces firing 120mm tank shells in attacks respectively killing six-year-old Hind Rajab and two paramedics, killing two people and injured six others in a Medecins Sans Frontieres guesthouse, as well as the firing of three tank shells into a humanitarian zone.”
The reference to the girl child Hind Rajab is poignant.
Hind Rajab was a five-year-old Palestinian child from Gaza. As her family attempted to flee the unrelenting shelling in Tel al-Hawa, their vehicle was struck by an Israeli tank. It was a family car, so this firing seems to have targeted civilians, a war crime. Hind miraculously survived the initial onslaught, only to be abandoned in the gore-drenched automobile amid the lifeless bodies of her loved ones. She tearfully implored emergency responders to rescue her over the phone. Doctors without Borders got permission to send an ambulance for her, but Israeli troops obliterated the rescue vehicle, leaving Hind to bleed out in sight of her parents’ corpses. DAWN is saying that Joe Biden provided the weapons with which the Israelis repeatedly committed such atrocities against civilians.
In April of last year, they say, Biden signed a bill giving Israel $3.5 billion in military aid, waiving Congressional oversight in a way that is not true for any other country.
Biden also repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council Resolutions demanding an end to Israeli attacks on Gaza, allowing the Strip to be pulverized into rubble and the killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Biden admitted that he knew the Israelis were firing indiscriminately on Gaza (a war crime) and nevertheless said he would stick with them.
That makes him an accomplice. DAWN points out that according to the Rome Statute “the accomplice does not need to share the specific intent to commit the principal crimes. The aider or abettor must only intend its own actions while being “aware of [the] essential elements” of these crimes.”
Building of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, 12 May 2019; Author OSeveno; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license; via Wikimedia Commons.
As for the awful Secretary of State Antony Blinken, DAWN observes that “the Secretary of State is required to assess the eligibility of arms transfers to foreign security units under the Leahy Laws. As such, he must ensure that no U.S. weapons are transferred to foreign security units if credible information indicates they have committed gross violations of human rights, unless the recipient government has held accountable the security force members responsible for the violations.”
Even though Blinken witnessed Israeli forces clearly commit terrible violations of human rights, he never allowed the Leahy Act to be invoked against Israel, provoking several outraged resignations from the State Department.
Since the Leahy Act was passed in the late 1990s, the State Department has cut off dozens of countries from U.S. arms. But Blinken ensured that not a single Israeli military unit was denied American weapons for atrocities against Palestinians.
Biden, Blinken and Austin took international law as it developed after WW II and threw it in the trash can. The US had been a champion of the Geneva Conventions, but under Biden they became a dead letter.
Lest anyone think this filing is partisan, DAWN is also urging the ICC to investigate Trump for placing sanctions on ICC judges (a violation of the Rome Statute) and for his plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians of Gaza, a serious war crime.
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