The ICC’s accusations against Israel are unfounded and the data proves it

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Canada played very important role In the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an order Due to the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday. Prime minister Justin Trudeau said will comply with the court’s decision. But Canada should not do such a thing because the court betrayed its authority by transparently leveling false accusations in a case over which it had no jurisdiction.

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ICC prosecutor Karim Khan initially implemented The main accusation against Netanyahu and Gallant for their arrest warrants in May was “starving civilians as a method of warfare”. But as he wrote these words, a wave of aid was pouring into Gaza.

Following the October 7 massacre, Israeli authorities suspended aid deliveries to Gaza as they tried to regain their composure in the face of the devastating surprise attack. However, aid soon resumed and United Nations data It showed that the number of trucks delivering their goods increased for three months.

However, there was a sudden decline in February 2024. Despite their mutual hostility, UN agencies and Israeli officials worked to improve the situation. While 2 thousand 874 trucks reached Gaza in February, this number increased to 4 thousand 993 in March and 5 thousand 671 in April.

Despite this increase, warnings that Gaza is on the brink of disaster have increased. What gave rise to this fear was this: an evaluation by the UN-backed famine monitoring system known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC. For experts worldwide, IPC is the gold standard in famine monitoring. In the middle of March, IPC warned “Famine is coming” and will hit Gaza within two months.

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IPC provides a lot of employment specific definition including famine excess death “At least two deaths per 10,000 people per day” means that if there were a strike in Gaza, there would be hundreds of deaths every day, not from violent conflict, but simply from starvation.

As the two-month forecast window drew to a close, it became clear that there was no famine. The Hamas-run Government Media Office in Gaza reported: 41 total deaths From malnutrition throughout the war. These were tragic losses, but they are not evidence of Israeli malevolence.

IPC in May Famine Review Committee It found that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the situation in Gaza met the criteria for famine. He released a post in late June. new quarterly review “The amount of food and non-food goods entering the northern provinces has increased,” he said, adding, “Current evidence does not indicate that there is currently a famine.”

In March the IPC found that: 30 percent 50% of Gaza residents experience the most severe form of deprivation and scored five on the IPC’s five-point scale. This is until mid October six percent.

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One has to read the IPC publications with a magnifying glass to find any clues as to why their predictions turned out to be so wrong. The October report cited a “temporary surge in humanitarian aid” with no indication of who was responsible. Western media mostly covered the IPC’s persistent warnings that conditions could worsen at any time.

This brings us back to the ICC and its claim that Israel is deliberately starving the people of Gaza. Aid organizations frequently complain that Israeli authorities delay their shipments, turn away their trucks at the last minute and impose burdensome paperwork requirements. Yet Israeli data It shows that more than 57,000 trucks have brought cargo to Gaza since the beginning of the war, carrying more than 1.1 million tons of goods.

The full contents of the ICC arrest warrants are secret, but the ICC summary of the charges alleges that Netanyahu and Gallant’s “conduct led to the disruption of the ability of humanitarian organizations to provide food and other essential goods to the population in need in Gaza.” The facts say otherwise.

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Israel’s alleged hunger campaign is the focus of the ICC’s accusations, although this is not the only accusation leveled against Netanyahu and Gallant. There is no way to separate the weakness of this charge from the weakness of the case as a whole, revealing just how politicized the court has become.

Israel, like the United States, is not a party to the Rome Statute and is therefore not subject to the court’s jurisdiction. To conduct an investigation into Israeli leaders, the court had to expand its jurisdiction to the breaking point, arguing that it had jurisdiction because Israel’s actions occurred within the “State of Palestine.”

Some may see this as legal innovation for a noble cause, but there is a double standard. The ICC has not issued any arrest warrants for Chinese leaders responsible for the cultural genocide of their country’s Uyghur Muslim minority.

There is no arrest warrant for Bashar Assad, whose regime tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of Syrians. The court also did not pursue Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose regime supports Assad, Hamas and other violent terrorist organizations. Rather, it is the Jewish state that the ICC has chosen to target.

Canada has a strong commitment to international law, but when the instrument of that law, the ICC, turns out to be so flawed, it would be an even greater injustice to respect its dictates.

National Post

David Adesnik is vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC.

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