Albo goes MIA in these darkling times

Ramesh Thakur I 1 June 2024 I The Spectator Australia

For the first time, international bodies seriously damage the West

Anthony Albanese said in April 2022,

‘If I’m Prime Minister ‘I’ll accept responsibility, not always seek to blame someone else.’

That hasn’t aged very well. His mix of silence in the face of the belligerent intimidation of Jews and counterposing antisemitism and Islamophobia has helped to normalise resurgent antisemitism in Australia.

Actions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are having the same effect globally. The ICC prosecutor has called for international arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime and Defence Ministers and the ICJ has ordered Israel to cease military operations immediately in Rafah. Israel has simply ignored the ruling and continued with its strikes. Its war on Hamas is legally justified self-defence against armed attack.

Hamas started this war on 7 October with the most brutal and sexually depraved terrorist attack. It now complains about the mounting costs. Lillian Kline, speaking on behalf of a group of Australian Jewish women, said that ‘Hamas have used rape and sexual torture to destroy these women in body and soul and to terrorise’. And to think we have a woman Foreign Minister who has not had the time to visit the site of this sadistic depravity as a simple human gesture of compassion and solidarity.

Australians who exulted in Hamas’s attacks should first have asked themselves: will Israel hit back ferociously, at terrible civilian cost because of the extensive use of Palestinians as human shields by Hamas; or just sit back and allow Jews to be slaughtered?

Israel’s war objectives are to secure the release of the hostages, dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure and capacity to launch terror raids into Israel, destroy its hold on power in Gaza, and re-establish asymmetric deterrence in the context of the demographic and geographical reality in which Israel exists.

This inextricably involves complex calculations of military strategy and necessity, diplomatic negotiations, and principles of international humanitarian law. Still, Israel has sought to minimise civilian casualties; you would have to be wilfully blind to argue otherwise.

International legal constraints are important but don’t trump every other consideration. International judges, who would have put Churchill in the dock alongside Hitler and completely hobbled the war against Nazi Germany, are not best qualified to make the challenging trade-offs in an existential war.

For the first time, international legal institutions pose a threat to Western countries and their allies and to the sovereignty of their peoples. The bodies in the cross-hairs of animated public debate in the past fortnight are the ICC and the ICJ. The body that might just have been granted extraordinary powers to repeat mischief in the name of pandemics is the World Health Organisation.

The ICC and ICJ decisions show how international institutions can disregard checks and balances against abuse that were built into their charters. Have most countries been sensitised enough to the danger to have voted no to the expansion of WHO powers? As of the time of writing, the negotiating groups were unable to finalise either of the two texts, but the governing body was yet to make a final call. So let me focus mainly on the ICC.

British PM Rishi Sunak insisted,

‘There is no moral equivalence between a democratic state exercising its lawful right to self-defence and the terrorist group Hamas.’

Such moral, intellectual and political clarity eludes our PM. Consider his own words:

‘We make our own decisions and we will continue to do that.’ And: ‘Well, I’m not about to go into hypotheticals about things that have not happened…. There’s been no determination by the ICC against any individual or anybody at this point in time.’

Articles 86–92 of the Rome Statute that created the ICC deal with international cooperation and assistance.

ICC parties are legally obliged to enact domestic implementing legislation to meet ICC requests for arrests and extradition of any indicted person on their territory. What a pity the obligations are not spelt out on the first page, since we know Albanese neither reads beyond the first page nor understands why he should do so.

‘We call for the political advance for a two-state solution.’ Except this is no solution because both Israelis and Palestinians reject it. What does Albanese think ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ means?

‘We have said that Israel has a right to defend itself. How it defends itself matters.’ So from the comfort of the Lodge in Canberra and Kirribilli House in Sydney, Albanese – who has never had a life outside politics – thinks he can offer military advice to Israel with its unique threat environment at the intersection of geography, demography and hostile neighbours?

‘In terms of judgment, character, leadership and the intellectual heft required to grapple with the complex challenges’ we face, Peta Credlin concludes, Albanese has been found wanting as a leader for the times. ‘I hold no view’ Albanese shifts querulously from evasive to incomprehensible, incoherent and ultimately indefensible.

Who would have thought that by comparison, even Joe Biden displays moral clarity and sounds forceful and coherent?

‘The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.’

On 20 May Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that the administration was willing to work with Congress to impose sanctions on ICC personnel should arrest warrants be issued. Gerard Baker warns of hardening American antipathy towards the UN system in general, with even some Democrats becoming sceptical of international organisations’ hostility towards US allies and values.

Every country’s policy is based on a mix of geopolitical and economic calculations (realism) and core values and principles (idealism). Consequently, no country’s policy is consistent and coherent and none is immune from mistakes, hypocrisy and double standards. This is why foreign policy (any more than health policy) cannot simply be outsourced to an international institution.

Whether or not to arrest and extradite the leader of another country engaged in a war of survival against a powerful terrorist organisation when requested by the ICC, cannot be decided in isolation from the democratic credentials of and bilateral relationship with that country.

Sunak described the move by the ICC prosecutor as ‘deeply unhelpful’ even before a final decision by a three-judge panel, saying it would ‘make absolutely no difference in getting a pause in the fighting, getting aid into the region, or indeed the hostages out’.

If the international community had bestirred itself over the years to stop Hamas from hiding among civilians, in tunnels and under civilian installations, the civilian toll in Israel’s war of self-defence would have been substantially lower.

If Hamas had not launched its attack on every Israeli it could find, with no effort to separate civilians from soldiers or even fighting-age people, there would have been no Gaza war in 2023-24.

Yet here we are, with perpetrators of one of the worst civilian atrocities of the century being turned into victims and the victims into?genocidaires.

Author: Ramesh Thakur