Israel is drumming up support from Britain and the United States to go to war with Iran.
Thursday's attack on MV Mercer Street, managed by an Israeli-owned shipping firm, is an opportunity that the Zionist regime wouldn't want to miss exploiting. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden will be foolish to help the Zionist regime take the Middle East on a ruinous forever war.
Aren't Iraq and Afghanistan enough? Israel is no saint. The Zionist regime has been attacking Iran's assets at sea and on land for the longest time. One such was Israel's mine attack on Iranian military vessel Saviz stationed in the Red Sea in early April. Johnson was all of British stiff upper lip. And Biden? Not a Delawarean twang.
If this isn't enough, the trigger-happy Zionist regime has been assassinating Iranian officials for the longest time, too. Between 2010 and 2020, the Israeli Mossad had killed at least five Iranian nuclear scientists, the latest being Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Neither London nor Washington had any word of condemnation for the killings. The Zionists can do no wrong.
If indeed Iran is behind the drone attack on MV Mercer Street, then Iran must be brought to justice. And so must Israel. To punish Iran and not Israel is a travesty of justice, especially when the Zionists have been killing Iranian officials at their pleasure.
This is a tit-for-tat that has an old history, no doubt generously helped by British and American arms funding. As if it was not bad enough for Britain and the US to have escaped with alleged war crimes in the countries that they invaded, it is now preventing the International Criminal Court from investigating the genocidal regime of Israel. Now who is breaking international law? If the US and Britain really have any iota of respect for international law, they will allow the ICC to apply the Rome Statute equally on all and sundry.
Might shouldn't be the criterion; right is. Start with the more than 100 years of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians. True, the ICC has jurisdiction only for crimes committed after July 1, 2002. This doesn't mean crimes committed earlier by the Zionists cannot be investigated.
There is no statute of limitation against crimes in municipal or international law. A special tribunal can always be set up. If the Nuremberg tribunal for the Holocaust was possible, tribunal trials are also possible for allegations of genocide committed by the Israelis against Palestinians.
Britain and the US, two nations which ceaselessly hawk international law to the world, do not subject themselves or their allies to the same legal standard. There is a reason for the double standard. Like the Zionist regime of Israel, the US and Britain also stand accused of war crimes.
The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal made this clear in November 2011, when it found former British prime minister Tony Blair and former US president George W. Bush guilty of "crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and genocide". Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and former UN special rapporteur of Palestinian human rights, writing an op-ed in Al Jazeera then, put it thus: "A war crimes tribunal in Malaysia offers a devastating critique of international criminal law institutions today."
We go further. It's also a devastating critique of Western nations that cripple international criminal law institutions.