On Monday, nations around the world commemorated the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) by the United Nations General Assembly 76 years ago. But ironically, some of the very same nations are turning a blind eye to the genocides that have been going on for that many years in occupied Palestine, most blatantly in Gaza.
What is worse, a few that claim to stand for justice for all of humanity are preventing international legal institutions from putting the merchants of massacres behind bars. The United States is an egregious example.
When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in June that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza and that nations aiding Tel Aviv would be complicit in the crime of crimes, Washington hurried to declare the ICJ' s ruling as being nonbinding. True, it was an advisory opinion, but one from the highest court in the world.
Worse was to come in November, when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Again, the US led the charge, scandalously warning its Western allies of serious consequences should any of them arrest the two alleged war criminals.
More deplorable was the threat of sanctions against the ICC and its officials. This is not the first time the ICC has come in the crosshairs of Washington. When former chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda — now Gambia's high commissioner to the United Kingdom — opened investigations against US soldiers for possible war crimes in Afghanistan, she and others in the ICC were sanctioned by then president Donald Trump in 2020, only to be lifted by President Joe Biden.
On Nov 24, she spoke to The Guardian in London about how she and her family faced threats, thug-style, while in office. She didn't disclose the source of threats, but an investigation in May by the British newspaper revealed that an Israeli spy chief allegedly threatened her in an attempt to prevent an investigation into war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The investigation also revealed a broader campaign by Mossad, Israel's spy agency, against the ICC. Little wonder, justice doesn't get done when the war criminals are from Israel and the West.
Interestingly, Biden, who doesn't want Netanyahu and Gallant to be held accountable, is calling for Syria's deposed president Bashar al-Assad to be held accountable. Selective justice such as this is only going to make the Genocide Convention a paper tiger.
What is worse, selective justice is the mother of all injustice, birthing impunity. Just watch what the state terrorist regime led by Netanyahu and his marauding murderers is doing in Gaza and Lebanon despite ICJ's ruling and ICC's arrest warrants.
On Monday, UN secretary-general António Guterres, in his message marking the 76th anniversary of the adoption of the Genocide Convention, put it thus: "Tragically, in a world plagued by division, mistrust and violence, the dark spectre of genocide is still with us." The nefarious crime will be with us so long as the Genocide Convention is treated as being meant to only hold the perpetrators of the Holocaust to account and not others.