Palestine and the Assange Test

Many congratulations to Palestine on being recognised as a non-member state at the United Nations. There is a distinct irony that, apart from the unreconstructed climate change deniers in the United States, Canada and the Czech Republic, the supporters of Palestinian genocide could only muster votes from the tiniest island states threatened by climate change. Where is the much vaunted American Empire now?


Both the United States and Israel are incapable of introspection; instead they have reacted by saying the rest of the world is mad.

There was also a chilling admission of the United States support for extreme zionist land claims, from Hillary Clinton, who called for negotiation “Between Jerusalem and Ramallah”. Not Tel Aviv; Jerusalem.

I argued a year ago that Palestine could join the International Criminal Court without waiting for this vote. But this vote certainly removes all doubt on that score.

I was absolutely disgusted by William Hague’s offer of support form Palestine if Palestine agreed not to join, or take cases to, the International Criminal Court. It is yet another example of that theme to which my writing constantly returns, the abandonment by neo-con UK governments of the principle of international law in favour of a might is right approach. It was always UK policy to encourage dispute resolution by international courts. Now we are discouraging it.

There is a very important practical point here. As I also wrote a year ago:

There is an extremely crucial point here:

if Palestine accedes to the Statute of Rome, under Article 12 of the Statute of Rome, the International Criminal Court would have jurisdiction over Israelis committing war crimes on Palestinian soil. Other states parties – including the UK – would be obliged by law to hand over indicted Israeli war criminals to the court at the Hague. This would be a massive blow to the Israeli propaganda and lobbying machine.

This explains why Hague was so keen to avert Palestinian membership of the ICC. Not only can Palestine indict Israeli war criminals (and they should start immediately with those behind Operation Cast Lead and the attack on the Mavi Marmara) but Britain will be obliged – as will all other European Union countries – to hand them over to the court.

Given that this disgraceful government had specifically enacted legislation to block other avenues for the indictment of Israeli war criminals in the United Kingdom, this is infuriating for our zionist sponsored politicians.

It also raises an interesting point. We have seen the entire political establishment enthusiastically promoting the automaticity of European arrest warrants in the case of Julian Assange. How will those same politicians react to the automaticity of arrest warrants for Israeli war criminals? I suspect that they will suddenly discover there is a need for political intervention in such cases.

Craig Murray