Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry
Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry
Mossad director Yossi Cohen personally involved in secret plot to pressure Fatou Bensouda to drop Palestine investigation, sources say
“According to accounts shared with ICC officials, he is alleged to have told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.””
Holy shit that’s like, explicitly a threat
At this point Netanyahu has made it clear that Biden is his bitch and israel is openly flaunting that they are above international law.
I mean, when you've got the backing of the USA behind you, you can sorta get away with that.
Israel is above the law, above your rights, above your accountability.
Source: Mossad, Biden, legacy media, the EU et al.
!Biden!< As if any viable candidate for/holder of executive office at the federal level in the US has ever done anything but support the state of Israel lol. Just say "US", since Trump was and would be arguably even more supportive of Israel. To put it another way, compare Biden's tone (even if it's ultimately meaningless) on Israel to that of any other US president - have any of the other presidents pissed off Likud to the degree that Biden has? (Well, there might have been something about Obama that they didn't like, but I doubt any Likud officials ever managed to put their finger on it publicly.) The Biden admin is clearly shooting themselves in the foot here with the murky half-assed statements and actions here and in a perfect world they would have clear messaging and actions along the lines of the idea that sometimes supporting an alliance means forcing your ally to act correctly according to international law.
Obviously, Palestinian civilians don't deserve any of the horrors and injustices happening to them - we have international law for a reason and it should be upheld. Obviously the US is complicit in not upholding international law on behalf of Palestinian civilians and in aiding Netanyahu's sociopathic, self preserving collective punishment campaign.
That said, the GOP, whose members hate both Jews and Palestinians, (but is happy to support far right regimes however it can) is quite happy to see the left focus on the issue through the lens of blaming Biden and will continue to stir that sentiment in hopes of getting Trump in place again (whereupon everything will be worse). They must be laughing behind closed doors that this is being blamed on Biden and might get them in power where they will be much, much worse in every regard. Big picture, eye on the prize, etc...
For those that care about Palestinian civilians, messaging needs to be akin to "Kill Hamas, not civilians!" in order to short-circuit right wing attempts to conflate support of Palestinian civilians with support of Hamas or crocodile tears over supposed antisemitism. I wouldn't be surprised if later we find out that some of the "leaders" on the left are acting in bad faith, influenced by a certain foreign power to purposefully make the messaging easy for the right wing to attack. (I'm reminded of the phrase "defund the police," which was so comically bad that it seemed almost like it was designed to sound unreasonable and to ensure there could be no productive public discourse. Agent provacateurs stirring up things up with bad faith messaging and actions to discredit the left wing is a classic right wing tactic.)
Anyway, not directed specifically at you, just at the general sentiment. And, to be abundantly clear about my position on the specific thread topic: fuck threatening an ICC prosecutor, that's atrocious.
And EU gonna do fuck all to protect her against a foreign threat actor...
Rules based world order 🤡
Rules based world order when you could pretend and get away with it
Why is ‘threatened’ in quotation marks?
Because it refers negatively to a western ally. That's why Israel is commiting 'genocide', but thank god is not genocide.
Because they dont have first hand statements, they are just using different israeli sources that independently verified it. Hence the quotes and the "allegedly".
Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister’s office said: “The questions forwarded to us are replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel.” Cohen did not respond to a request for comment. Bensouda declined to comment.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.
That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza.
The prosecutor’s decision to apply to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, alongside three Hamas leaders, is an outcome Israel’s military and political establishment has long feared.
The revelations about Cohen’s operation form part of a forthcoming investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, revealing how multiple Israel intelligence agencies ran a covert “war” against the ICC for almost a decade.
Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister’s office said: “The questions forwarded to us are replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel.” Cohen did not respond to a request for comment.
Multiple sources have confirmed to the Guardian the trips were partly related to the ICC operation, and Kabila, who left office in January 2019, played an important supporting role in the Mossad’s plot against Bensouda.
The original article contains 2,302 words, the summary contains 234 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!