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Two of the great adversaries of our time – Iran and Israel – are facing internal turmoil. In the same week, the leaders of these two bitter rivals have been dealt major crises.
In Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant learnt that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court was seeking arrest warrants for them, which would oblige any of the 124 countries who are signatories to the ICC to arrest them should they visit.
The ICC also wants three Hamas leaders charged — its head in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of its al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, and leader of its political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh.
On top of this, Spain, Ireland and Norway announced that they will immediately recognise a Palestinian state and called on other European countries to do the same.
In Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, 85, was given the news that his president, Ebrahim Raisi, the man he’d anointed to be his successor, had died in a helicopter crash.
In both cases, the rest of the world will be drawn into what happens next.
Iran’s next leader will inherit an emboldened regime at a tense moment
Raisi did not get the nickname “The Butcher of Tehran” for his diplomatic skills.
The president ruthlessly enforced Islamic law, cracking down on the “morality law” which targets, in part, what women can do, where they can go and how they must dress. According to human rights groups, Raisi was directly involved in the disappearance and extrajudicial execution of thousands of protesters and political prisoners.
That crackdown was obvious in 2022 when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was taken into custody because the “morality police” claimed her scarf showed too much hair. She died in custody – authorities claim she had a medical episode while her family claim she was bashed.
As prosecutor-general of the Special Court of the Clergy, Raisi had relentlessly pursued Iran’s “morality laws” – the religious laws by which the population must live.
The regime’s interpretation of these laws exerts control over almost every aspect of women’s public lives, from what they are allowed to wear, to their access to education, and even the company they keep.
I saw this up close when I visited Iran in 2009. On the plane from Kuwait to Iran I’d met an academic who had dual British-Iranian citizenship and was visiting the country. She offered to show me around.
We boarded a bus in Tehran to see the city. To keep men and women separated, the bus was split down the middle by a metal rod — men at the front and women at the back. We continued our conversation across this barrier.
Suddenly, an elderly woman sitting near the academic demanded to know: “Are you two married?” The two began a row in Farsi, before the elderly woman went silent.
“What was all that about,” I asked. The academic explained that to avoid a major scene she told the woman that we were married.
The inferior status of women is entrenched in the country’s law. For example, under a section of the penal code known as Diyeh or “bloody money”, a woman’s life is literally valued at half of a man’s. If a negligent driver kills a woman they would be forced to pay her family only half what they would if they killed man — the same applies to unborn foetuses.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will now oversee the process to replace Raisi. Whoever that may be, they will inherit power at an extremely tense time in Iran’s relations with Israel and the West.
Israel continues to censor media coverage of its war in Gaza
Meanwhile, in Israel the leadership is dealing with fresh allegations of war crimes. Demonstrations outside Israel’s parliament featured banners with Netanyahu’s face covered in blood, or next to the slogan “Crime Minister.”
And when the ICC made clear it was pushing for arrest warrants, Netanyahu’s reaction was to accuse chief prosecutor Karim Khan KC of being one of the “great anti-Semites in modern times.”
While there is undoubtedly an increase in anti-Semitism in many countries, as Israel loses international support for its war the Netanyahu government and many of its supporters around the world are levelling the accusation of anti-Semitism more widely, often without clear justification.
For example, recently Israel’s influential Minister for Finance Bezalel Smotrich said President Joe Biden had engaged in an “anti-Semitic lie” when he supported a move to introduce sanctions against some Jewish settlers.
Linking Joe Biden, one of Israel’s strongest supporters, to anti-Semitism was clearly unsupported by evidence given the president’s staunch defence of Israel and of Jewish communities in the US.
Part of the problem is that the Israeli public has been watching a highly sanitised coverage – rarely will Israelis see a picture of a dead or injured Palestinian child.
While Australians have seen almost eight months of gruesome photographs, Israelis have not – they are often shocked when they read that large crowds around the world are demonstrating against the war. And their social media feeds are curated to suit their views, as is so often the case.
Israeli website +972 recently obtained documents under Freedom of Information showing that in 2023, the Israeli government censored the highest number of stories in a decade. Its investigation showed the Israeli military censor barred the publication of 613 articles and redacted parts of a further 2,703 articles.
With the exception of outlets like Haaretz and +972, there are scant sources for Israelis to read critical reporting about their own war from their own media.
This means that in general, many Israelis are not as informed about the atrocities occurring in Gaza as the average Australian.
As +972 noted, Israeli law requires all journalists working inside Israel or for any Israeli publication to submit any article dealing with “security issues” to the military censor prior to publication.
“No other self-proclaimed ‘Western democracy’ operates a similar institution,” +972 wrote this week.
The case according to the ICC
So who is the panel on whom the ICC’s prosecutor, Mr Khan, has based his assessment for arrest warrants? It’s a distinguished list of international law experts: 94-year-old Holocaust survivor Judge Theodor Meron, Sir Andrew Fulford, Amal Clooney, Danny Friedman KC, Baroness Helena Kennedy KC and Elizabeth Wilmshurst KC.
Their report is forensic in its cases against Hamas, Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant.
Israel claims the report makes a “moral equivalence” between it, with an elected leader, and Hamas, which has been designated by Israel and several Western nations, including Australia, as a terrorist group.
This argument is thin at best — the report details an entirely different list of alleged war crimes for each of the leaders it names.
On the leaders of Hamas, for example, the report says:
“The prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against three senior Hamas leaders for the war crimes of murder and the crimes against humanity of murder and extermination for the killing of hundreds of civilians on [October 7], 2023. He also seeks to charge them with the war crime of taking at least 245 persons hostage.
“Finally, he seeks to charge them with the war crimes of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, cruel treatment, and outrages upon personal dignity and the crimes against humanity of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, and other inhuman acts committed against Israeli hostages while they were in captivity.”
On the two Israeli leaders, it says:
“The prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defence, on the basis that they committed the war crime of ‘intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’ under article 8 (2)(b)(xxv) of the ICC Statute.
“The prosecutor also seeks to charge the two suspects with various other war crimes and crimes against humanity associated with the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare under articles 7 and 8 of the ICC Statute. These include the war crimes of ‘wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health’ or cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder and intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population.
“The proposed charges also include the crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, other inhumane acts and persecution with respect to deaths and injuries resulting from or associated with the systematic deprivation of objects indispensable to the survival of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
In the case against Hamas, the ICC has as evidence the horrors committed on October 7. Those atrocities are recorded on video for all to see. Notwithstanding that Palestinian media has faced accusations of downplaying it.
In the case against Israel, the ICC has Israel’s own words. On October 9, two days after the atrocities, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said:
“I have ordered a compete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
That closure went ahead. Depriving civilians of food is considered a war crime.
The ICC can also raise the fact the US repeatedly urged Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. These urgings came over several months.
There were occasional increases in the amount of aid, but Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Program, declared recently that “a full-blown famine” is now underway in northern Gaza – next to one of the largest crossings into Israel, Erez.
McCain, like the ICC panel, is someone who Israel will find it difficult to attack as anti-Semitic – the widow of US Senator John McCain.
Doctors and human rights groups have already chronicled the deaths of people in Gaza through lack of food.
Israel is vulnerable on two questions: if Israel was allowing an abundance of aid into Gaza, why did the US need to drop aid by parachute? And why did the US need to build a floating pontoon off Gaza near Ashdod, one of Israel’s largest ports?
Kenneth Roth, a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs and a former head of Human Rights Watch, wrote this week:
“The Israeli government claims that it has not restricted the flow of aid, but this denial of Netanyahu’s starvation strategy is not credible, given the extensive reporting on the needless obstacles that Israeli officials have erected to humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
“Instead, the Netanyahu government has responded to the possibility of ICC charges with threats, saying it would retaliate against the Palestinian Authority, potentially leading to its collapse.”
The ICC was set up to ensure “an end to impunity for perpetrators of the most serious crimes”. It notes on its website that it is an independent entity entirely separate from the United Nations.
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What the response of Netanyahu and his allies tells us
Undoubtedly there has been a rise in anti-Semitism in recent months. But surely Netanyahu would have been better to answer Mr Khan’s claims point by point.
Suddenly, leaders who have for years stated their commitment to the international rules-based order have changed their view of the ICC because two Israeli politicians have been named as targets after an eight-month war which has left vast swathes of Gaza destroyed, tens of thousands of people killed and left more than 19,000 orphans.
When the ICC recommended an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin two years ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the 124 countries who are signatories to the ICC to arrest Putin should they get the chance.
This time, Biden described the ICC’s suggestion that it was seeking arrest warrants for the two Israeli leaders as “outrageous” and Blinken has begun looking into sanctions against the ICC.
For Washington, the ICC was correct when it came to Putin. It’s correct now when it comes to Hamas. But the same organisation is “outrageously” wrong when it comes to Israel – led by, in Netanyahu’s words, “one of the great anti-Semites in modern times”.
The observations of a former Israeli leader who I spoke to for a recent Four Corners investigation, The Forever War, perhaps offer an insight into the country’s attitude towards international bodies.
Ehud Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier who served as prime minister from 1999 to 2001, pointed out two things: firstly, that there was no word in Hebrew for accountability. And secondly, how important it was for the US to protect Israel, including from criminal prosecutions by the ICC.
Israel, he said, needed the US “to protect us in the UN Security Council”. Israel would need them to “block” the prospect that Israeli military officers or politicians “might find themselves as a criminal in the Hague”.
And so the US is playing its role. Others, including Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton, who has long supported an international rules-based order, described the ICC’s decision as “an abomination”.
Geoffrey Robertson, an Australian barrister with experience of the ICC, described Dutton’s comments as “scandalous and false,” particularly given Israel’s “saturation bombing” of Gaza.
He said the ICC was independent, and those who supported the rules-based order needed to support that independence.
While some leaders around the world are suddenly suspending their support for international law and the ICC, at least one major Western country remains true to its support for the ICC’s independence.
As France has made clear, the world either supports the rules-based order or it does not.
