The flag of the United Nations was flown at half-staff last week to honor Ebrahim Raisi, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who died in a helicopter crash. Known at home as the "Butcher of Tehran," he was responsible for torturing and brutally executing thousands of Iranian political prisoners, minorities, and women. The regime he served supports Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi rebels of Yemen.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his "sincere condolences" for Raisi. The UN Security Council, at the request of Russia, China, and Algeria, held a moment of silence for the neo-imperialist theocrat. America's representative dutifully stood for the ceremony.
Also last week, Norway, Spain, and Ireland announced they would recognize a Palestinian state. Hamas expressed its gratitude for this "historic turning point" brought about by the "brave resistance."
Coincidently, videos released last week showed Hamas' "brave resistors" on Oct. 7 harassing bloodied female soldiers abducted moments earlier. They called them sabaya, meaning sex slaves.
In another video, a young Gazan man recounts how he, a cousin, and his father raped an Israeli woman on Oct. 7. He nonchalantly recalled, "After we finished raping her, my father killed her."
But wait, there's more. On CNN last week, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad Khan announced that he will seek arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, Israel's defense minister.
Khan said he'd also like warrants for several Hamas leaders. Sen. Tom Cotton observed, "Equating Israel's democratically elected leaders with the perpetrators of the worst attack on Jews since WWII shows what a farce the International Criminal Court is."
He added, "Mr. Khan's kangaroo court has no jurisdiction in Israel to pursue these antisemitic and politically motivated 'charges.' My colleagues and I look forward to making sure neither Khan, his associates, nor their families will ever set foot again in the United States."
Cotton understands – as Khan apparently does not – that under international law the ICC has jurisdiction only over signatories to a 1998 treaty known as the Rome Statute. Israel didn't sign. Neither did the US.
Khan's workaround is to declare that he is pursuing these warrants on behalf of "the State of Palestine." Who governs that state? In Gaza, it's been Hamas since 2007 – two years after the Israelis withdrew every last Jew and Jewish grave from the territory. In the West Bank, it's the Palestinian Authority which is so weak that it almost certainly would be overthrown by Hamas were it not for Israel's quiet support. The only way for the PA to return to Gaza – from which it was expelled by Hamas in a civil war just after the Israeli departure – would be behind Israeli tanks.
There's a second reason Khan lacks authority. Under the Rome Statute, the ICC was set up as a court of last resort, empowered only to investigate nations "unwilling or unable genuinely" to prosecute wrongdoing on their own. But Israel does that well. (The same can be said of no other nation in the Middle East.)
With all this in mind, Cotton and 11 other US Senators wrote to Khan warning that they "will not tolerate politicized attacks by the ICC on our allies. If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States."
Khan fired back, "When individuals threaten to retaliate against the Court or Court personnel…such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offense against the administration of justice under Art. 70 of the Rome Statute."
Were you under the impression that Americans are guaranteed freedom of speech? Khan begs to differ.
Among those paying Khan's salary and funding the lavish budget of the ICC bureaucracy in The Hague are Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy, and South Korea. Do you suppose that President Joe Biden and his ambassadors could have an influence on those countries if they tried?
Another important international organization came out in support of Hamas and its patrons in Tehran last week. Nawaf Salam, the presiding judge of the International Court of Justice, also headquartered in The Hague, declared that "Israel must immediately halt its military offense" in Rafah "which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
Salam is from Lebanon, a state dominated by Hezbollah, Tehran's most formidable proxy, which since immediately following the Oct. 7 attack, has been firing hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, killing and wounding Israelis and causing tens of thousands to abandon their homes.
Hamas leaders welcomed Salam's ruling. Israeli officials responded by saying, in effect, "Thanks for the guidance. We'll continue fighting Hamas terrorists in such a way as to not bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinian group in Gaza, in whole or in part – even as Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields guaranteeing that civilians will be killed."
These developments should serve as a reminder – not that you needed one – of what the UN and many other international organizations have become: clubs for tyrants, terrorists, and antisemites, their fellow travelers and assorted useful idiots, all of them emboldened by billions of dollars provided by America and its allies.
As for the current leaders of Norway, Spain, and Ireland, they are demonstrating the truth of the adage that ideas can't be destroyed militarily. During World War II, all three of these nations were neutral toward – or actively supportive of – the Nazis, whose big ideas included murdering Jews by the masses.
