Canada played a pivotal role in the founding of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which put out a warrant on Thursday for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he will abide by the court’s ruling. But Canada should do no such thing, since the court has betrayed its mandate by levelling transparently false charges in a case in which it has no jurisdiction.
When ICC prosecutor Karim Khan initially applied for the warrants in May, the lead accusation he made against Netanyahu and Gallant was the “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Yet as he wrote those words, a surge of aid was pouring into Gaza.
In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, Israeli authorities suspended the delivery of aid into Gaza as they sought to regain their composure amid a devastating surprise attack. But aid soon resumed, and United Nations data showed an increasing number of trucks delivering their goods for three months straight.
But in February 2024, there was a sudden drop. Despite their mutual antagonism, UN agencies and Israeli authorities worked to improve the situation. Whereas 2,874 trucks reached Gaza in February, the number rose to 4,993 in March and 5,671 in April.
Despite this surge, warnings multiplied that Gaza was on the brink of disaster. What drove this fear was an assessment by the UN-backed famine monitor known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC. For experts around the world, the IPC is the gold standard in famine monitoring. In mid-March, the IPC warned that “Famine is imminent” and would strike Gaza within two months.
The IPC employs a very specific definition of famine, which includes excess mortality of “at least two deaths per 10,000 people/day,” meaning that, if it were to strike in Gaza, there would be hundreds of deaths each day just from hunger, not violent conflict.
As the two-month forecast window drew to a close, it became clear that there was no famine. The Hamas-run Government Media Office in Gaza has reported 41 total deaths from malnutrition throughout the war. Those were tragic losses, but not evidence of Israeli malice.
In May, the IPC’s Famine Review Committee found that there had not been enough evidence to conclude that the situation in Gaza met the criteria for a famine. In late June, it issued a new quarterly assessment stating that, “The amount of food and non-food commodities allowed into the northern governorates increased,” and that, “The available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.”
Back in March, the IPC found that 30 per cent of Gaza residents were experiencing the most severe type of deprivation, rating a five on the IPC’s five-point scale. By mid-October, it was down to six per cent.
One has to read IPC publications with a magnifying glass to find any hint of why its forecasts proved to be so wrong. Its October report referred in passing to a “temporary surge of humanitarian assistance,” with no indication of who was responsible. Western media mainly reported the IPC’s persistent warnings that conditions could take a turn for the worse at any moment.
This brings us back to the ICC and its claim that Israel has deliberately been starving the people of Gaza. Aid organizations frequently complain that Israeli authorities delay their shipments, turn their trucks back at the last moment and impose onerous paperwork requirements. Yet Israeli data show that over 57,000 trucks have brought cargo into Gaza since the beginning of the war, delivering more than 1.1-million tons of goods.
The full contents of the ICC warrants are secret, yet the ICC’s summary of the charges alleges that Netanyahu and Gallant’s “conduct led to the disruption of the ability of humanitarian organizations to provide food and other essential goods to the population in need in Gaza.” The facts say otherwise.
Although it is not the only charge against Netanyahu and Gallant, the alleged Israeli starvation campaign is the focal point of the ICC’s accusations. There is no way to separate the weakness of this charge from the weakness of the entire case, which exposes how politicized the court has become.
Israel, like the United States, is not a party to the Rome Statute and therefore not subject to the court’s jurisdiction. To pursue an investigation of Israeli leaders, the court had to stretch its mandate to the breaking point, asserting that it has jurisdiction because Israeli actions took place within the “State of Palestine.”
Some might see this as legal innovation for a noble purpose, yet there is a double standard at play. The ICC has issued no warrants for the Chinese leaders responsible for the cultural genocide of their country’s Uyghur Muslim minority.
There is no warrant for Bashar Assad, whose regime has tortured and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Nor has the court pursued Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose regime supports Assad, Hamas and numerous other violent terrorist organizations. Rather, it’s the Jewish state that the ICC has chosen to target.
Canada maintains a strong commitment to international law, but when the ICC, the instrument of that law, proves to be so flawed, respecting its warrants would be an even greater injustice.
National Post
David Adesnik is the vice-president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.