KINSELLA: ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu based on a falsehood

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Benjamin Netanyahu is not an extremely likeable person.

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In Israel, where this writer met with many people earlier this month, Israel’s prime minister was reviled across the ideological spectrum, from left to right. His failure to anticipate and prevent the Oct. 7 massacre will never be forgotten or forgiven by the Jewish state. When the war ends, so too will his tenure in power.

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But, one, should Netanyahu be the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) before a trial has even taken place? Two, does Israel’s prime minister, as dislikable as he is, lose the presumption of innocence?

And, three, while we are on the subject, should the ICC be referring to Israel as “the territory of Israel” — and the Gaza Strip as “the State of Palestine?”

Fourth and final question: Has the ICC ever sought an arrest warrant for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has killed 306,000 Muslim non-combatants?

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The answer to all four questions is no. No, no, no, no.

The fact that a publicity-seeking prosecutor associated with the ICC is condemning Netanyahu before trial — which U.S. President Joe Biden, no less, called outrageous — is symptomatic of the age in which we live. So, too, the ICC’s relegation of Israel to a mere “territory,” and Gaza to a “State” (capitalized, no less).

And letting genocidal monsters like al-Assad off the hook? Again, it is another sickening reversal of reality.

This sort of upside-down-ism is representative of a unique (and evil) phenomenon that is emerged since Oct. 7: Holocaust inversion. Where everything — history, decency, truth — is turned on its head, essentially.

Holocaust inversion is depicting Jews, and the Jewish state, as Nazis. It is turning victims into predators. It is a willful and disgusting distortion of history. History shows, as indisputable fact, that six million Jews were slaughtered by Adolf Hitler’s regime during the Second World War, It shows that Jews needed to re-establish their ancestral homeland to be safe.

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Holocaust inversion is like Holocaust denial, but qualitatively worse. The Holocaust deniers that this writer has interviewed, over many years, deny the Holocaust to whitewash the sins of Hitler and his evil regime. Those who practice Holocaust inversion — since Oct. 7, too many Muslims, too many on the left and, now, the ICC — don’t merely want to exonerate the likes of Hamas or Hezbollah. They want to falsely accuse Jews, too, of mass murder.

As British writer Howard Jacobson recently wrote for The Guardian, the objective in Holocaust inversion is there for all to see: “Charging Jews with genocide is a sophistication on that theme, painting them as perpetrators of the very crime that killed them in their millions, as a consequence of which that crime is abrogated.”

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He continues: “There is a sadistic triumphalism in charging Jews with genocide, as though those making it feel they have their man at last. The sadism resides, specifically, in attacking Jews where their memories of pain are keenest. By making them now the torturer and not the tortured, their assailants wrest their anguish from them, not only stealing their past but trampling on it.”

And, now, we have the International Criminal Court’s Karim Khan doing precisely that from his perch in the Hague (aided and abetted by Amal Clooney, it has been reported): Making a Jew the torturer, and not the tortured.

But, but, but some will say: Israel has committed genocide! Netanyahu must pay for that. Well, no.

It bears repeating: We don’t come here to praise Benjamin Netanyahu. But nor should we condemn him with arrest warrants when no genocide has taken place. The Population Reference Bureau and the Census Bureau in the United States, say this: “The Palestinian population growth rate is among the highest in the world: 3.4% in the West Bank and 4% in Gaza.” Life expectancy at birth, too, is “high,” say the agencies. And, year over year, Palestinian population growth outstrips Israel’s by nearly 35%.

If that is a genocide, it is fair to observe, it is a genocide that has completely failed.

The arrest warrants claiming Benjamin Netanyahu should fail, as well. They are based on a falsehood.

And they are trying to invert history — and reality.

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