Special Feature: Selected Poems for ICC Seeking Arrest Warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Three Hamas Leaders

(FYI: The Guardian, May 28: Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

Now, an investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli-based magazines +972 and Local Call can reveal how Israel has run an almost decade-long secret “war” against the court. The country deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries)

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants yesterday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

In an interview yesterday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan detailed the charges against Netanyahu:

Karim Khan: We’ve applied for warrants. Of course, the judges must determine whether or not to issue them, but we’ve applied today. We’ll apply for warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and also Minister of Defense Gallant for the crimes of causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict... 

Read the full  interview here and the full statement of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan and selected poems about these war crimes:

Never Again

a promise, a slogan, 

a bumper sticker ...

now a rallying cry

for more chaos and carnage

NeverEnding Story, November 5, 2023

Life and Death

nonstop

a silver-haired man stares

into the night sky:

the time and space

between each fireball

to save a life

is to save this broken world

a rabbi laments ...

TV debate back and forth

about the new body count

NeverEnding Story, November 18, 2023

                      aid

out of reach            air            ops

                                       dr 

and a dead child’s stare

NeverEnding Story, March 5 2024

dating profile photo:

a smiling twentysomething

with a M4

in front of mushroom clouds

from Israeli strikes in Gaza

NeverEnding Story, March 28, 2024

between blood of birth

and blood of death

a new life

on the hospital floor ...

a Gazan mother's last look

NeverEnding Story, April 4, 2024

To conclude today's "Special Feature" post about ICC's arrest warrants,  I would like to share with you the following new tanka: 

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LXIII: "ICC's arrest warrants"

in my dream

a Gazan boy's bruised body

a question mark

unravelling in smoky twilight ...

cease-fire chants from afar

Chen-ou Liu

FYI: Haaretz, Analysis, May 21: Jerusalem, Not The Hague: Israel Must Investigate Netanyahu for Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza

The only effective way of responding to the ICC's request for arrest warrants is to convene an Israeli state commission of inquiry to examine if Gaza's population was deliberately starved – not cry antisemitism and Nazism