The International Criminal Court is a broken, corrupt political institution. The Biden administration needs to adopt serious measures against it and the Palestinian leadership for the protection of U.S. national security interests and allies, including Israel.

By: David Milstein

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague issued an illegitimate and politicized decision on Friday, falsely claiming that it has jurisdiction to open an investigation focused on false allegations of Israeli “war crimes.”

The Feb. 5 ruling is the latest development in the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic lawfare campaign against Israel. The P.A. is also engaging in economic warfare in the form of BDS, supporting terrorism through incitement, glorifying violence, and making payments to terrorists and their families.

In a video statement released by his office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the decision. “The ICC has again proved that it is a political body—not a judicial institution,” he said. “The ICC ignores the real war crimes and instead pursues the State of Israel, a state with a strong democratic government that sanctifies the rule of law, and is not a member of the ICC.”

He went on: “In this decision, the ICC violated the right of democracies to defend themselves against terrorism and played into the hands of those who undermine efforts to expand the circle of peace. We will continue to protect our citizens and soldiers in every way from legal persecution. … When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes, this is pure anti-Semitism.”

He concluded: “The court, established to prevent atrocities—like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people—is now targeting the one state of the Jewish people. First, it outrageously claims that when Jews live in our homeland, this is a war crime. Secondly, it claims that when democratic Israel defends itself against terrorists who murder our children [and] launch rocket on our cities, we’re committing another war crime. Yet the ICC refuses to investigate brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria, which commit horrific atrocities, almost daily.”

Though the Biden administration also condemned the ICC decision, there are indications that it wants to reverse the strong policies against the ICC adopted by its predecessor, the administration of former President Donald Trump.

Instead, however, Washington should take the following actions to impose consequences on the ICC and the Palestinian leadership:

First, it should implement Trump’s Executive Order 13928 to impose additional sanctions, such as the blocking of property and revoking of visas of “ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members” who are part of this decision against Israel.

Trump firmly asserted that “any attempt by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute any United States personnel without the consent of the United States, or of personnel of countries that are United States allies and who are not parties to the Rome Statute or have not otherwise consented to ICC jurisdiction, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

His administration then imposed sanctions on ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and her aide, Phakiso Mochochoko, for launching an illegitimate investigation into alleged “war crimes” by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Israel expressed support for the U.S. sanctions. But the European Union, along with more than 70 countries, announced opposition to them.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration is now reviewing those sanctions and may acquiesce to the pressure campaign to lift them as part of a softer approach to the ICC. This would be a big mistake.

Second, the Biden administration should use Trump’s E.O. 13938 to impose sanctions on individual P.A. leaders who have been materially assisting or providing support for this charade against Israel. After acceding to the 2015 Rome Statute, P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas appointed a 45-member “higher national supervising committee,” chaired by the late PLO Executive Committee Secretary General Saeb Erekat, to pursue legal action against Israel in the ICC.

Erekat told Palestine TV that the committee was made up of the “the complete spectrum of Palestinian political factions,” including Hamas, the PFLP and DFLP—and that P.A. Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Maliki served as its official liaison to the ICC.

In other words, the P.A. has been collaborating with members of State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations that seek the destruction of Israel to provide material against it to the ICC. This is in addition to public statements by Abbas, al-Maliki, P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and Hamas encouraging and lauding ICC actions against Israel.

Third, the Biden administration should make it clear that will not re-engage with the Palestinian leadership, and withhold financial assistance to the Palestinians, until Ramallah ends its lawfare campaign against Israel and officially withdraws from the ICC—as both Burundi and the Philippines have done in recent years.

Fourth, the Biden administration should reverse its intention to reopen diplomatic missions that were closed by the Trump administration. One such mission is the PLO office in Washington, which was closed in compliance with the law that prohibits a PLO office unless the president can certify that the Palestinian leadership is not supporting ICC actions against Israel. In the case of the PLO mission, he was unable to do so.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration is trying to reopen the PLO office, by working to amend a law signed by Trump stating that the PLO office would provide jurisdiction for U.S. courts to hold the PLO and P.A. accountable in cases where they have already been found liable for supporting terrorism against U.S. citizens. Congress should ensure there are no changes to U.S. law, stand with American victims of Palestinian terrorism and keep the PLO office closed in response to its hostility towards Israel.

Fifth, the Biden administration should not keep its campaign promise to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinians—and if it does, Congress should block any funding for it. The Trump administration made the right move by closing it down and merging it with the new U.S. embassy complex in Jerusalem.

The Palestinians should not be treated to a separate American diplomatic mission in any part of Israel, especially Jerusalem, which the U.S. recognized as Israel’s eternal capital—in compliance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. Furthermore, the U.S. Senate voted late Thursday night to keep the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and not return it to Tel Aviv.

Sixth, the Biden administration and Congress should encourage U.S. allies that are top financial backers of the ICC—such as Brazil, Japan, France, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom and Italy—to withhold funding, along with the countries that filed amicus briefs arguing against ICC jurisdiction.

The ICC, which is going after Israel unjustly while it wouldn’t even investigate China for the mass detention and persecution of Muslim Uyghurs and other religious minorities, is a broken, corrupt political institution. The Biden administration needs to take all the above measures against it and the Palestinian leadership—for the protection of U.S. national security interests and allies, including Israel.

            (www.JNS.org)

David Milstein served as special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to Israel and as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate.

By: J. Christian Adams

H.R.1 packs into one 791-page bill every bad idea about how to run elections and mandates that the states must adopt — the very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess. It includes all of the greatest hits of 2020: Mandatory mail ballots, ballots without postmarks, late ballots and voting in precincts where you don’t live. It includes so many bad ideas that no publication has satisfactory space to cover all of them. The Senate companion bill, S.1, might be even worse.

These bills rearrange the relationship between the states and the federal government. The Constitution presumes that states regulate their own elections, but the Constitution has a big “but” in what is called the Elections Clause. The Constitution says, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” For over 200 years, Congress rarely used this power. After all, the power was put in the Constitution only to prevent the states from suffocating the federal government out of existence by never holding federal elections.

Do not assume that the bills will stall and wither in the process. They are named H.R.1 and S.1 for a reason. The bills are the top priority of the newly empowered Democrats in Congress.

Dissatisfied with the effectiveness of the last federal mandate — 1993’s Motor Voter law — H.R.1 dispenses with the idea that an American should go affirmatively register to vote.

In 2020, states such as Nevada and New Jersey sent ballots through the mail to anyone on their registration lists despite having voter rolls full of errors. The Public Interest Legal Foundation documented thousands of ineligible registrations in Nevada alone that received mail ballots. Some were sent to vacant lots, abandoned mines, casinos and even liquor stores.

States also would be blocked by H.R.1 from signature verification procedures.

H.R.1 rigs the system for any lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the law. All lawsuits can only be filed in one court – federal court in the District of Columbia. And all opposition must be consolidated into one brief with only one attorney being able to argue the merits. It also grants automatic intervention to any legislators who want to join in the fight against the lone opposition.

It prohibits states from conducting list maintenance on the voter rolls. That means deadwood and obsolete registrations will stack up.

HR.1 and S.1 are omnibus bills that would change every American citizen’s — and foreigner’s — relationship to voter registration.

Universal automatic voter registration has, for years, been a top priority of the institutional left. In fact, H.R.1 would do away with actual voter registration and instead make the voter rolls merely a copy of anyone already on a government list — such as welfare recipients and other social service beneficiaries. The bills would expand well beyond to federal entities like the Social Security Administration, Department of Defense, Customs and Immigration, and elements of Health and Human Services.

Naturally, a giant federal database would serve as the home for this list of people who must be automatically registered to vote, whether they know it or not.

Imagine the number of government databases in which your information is contained. Do your names and addresses all match? Does Social Security know you moved out of your birth state? Are your married and maiden names different? Did you get a driver’s license before obtaining American citizenship?

You can see the pitfalls. One person will be “registered” to vote multiple times, with slight variation in names, and perhaps greater variation in residence addresses.

Making it “easier” to get registered to vote through automatic registration from government lists might seem attractive, until you consider the disaster of universal auto-mail voting as we saw in 2020.

H.R.1 and S.1 will force states to push ballots into the mail. It builds slack into the election system. Decentralized mail elections introduce error because of error-filled rolls. Mail-in ballots delay results, create uncertainty and push the elections into kitchens and bedrooms where election officials cannot observe the voting process and cannot protect the voter from coercion.

H.R.1 takes the absolute worst emergency rule changes of 2020 and enshrines them as federal law. Gone also are state witness and notary requirements during the mail ballot application process. Nor may states enact identification requirements of “any form” for those requesting a ballot. That means no more voter ID as a matter of federal law.

States also would be blocked by H.R.1 from signature verification procedures.

It gets worse. The 791-page bill also includes:

“Congress can reduce a state’s representation in Congress when the right to vote is denied.” Without qualification or definition, Congress could rely on this sentence unilaterally to cut the number of House members from any state it claims is denying the right to vote.

It criminalizes anyone who uses state challenge laws to question the eligibility of registrants wrongly. The penalty is up to one year in prison per instance.

It prohibits states from conducting list maintenance on the voter rolls. That means deadwood and obsolete registrations will stack up.

It criminalizes publishing “false statements” about qualifications to vote and “false statements” about which groups have endorsed which candidates. Information banned from being published includes false qualifications to vote and the penalties for doing so. What is a false statement will apparently be in the minds of the Justice Department lawyers who bring the charges. And if they do not act, the law provides a private right of action to individual plaintiffs to drag speakers to court. You can be sure this provision would be used as a merciless weapon against political opponents.

And in case it was not clear that H.R.1 was dismantling state power to run their own elections, the bill makes it clear: “The lack of a uniform standard for voting in Federal elections leads to an unfair disparity and unequal participation in Federal elections based solely on where a person lives.” In other words, state laws which have the Constitutional authority to determine the voting eligibility of its residents, will be preempted by a federal uniform standard.

                  (www.GatestoneInstitute.org)

By: Guy Milliere

December 22, 2020. 9:30 am. A plane takes off from Ben Gurion Airport in Israel for Morocco’s capitol, Rabat. Economic, political, cultural and strategic agreements between Morocco and Israel are signed for a full normalization of relations between the two countries. Morocco is the fourth Arab Muslim country in 2020 to sign such an agreement with Israel.

The Abraham Accords, solemnly signed on September 15, 2020 at the White House by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the United States, set in motion a new peace process that many observers would have considered unimaginable just a few years ago. This new peace process has continued well beyond the 2020 U.S. elections and are at the heart of a broader revolution that has changed the Middle East and the Arab world. It is a revolution that is one of the major achievements of the Trump presidency.

With the new administration in Washington, DC showing an eagerness to drag everything that bears Trump’s name through the mud, it may be important to analyze this revolution and the strategy that made it possible – starting from the situation in the region when President Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House.

Syria was ravaged by a catastrophic civil war that left more than 400,000 people dead and millions of refugees. A jihadist terrorist organization had occupied a vast territory in eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq, called it the” Islamic State”, and was using it as a base for preparing bloodthirsty worldwide jihadist attacks.

In Iran, the mullahs’ regime was destabilizing the entire region and advancing toward regional hegemony. Iran ruled Lebanon through Hezbollah; areas of Syria that are still in the hands of Bashar Al-Assad through thousands of Revolutionary Guards and militiamen dispatched by Tehran, and half of Yemen’s territory through the Houthi militias it was financing and arming. It was also financing and arming Hamas in the Gaza Strip and continuing to move towards possessing nuclear weapons, despite the July 2015 nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA), which had served no purpose other than allowing the regime to dispose of billions of dollars, become the main financier of global Islamic terrorism, and continue its uranium enrichment toward a legitimized nuclear breakout.

The countries of the Sunni Arab world were weak and shaken. Egypt was just beginning to find calm after years marked by the fall of Hosni Mubarak; the rise to power in 2012 of the Muslim Brotherhood; its overthrow a year later by large demonstrations; the rise to power of Abdel Fattah al Sisi, and ongoing Islamist uprisings that the army has severely repressed.

Libya, since the destruction of the Gaddafi regime, has been in ruins, and abandoned to Islamic terrorist groups. Yemen has been largely destroyed. Saudi Arabia was threatened both by Iran and Islamic State, which had launched attacks in the east of the country. Sudan was in the hands of Omar al-Bashir, a bloodthirsty ruler who accepted the use of his country for Iran to transfer arms to the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority, after abandoning all negotiations, proceeded to organize bloody anti-Israeli attacks without receiving the slightest reprimand from the Western world, and carry out with impunity a campaign committed to delegitimizing Israel in international organizations.

Israel had been under constant pressure from the Obama administration, as well as from President Barack Obama himself, who constantly stressed the “imperative” of creating a Palestinian state within the “1967 borders”. Obama, apparently hoping to create a Palestinian state on his way out the door, had decided not to veto a UN Security Council resolution on December 23, 2016, which described Israeli settlements as “territories occupied by force”, including the Old City of Jerusalem, and Israel as “acting in violation of international humanitarian law”.

In addition, the Obama administration and Obama had explicitly supported the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and the ascent of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Obama administration had also distanced itself from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies; contributed to the destruction of Libya’s Gaddafi regime; signed the JCPOA enabling Iran to enrich uranium and possess nuclear weapons — a deal Iran never signed — and had poured more than $150 billion into Iran’s coffers.

President Trump, from the moment he took office, acted quickly and decisively. He destroyed the Islamic State. By December 2017, the group controlled only 5% of the territory it had controlled ten months earlier. By March 2019, it had lost its last stronghold.

On May 21, 2018, Trump moved to incapacitate the regime of Iran’s mullahs by announcing that the United States was abandoning the “nuclear deal”. He then implemented sanctions aimed at curtailing Iran’s adventurism.

Trump also distanced himself from the “two-state solution,” stillborn in diplomatic circles by a Palestinian veto of any suggestion, as well as other untenable Palestinian demands.

Trump improved U.S. ties with much of the Muslim Arab world, and in May 2017, made a crucial trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There, he told the 54 leaders from Sunni Muslim countries gathered for the occasion that the United States would be on their side in facing Iranian threats, and that the US was ready to help them overcome instability on the strict conditions that they lead a fight against terrorism and radical Islam, and that they modernize.

Trump, clearly aware that discreet meetings had been held between Israeli leaders and leaders of several Sunni Muslim countries, suggested that regional economic and strategic rapprochement would help move towards peace. He referred to “citizens of the Middle East” in general and added that if “the three Abrahamic Faiths can join together in cooperation, then peace in this world is possible”.

Trump saw that the intransigence of the Palestinian leadership, which the leaders of the Arab world had long supported, was now seen by them as an obstacle. While in Riyadh, Trump did not say a single word about the Palestinian Authority.

He traveled on the first flight from Riyadh to Israel; visited the Western Wall — the first President of the United States in office to do so — and affirmed his unwavering support for the US ally. He then went to Ramallah, where he accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of being a supporter of terrorism and a liar.

In November 2017, Trump asked a team led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to draw up a peace plan that respected Israel’s security imperatives and that took into account not the demands of the Palestinian Authority, but benefits for the Palestinian people.

During the following months, he asked the Palestinian Authority to stop its terrorist activities. When the Palestinian Authority refused, Trump reduced the financing granted to it by the United States, and ceased to treat its leaders as constructive and legitimate interlocutors.

On December 6, 2017, Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and decided to locate the U.S. Embassy in Israel there. It was a way of saying that Israel’s presence in Jerusalem was fully legitimate and that no one would be permitted to push Israel around. The US embassy was inaugurated less than a year later, on May 14, 2018.

On September 7, 2018, Trump asked the US Department of State to issue a statement saying that from now on, the US would recognize as refugees only the Arabs who had personally left Israel in 1948-49 and added that the US would no longer fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an organization that claims there are more than five million Palestinian refugees, almost all of whom have never set foot in Israel and who therefore cannot claim to “return” to lands where they have never been. (UNRWA includes all the descendants of actual refugees through the generations, in a method of accounting not done by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.)

Trump said that the idea of a “return” to Israel of millions of people who are not actually refugees was no longer on the negotiating table.

Trump’s peace plan, at least its economic component, was presented in Manama, Bahrain, on June 25 and 26, 2019. Representatives from 39 countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Gulf countries were present, as well as businessmen from all over the Arab world.

The plan, presented at the White House on January 28, 2020, talks about a Palestinian state, but stipulates that Israel’s security would be guaranteed. If a Palestinian state were to come into being, it would be demilitarized, have borders controlled by Israel and no border with an Arab state. The plan offered the prospect of sovereignty, within this security framework, to the Palestinian Arabs. The proposal allows Israel to retain a necessary control of the Jordan Valley, and pledges that Israel would be sovereign over 30% of Judea and Samaria — a percentage that many Israelis considered woefully insufficient, considering that historically, Judea and Samaria have been part of Israel.

Above all, the plan says that a Palestinian state can only come into being if the leaders and the Palestinians fully renounce and end terrorism.

Palestinian leaders immediately rejected the offer. A few days later, at the insistence of the Palestinian Authority, the Arab League condemned the plan, however Arab representatives present in Manama continued to prepare the next step.

The Abraham Accords soon followed. They were in line with the prospects for peace mentioned by President Trump in May 2017. They had not been condemned by the Arab League.

As anticipated by Trump in May 2017, the Abraham Accords have both an economic and a strategic dimension. They not only offer economic opportunities to all the signatories but also reinforce their military strength. As the plan includes the Palestinian Arabs, the Arab signatories can say that by signing the agreement, they did not forget the Palestinian population.

             (Gatestone Institute)