Karim Khan of the ICC: ignoramus, opportunist, anti-Semite, fool?

By Lev Tsitrin

It is hard to get into another person’s head, but Karim Khan, a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, apparently does not believe that Israel intends to either capture/put on trial, or to kill Hamas leadership.

Why else would he issue a request for the arrest warrants of Hamas’ Sinwar, Deif, Haniyeh? Either he does not know that one of the goals of the Gaza war is Hamas’ destruction, or he is unaware of the basic operational principle of ICC, the court in which he works — namely, to quote Wikipedia,  that “the Court will only prosecute an individual if states are unwilling or unable to prosecute.”

Alternatively, Mr. Khan does not think that Israel is a state, and therefore, this clause does not apply to Israel. There is really no other explanation for his decision to seek Sinwar’s, Deif’s, and Haniyeh’s arrest warrants while Israel is in the hot pursuit of them.

Which implies several things. If, in Mr. Khan’s mind, Israel is not a state, than it inexorably follows that Mr. Khan is an anti-Semite, his request for the arrest warrants for hamasers who are being hunted down by Israel means, in essence, that a Jewish state cannot be legitimate.

If Mr. Khan does not know that there is a war going on in Gaza, and that one of its goals is capturing or killing Sinwar, Deif, and their underlings, than he is utterly ignorant.

If he does not know the basic principles of ICC, the organization for which he works, than Mr. Khan is plainly a fool, and ICC should immediately boot him.

Or perhaps something else, and entirely different, is going on here — Mr. Khan seeking publicity, a chance to step in front of cameras and microphones, to be in the center of world’s attention?

Of course, he would not have gotten much attention with the mere announcements of the arrest warrants for Hamas terrorists — that would be, as Mr. Hearst elegantly put it back in the age of “yellow journalism,” not a “sensation,” not a “man bites dog” story, but a mere “so what?” story of a “dog bites man.” The truly sensational part of Mr. Khan’s announcement was that, in the same breath as seeking the arrest warrants for hamasers, he announced the intention to arrest and try Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the defense minister Gallant. If this is not a “man bites dog story” deserving full media attention and shining bright light of publicity on Mr. Khan, what is?

Which gets us to Mr. Khan’s real motivations in seeking the totally unnecessary (and illegal under ICC rules, for that matter) arrest warrants for the Hamas triumvirate. Those serve as a mere smokescreen for his real intention: to put Israel in the dock. If he requested only the Netanyahu and Gallant arrest warrants, there would be an outcry that he let the terrorists go scot-free, so to avoid that — and to showcase his faux “impartiality” and “even-handedness” to boot, Mr. Khan went through the empty (and — let us repeat yet again — illegal) motion of asking for the arrest warrants for the Hamas chieftains.

This cheap manoeuvre should not fool anybody; Mr. Khan is merely a shyster.

Not that his deceptive pettifoggery has no goal. It is hard to believe that Mr. Khan is just an innocently ignorant fool. He knows what he is doing — he is de-legitimizing Israel. While his flair for publicity is clearly there, the real driving force for Mr. Khan must be his antisemitism — perhaps not that surprising in someone, though Britain born and raised, whose full name is Karim Asad Ahmad Khan? Haven’t we seen plenty of British Moslems flooding the streets of London in mass demonstrations supporting Hamas?

The fact that his fig-leaf request for arrest warrants against Hamas chiefs are — worth repeating again — illegal under ICC’s own statute, puts his support of Hamas, and his antisemitic hate of Israel in sharp relief. It is Mr. Khan’s antisemitism that the press’ cameras really shed the light on. It is his antisemitism that should be stressed, again and again.