MARY ALEXANDER • 3 JUNE 2024
Published by Africa Check on 7 June 2024

“The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu,” reads the common version of a claim circulating on social media in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and elsewhere since 20 May 2022.*

Other versions include:

• The International Criminal Court (ICC) officially issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu & the Israeli Minister of Defense.
• The International Criminal Court which has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes is the same ICC at which Jack Smith, special persecutor of President Trump was employed.
• Finally, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu … the International Court of Justice has also issued arrest warrants against Hamas leaders.

Benjamin Netanyahu has led Israel’s response to the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on his country, which killed more than 1,200 people. At least 245 hostages were taken and other crimes – including rape and torture – committed during and after the attack.

It was launched mainly from the Gaza Strip, a 363 square kilometre Palestinian territory wedged between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea in the Middle East.

The Israel-Gaza war has as of 31 May 2024 killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza by both military action and a total blockade of essential supplies such as medicine and food. The war is said to be one of the most deadly of the many conflicts since the state of Israel was established within Palestine in 1948.

In December 2023 South Africa opened a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice for breaching the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention by its actions in Gaza.

The convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

South Africa accused Israel of “killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction”.

The case is known as South Africa vs Israel, and continues to be heard. Other countries, including Mexico, Libya and Colombia, have since joined South Africa in its suit.

But it’s not true that an arrest warrant has been issued for Netanyahu. Before we discuss why, let’s look at the difference between the two international courts.

Cases against individuals, cases between countries

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) both work out of the Hague in the Netherlands to judge crimes against international law.

But there are important differences.

The ICJ – also known as the world court – is the main judicial body of the United Nations and hears disputes between states, such as South Africa vs Israel.

The ICC, by contrast, investigates and prosecutes individual people suspected of committing international crimes. These are set out in a treaty known as the Rome Statute and include crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

ICC prosecutor files request to judges

On 20 May the ICC’s chief prosecutor, British lawyer Karim Khan, applied to the court’s first of two pre-trial chambers for arrest warrants against five people for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the “situation in the State of Palestine”.

The five are Netanyahu, as well as Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh.

Khan’s application accuses Netanyahu and Gallant of the crimes of murder, starvation, attacks on civilians and more. The three Hamas leaders are accused of being responsible for similar crimes, as well as rape and torture.

But it’s still an application. The ICC has not issued any arrest warrant for the five. And Netanyahu has not been accused of genocide.

Khan’s application has to be decided by ICC judges in a process likely to take months. In March 2008, for example, the ICC prosecutor requested a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese military leader Omar al-Bashir. ICC judges only issued the actual warrant a year later, in March 2009.

The new application has been condemned by the United states, which has not signed the ICC’s Rome Statute. There is debate about whether the ICC will issue the arrest warrants at all.

At the time of publication, the ICC had not issued an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Netanyahu.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

The post International Criminal Court hasn’t issued arrest warrant for Israeli PM Netanyahu – judges still to decide appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

MARY ALEXANDER • 20 March 2024

“ISIS was created and funded by Mossad and the CIA,” reads the caption of an image circulating on social media in Nigeria, South Africa and elsewhere.

It adds: “Israel treated ISIS fighters in their hospitals and John McCain met with their leader and supplied weapons.”

The image shows a row of smiling soldiers holding the black and white flag of Isis, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, next to the blue and white flag of Israel.

Mossad is the foreign intelligence agency of Israel, a country in the Middle East. The CIA is the US Central Intelligence Agency.

John McCain was a US senator and the Republican Party presidential candidate who lost to Barack Obama in 2008. He died in 2018.

What is Isis?

Isis is a militant Sunni Islamist group that captured and held large parts of northern Iraq and eastern Syria in the Middle East from 2014 to 2019. The group’s previous name was the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or Isil. It’s also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, or simply as the Islamic State.

At its height, the Islamic State controlled a self-declared caliphate of roughly 4,400 square kilometres, a region of about 8 million people.

In 2015 the International Criminal Court said it was investigating “crimes of unspeakable cruelty” by the Islamic State. These included:

… mass executions, sexual slavery, rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, torture, mutilation, enlistment and forced recruitment of children and the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities …

The Islamic State has been linked to deadly attacks in Nigeria, Benin, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. It has also claimed responsibility for attacks in more than 20 other countries across the world.

Most recently, an Islamic State group based in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for a 22 February attack on a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia’s capital. At least 133 people have so far been reported to have been killed.

But is the image any proof that Isis was “created and funded by Mossad and the CIA”?

US-led African Lion military training in Morocco

A reverse image search reveals that the image has been altered.

In the original photo, the soldiers are holding a green and yellow flag – not the Isis flag – next to the Israeli flag.

The photo appears in news reports on troops from an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) battalion joining the US Africa Command’s African Lion military training exercise in Morocco in June 2023.

Its caption on the Times of Israel reads: “An IDF contingent of soldiers from the Golani Reconnaissance Battalion in Morocco to take part in the US-led African Lion military exercises on June 5, 2023.”

The photo was also posted on the IDF’s official X/Twitter account on 5 June 2023.

משלחת של 12 לוחמים ומפקדים מיחידת סיירת גולני יצאה אתמול לתרגיל “African Lion 2023” בהובלת זרוע היבשה שמתקיים במרוקו.

בתרגיל משתתפות כ-18 מדינות וכ-8,000 חיילים מצבא ארה”ב, מרוקו וגאנה >> pic.twitter.com/4SDKbAcAJl

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) June 5, 2023

A machine translation of the post’s Hebrew text reads:

A delegation of 12 fighters and commanders from the Golani patrol unit left yesterday for the ‘African Lion 2023’ exercise … that is taking place in Morocco. About 18 countries and about 8,000 soldiers from the US army, Morocco and Ghana are participating in the exercise.

The altered image is not proof that Mossad created and funded Isis.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

Report published by Africa Check on 28 March 2024

The post Doctored image of Israeli soldiers with Isis flag used to claim Mossad and CIA created Islamic State appeared first on South Africa Gateway.