The Nuremberg principles are the legal foundation of the judgments meted out to convicted Nazi war criminals in the aftermath of World War II. Uniquely, these principles were articulated not on the foundation of the victors’ jurisprudence, but on behalf of all humanity...they are recognized as universal in scope and application. There are many issues connected with the Nuremberg proceedings that we will note in passing, but they are not relevant to this essential point. There are substantial allegations of torture of some defendants, lax due process (e.g.,hearsay evidence was admitted). Then there is the increasingly apparent fact that many, many defendants were entirely exempted from the proceedings because both sides wanted their expertise in fighting the next “Cold War” ...so much so that it’s a wonder anyone was left to convict. What concerns us in this essay is the supposed universal applicability of these Nuremberg principles. Has this been enforced at all since the Nuremberg trials? The United States dodged any scrutiny for its violations during the Korean War (committed under UN auspices, note), the Vietnam War (just think about Agent Orange!!), and ever since (think: depleted uranium in Iraq), Worse, the US has extended the mantle of its acquired immunity to various client states at various times, including to the apartheid state of Israel, apparently permanently. So, it seems, everyone is subject to prosecution for violating the Nuremberg Code except the United States and those to whom it gives a pass...welcome to the “rules-based order!” But whilst the US military has been guilty of all sorts of Nuremberg violations, Israel is now going them one better, it is completely scofflawing the first Nuremberg principle of discrimination between civilian and military targets. Whilst Israeli military spokesmen go on TV and give pathetically casuistic excuses (A Hamas member was among the patients in fleet of ambulances we bombed, there was a Hamas meeting space below this hospital we flattened, there was a Hamas worshiper at the mosque we obliterated, etc., etc.) the practical reality is that Israel is at war with the civilian population of Gaza (and as this consists of more than half children we should probably correct that to “with the children of Gaza”). Nor has this intent failed to find expression in Israel. In a piece written by Jonathan Turley in 2014, “They Have to Die”: Israeli Politician’s Comments Calling for Killing of Mothers of Palestinians Trigger International Backlash1, a Facebook post by Ayelett Shaked, a member of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, which was part of the ruling coalition then (and no doubt remains so today) was referenced: “She is quoted as calling for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to ‘little snakes’…. They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists...they are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists.” Considering that this is exactly what we are now witnessing in Gaza, I leave it to the reader to assess whether or not this has not become the official policy of the current Israeli government. Ayelett Shaked is doubtless ecstatic now that one Palestinian child is killed every fifteen minutes in Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
The Nuremberg Tribunals failed not in their careful denunciation of proper restraints on warfare, but in not arranging for an ongoing process to enforce them fairly in the future, a fault doubly shared by the United Nations. As most of the national judiciaries of this world are far too politicized and corrupt to prosecute Nuremberg violations, we must press for judicial reform until that’s no longer the case. In the meantime, how are we to regard those who scofflaw these internationally recognized rules of war? I refer readers, especially American readers, to a little corner of our Declaration of Independence:
Among the complaints against British monarch George III we find this one: “He...has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Let that sink in. We don’t need to concern ourselves here with how brutal Native Americans actually were or wre not in their native state, or whether all Indian tribes answered this description. The fact is that these mercenary Indians behaved as described, and they are called “savage” here not because they are Indians nor because they live primitively, but precisely because they practice indiscriminate warfare, and this a century and half before the Nuremberg Tribunals! So what I’ll suggest here is that if we cannot have the enforcement of the Nuremberg Code, let us at least fall back on the wisdom of our founding fathers, and deem the Israeli military apparatus and government what it is: savage! With their bombardment of defenseless civilians in the world’s largest open-air concentration camp called the Gaza Strip, the Israelis have put themselves well outside the bounds of civilized society. The BDS movement should not hesitate to use this fact to promote its cause, and to expand its reach into American and other nation’s industries that are supplying this apartheid state with its means of high-tech savagery. The UN should be pressed to deny Israel standing in that international body.
1https://jonathanturley.org/2014/07/17/they-have-to-die-israeli-politicians-comments-calling-for-killing-of-mothers-of-palestinians-trigger-international-backlash/
Excellent without a conclusion as to how to hold accountable