Revealed: Israeli spy chief 'threatened' ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-icc-prosecutor-war-crimes-inquiry

by zhengiszen • 2 years ago

134 86 2 years ago

theguardian.com

nabla9• 2 years ago

Whatever you think of the merits of the charge, that's low.

WhackyIdeas• 2 years ago

Haven’t people learned yet, Israel should be able get away with ANYTHING they want in this world.

Feeble International laws shouldn’t be applied to a country with the most moral army in the world!

They deserve a free pass for what they’ve done and everything they are going to do.

And anyone who disagrees is a bloody anti-semite, got it?!

shmatt• 2 years ago

Luckily the NSA, GCHQ, DGSE, ASIO, and FIS don't exist. And if they did, they would never wiretap or hack anyone ever. Darn you Mossad!

iamthirsty• 2 years ago

Kinda whataboutism, don't you think? Those aren't the organizations in question here.

scrubs• 2 years ago

Well Israel has enough merits to back them considering what they're surrounded by. But that has limits.

The Israeli Palestinian problem is complicated going back to WWI as one starting point.

And from time to time I get extremely tired of both sides whining about how they're victims. Similarly, I wish she US would be done with the middle east and focus on china/Russia. I'm tired of us wasting resources there.

At this point we all know what needs to happen. Isreal needs to empty its settlements; then two state solution where both sides mind their own business. Palestine, if they want control will also have commensurate accountability. So whether by action or inaction if hamas/iran/hezbolh screw stuff up, Palestine will be accountable. They're going to have to actually want to run it instead of being a pawn or playing short-termism footsies with terrorists.

We have less leverage on hamas, and more on Isreal. But Isreal doesn't want a two state solution now. That's also a problem.

petre• 2 years ago

Similarly, I wish she US would be done with the middle east and focus on china/Russia. I'm tired of us wasting resources there.

I'm sure all the employees of the 3 letter agencies dealing with these issues and presidential the advisors know better. It's a complex issue involving Iran. If Israel empties the settlements Hamas will keep attacking, just like Hezbollah does from Lebanon.

However, most countries are fed up at this point and want a two state solution.

doron• 2 years ago

China & Russia are heavily involved in the middle east as well as Africa. Much of the current war is also a proxy war with them. It's the same war

seo-speedwagon2• 2 years ago

The counterpart +972 Magazine article, which goes into more details on the communications interception side of this, was posted earlier as well. The articles are complementary, IMO

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40502432

NomDePlum3• 2 years ago

Guardian have also published on this subject which I submitted but has been flagged for some reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40500023

On a side note, has anyone experienced submission posts URLs being changed/corrupted? Including above, correct link in the comments.

Twice in the last month or so I've had submissions links go wrong. Each time wrongly pointing to the exact same Guardian article that I have never accessed (other than following the issue).

seo-speedwagon2• 2 years ago

The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call apparently jointly collaborated on this story, and all released their articles today (modulo local timezones).

Multiple people have posted these articles today, most instances of which were flagged. The HN thread I linked above, in fact, has toggled between flagged and not-flagged at least twice already.

no_exit• 2 years ago

Wild stuff. Kudos to Bensouda for refusing to be intimidated.

xenospn2• 2 years ago

I don’t get what Israel is doing here. They keep claiming the ICC has no jurisdiction and is a corrupt political organization, but also try to influence its inner workings and decision-making process.

Also, seems like they picked the wrong target since they basically had nothing to pressure the prosecutor with, according to the report. The story is weird.

NomDePlum3• 2 years ago

The story indicates plenty of pressure being applied does it not? Ranging from fabricated reputational damage, physical and psychological intimidation and attempts to threaten family members amongst other pressure being applied repeatedly over many years.

For an individual does it get much worse than that? Particularly given the reputation of Israeli intelligence services.

xenospn2• 2 years ago

Are you telling me that the full weight of the Israeli government, coming directly from the Prime Minister’s office, and the best they could do is “this will be bad for your career”?

Something here is missing.

pygar• 2 years ago

They just don't care enough and think they can get away with it. It's thuggish behavior. They would rather the ICC didn't exist, the UN didn't exist, the Palestinians didn't exist.

linearrust• 2 years ago

Also, seems like they picked the wrong target since they basically had nothing to pressure the prosecutor with,

Makes you wonder what dirt they have on our politicians. The republican party acts like they work for the israeli government.

Student loan forgiveness? Every republican politician cries "No way, we have no money for it".

Affordable healthcare for americans? Every republican politician screams "Impossible, our debt is unmanageable.".

Money for israel? Every republican politician shouts "Whatever israel wants. Damn the debt.".

Peaceful protests by american college students. Every republican politician "Who cares? ... Oh it's against israel's genocide?... Send in the troops".

YouWhy• 2 years ago

Modulo Israel's unpopularity: how would another nation state, say, Korea, act, if a non-state organization attempted to assert its authority to act in substantial force to override the authority of the nation state's government?

It is my theory that, up to niceties, that such acts are a form of war; the nation's government would be under major pressure from its public to act in reciprocal force.

seu• 2 years ago

There's a good reason why "Israel, like the US, Russia and China, is not a member", and why Israel has engaged in spying them (and I would be surprised if the others didn't): they completely disregard any sort of global overwatch on their actions. Each of those states believe they are above everyone else.

jdougan• 2 years ago

Frankly, I would expect that many of the States that are members are spying on the ICC internals.

preommr• 2 years ago

The countries you listed are basically all the world players that exert outside influence. It's easy for a country like Canada to sit on the sidelines and go along with orgs like the ICC since we're not really under threat, nor is it something we've grown into.

Watch the ICC challenge Canada's sovereignty repeatedly on issues that we hold important, and see how fast our government decides not to recognize their authority.

brabel4• 2 years ago

The ICC is not challenging any country's sovereignty, it's prosecuting criminals whose crimes fall outside the jurisdiction of a single country. The fact that the US has "pressured" the ICC (while not even being a signatory) to not go after Israel, and that Israel has been harassing them, shows that the West is not at all on a higher ground morally than anyone else. They're doing the same thing: killing, waging unjustified wars, spying on and harassing people trying to do good. I am ashamed of what we, the collective West, are doing. The rule of law doesn't mean anything to us if it goes against our interests.

defrost• 2 years ago

Watch the ICC challenge Canada's sovereignty repeatedly on issues that we hold important

That's not likely to happen ...

it seems that once Canada embraced the ICC https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re...

    Canada became the first country in the world to incorporate the obligations of the Rome Statute into its national laws when it adopted the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act (CAHWCA) on June 24, 2000. Canada was then able to ratify the Rome Statute on July 9, 2000.

it gained a retroactive free pass on "stuff that happened"

    https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/lawyer-says-international-criminal-court-declines-request-to-open-residential-school-investigation/

    A lawyer who was part of a group lobbying the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Canada and the Catholic Church over the residential school system says they’ve been turned down.

    “The ICC prosecutor declined to open a preliminary investigation,” says Andrew Phypers, one of a dozen lawyers who wrote the ICC requesting an investigation. “Part of their reasoning was that they felt they were prevented as the deaths occurred before Canada ratified the crimes against humanity law.”

Regardless of the merits of the case, that's a solid "No." on even just having a look.

tome4• 2 years ago

That's one interpretation. Another interpretation is that Israel is convinced that the global scrutiny they experience is so unfair and one-sided that they have to take action ahead of time to try to restore a modicum of balance.

brabel4• 2 years ago

That's kind of ridiculous. Israel has had the support of most of the world for months of war, but at some point it became clear they were just going far over what looked like a proportionate response. And they just kept going, month after month, getting worse and worse... and the outrage from other countries has slowly grown as they kept killing civilians almost indiscriminately. I would say this proves the exact opposite: that Israel, given the history of their people, are given more leeway than basically anyone else by the international community.

racional3• 2 years ago

It's an "interpretation" but an obviously rubbish one. One doesn't go to such extreme lengths as stalking the Chief Prosecutor, making thinly-veiled threats to their family's safety and so on unless one is perfectly aware of one's precarious fate in the hands of global public opinion -- and perfectly aware also (through knowledge of one's own actions) of the reasons why such scrutiny is legitimate and necessary.

tmnvix2• 2 years ago

More than just hacked and spied on. They are also accused of intimidating the chief prosecutor and others. That's some chutzpah.

jimbob45• 2 years ago

The US hacked and spied on Angela Merkel's phone and nobody really cared or did anything.[0]

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/germany-drops-...

qeternity2• 2 years ago

Spoiler: all countries are surveilling each other.

ggm2• 2 years ago

Well.. cared and could do anything differ. I think it's lovely we know. I suspect a lot of inter governments negotiated differently given strong evidence one doesn't do it in even the basic good faith manner. But, in state relations maybe good faith is a null concept?

gorbachev• 2 years ago

They did care. Or at least she did. You're right, though, that they didn't do much about it, other than complain loudly.

The main story about that incident was that the US had been spying on regular German citizens for years (decades?), as per Edward Snowden's revelations, and the German Government knew all about it. They didn't care at all. In fact, at the time it was sort of understood they were quite ok with it. It was only after "one of them" were hacked, they, sort of, cared.

tmnvix2• 2 years ago

Did they threaten her family too?

arp2423• 2 years ago

Prosecutors say they can find no actionable evidence to support claims German chancellor’s mobile phone was tapped by US National Security Agency

Who knows what happened; it's certainly possible, perhaps even plausible. But neither the absolute "hacked and spied" and "nobody really cared or did anything" are true, according to the article you posted yourself.

And regardless, there is no equivalence with the ICC case here anyway, for many reasons.

mathieuh• 2 years ago

I hope the Israelis manage to kick out this government, reading about what some of them were up to is astonishing. Particularly Ben-Gvir[0], he seems like a horrible piece of work with his repeated calls for genocide, but none of the rest of them seem much better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir

smcl• 2 years ago

Do they not have the same problem as Russia, though? Kick out Netanyahu or Putin and another group of (potentially even more) unhinged psychos take power.

Protostome3• 2 years ago

Assuming that's true—and it's a significant "if," given that every story has multiple perspectives and The Guardian's known critical stance toward Israel—such behavior by Israel would indeed be disgraceful.

As an Israeli, I must clarify that the current government represents only a small minority. This minority has gained power through political maneuvering orchestrated by Netanyahu.

It's important to note that there are daily demonstrations with thousands of protesters demanding a change in government. These actions are completely out of step with the desires and values of the broader Israeli populace.

helpfulContrib• 2 years ago

As an Israeli, I can say that the current government represent a small minority that through political manipulation by Netanyahu has gained power.

I sure hope this is true, although I have my doubts that it is a 'small minority'.

A nation willfully ruled by war criminals always becomes their final victim.

klyrs• 2 years ago

... the current government represent a small minority that through political manipulation by Netanyahu has gained power.

The only part of this sentence that's an Israeli thing is Netanyahu. Right wing hardliners don't get elected to power, they seize it.

Teever• 2 years ago

Benjamin Netanyahu has been PM of Israel for almost 17 years. Israel has been a state since 1948. 2023-1948 = 75 years. 16.66/75*100 = 22% of the existence of Israel.

Think about that. One man has been the democratically elected leader of Israel for about 22% of the entire time it has existed. He is also the first prime minister to have been born in Israel after its establishment. In so many ways this man is the manifestation of the nation of Israel. Or maybe it could be better said that Israel is a manifestation of Benjamin Netanyahu?

It would be interesting to work out the numbers on what percent of the entire Israeli population of all time voted for him and compare that with the percent of the entire Palestinian population that has existed from the same time period that voted for Hamas that one time Which IIRC was a vote that was only open to males 35+.

Protostome3• 2 years ago

Benjamin Netanyahu has generally been averse to war over the years, often avoiding major conflicts. However, following the debacle on Oct 7th, there has been increasing pressure for his resignation. In this context, the current conflict may serve his interests. Netanyahu is aware that once the conflict ends, he will face tough questions and likely need to step down.

flanked-evergl4• 2 years ago

As an Israeli, I must clarify that the current government represents only a small minority.

Did the majority of the Knesset not vote for this government, and if not, how did it form?

dijit2• 2 years ago

tl;dr: Coalition governments.

wslh• 2 years ago

I love to read every intelligence news but it seems The Guardian has many issues finding what Putin or others are really doing.

Today the problem is not only the truth and the signal vs. noise but the context. This all seems like the spotlight fallacy.

eynsham• 2 years ago

First, thanks for the conatructive tone. Every day I am astonished that people directly impacted—whose friends died and might have been sexually abused on 7.10 and people whose families have been blown to pieces by aerial bombardment—somehow still manage to be more reasonable (on occasion) than many of their supporters in the West.

Second, I am not sure that this is a ‘small’ minority. Even ignoring the Channel 14 polls (which do seem to be made up) the current coalition is on about 50 seats (looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_I...). And then I am not really convinced that Sa’ar or Lieberman would really be opposed to this specific action, which would make a majority. For that matter, I saw one poll saying a Sa’ar+Cohen+Bennett tie-up would hit a whole thirty-two seats and reduce the Likud to twelve (that's the one labelled ‘Merger of Gideon Sa'ar, Naftali Bennett and Yossi Cohen & Labor and Meretz under Yair Golan’…) Admittedly maybe Lieberman would say that it’s stupid but that’s different from saying it’s disgraceful.

muddi900• 2 years ago

Benjamin Netenyahu has consistently been winning elections. It took a coalition of 11 parties last time to keep him away from the PM seat.

At what point will people accept that he is the rule, not the exception?

runarberg2• 2 years ago

Also, this has been going on since 2015, with serious escalation in 2018-2019, spanning a total of 4 governments, one of which didn’t include Netanyahu, two (and a half) included Netanyahu’s main oppositions.

Spying, and using nefarious methods to undermine international law seems to be a consistent policy of Israel regardless of who is in power.

Democracies usually have a set of policies which the public has no influence over, so perhaps, if given the choice, the Israeli public would vote to abolish these kinds of policies.

That said, these kinds of actions are usually followed by international (and—in case of democracies—domestic) condemnation, and in the worst cases (which this is) sanctions. In the case of Israel, the response seems to be a relatively small demonstrations (think Argentina if you want to see demonstration against actions the public really dislikes) and a lackluster international response. I don’t think Israel is likely to change these policies any time soon, unless the international response really steps up their pressure.

ggm2• 2 years ago

Influence comes in many forms. The US has underfunded international agencies for decades if it differs from their posture. Things like women's reproductive rights can affect funds to agencies like the FAO.

Sabine12345673• 2 years ago

Its about time for economical sabctions against Israel to Guide it into a two state silution. Why is everyone afraid of that logical step ?

rogerian• 2 years ago

btw - its spelt Israel

cykros3• 2 years ago

Indeed. Spelling it Isreal would give it an undeserved legitimacy.

Sabine12345673• 2 years ago

Its obvious that Bibi is a war criminal and this "Hell on earth" can only be stoppped by harsh economical sanctions. And of course every country should stop delivering weapons while condemning those actroceties. Words are not enough. Does noone has a moral Backbone ?

Sabine12345673• 2 years ago

Instead of getting lost in manipulative discussions about Hamas and Israels " right for self defense" ( 1200 killed Israelis against 36.000 killed Palästinians and 81.000 wounded ...) The traumatised and wounded felliw human beings can not even be treated, as almost all of their Hospitals have been destroyed. Its time to stop getting caught in Israels net. Why are no countries putting economic sanctions as this is the only logical reaction to Deal with this sadistic Land grap.

smitty1e• 2 years ago

Governments have been running plays on governments (and governmental organizations) since there were governments.

Not a justification, just a statement of reality. If one thinks one's stuff secure, it may be.

jules-jules• 2 years ago

Getting the HN customary flagged status. Like clock work.

Revealed: Israeli spy chief 'threatened' ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry

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