I sat spellbound the other night listening to Karim A.A. Khan, the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal court, as he explained to Christiane Amanpour why he sought arrest warrants from the court for the leadership of both Israel and Hamas. His public announcement had listed the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the leadership of both parties. I cannot say that I have ever heard a more rational statement by a man charged with taking action against evil. It could not have been a more perfect blend of compassion, reason, and outrage in an expression of necessity.
Anyone who cares at all for the people on either side of this spiral of hatred and collective violence should read Karim Khan’s full statement, where he lists the war crimes and crimes against humanity for which he has gathered evidence and presented it to the court. I would especially commend Mr. Khan’s statement to the ‘pro-Palestinian’ and ‘pro-Israeli’ student protestors in the United States.
Dehumanization
Hatred is not a natural state of humanity. It has to be learned. There is a sequence involved, which usually begins with fear and/or the seeking of power over the other. Cooperation in human groups has always been an evolutionary strength. Humans would not have survived ‘in the wild’ without cooperating with each other in defending against threats and acquiring the means for survival. That old Hobbesian myth about society as all against all is long-since disproven by archeological science. Cooperation has always been paramount, however achieved, by hierarchical force or by compassion and mutual aid.
But, of course, that has not precluded human groups from fighting other human groups. Cooperation and conflict have always been the two ends of the spectrum of human relations. When cooperation is strong, empathy tends to prevail. When conflict dominates relations, dehumanization arises.
Throughout history, all manner of variations and mixes of conflict and cooperation occurred. More often than not, those in power have tended to use the dehumanization of others as a means of controlling and directing their own populations. It happens at all levels, from office politics and high school sports, to international relations. At the same time, humans are perfectly capable of being compassionate and caring of strangers. As I listened to Karim Khan explain his actions to Christiane Amanpour, I felt both his calm reason and his outrage at the worst kinds of behavior in which humans engage. If you do anything, at least read the lists of war crimes and crimes against humanity he has documented. How else could he have done his job?
Power and Hatred
It is not my intention to trace the sordid history of power imbalances and exploitation, or the history of the geopolitical failures of the U.S., Great Britain, and others since and before World War II that produced the predicament that has persisted for around seven decades. The famous Israeli writer and public intellectual, Yuval Noah Harari, in another conversation with Christiane Amanpour, got it right last night in discussing the current situation.
The mutual hatred has grown so intense and the atrocities on both sides so severe, that what might have been in another time is impossible to achieve today. The dehumanization and hatred on both sides has just gone too far. The Hamas attack on October 7 and the Israeli assault on Palestine that followed were both “aimed simply to annihilate entire communities.” As Harari points out, these were not merely military operations; they were attempts to destroy people in the most brutal ways possible. That, in essence, is the essence of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Harari also made the important point that you can be both a victim and a perpetrator at the same time, or at different times, as most nations have been throughout history. That fact does not set well, of course, with the sanctimonious assertion, “My country, right or wrong!” That is when power, arrogance, and hatred override morality.
Sovereignty and Sanity
Neither the United States of America nor Israel are parties to the treaty that formed the International Criminal Court. Some argue it is a matter of national sovereignty. Why should a nation submit itself to the judgement of a court composed of representatives of other nations as well as its own? Well, one hundred twenty-three other nations signed the treaty, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in July 1998, and came into force on July 1, 2002. The ICC is relatively new in international affairs. National sovereignty has always trumped any effort at enforcing international morality.
A look at the increasingly urgent climate emergency confirms the utter failure of political leadership to recognize that there are higher values in this world than national sovereignty. When the anti-climate action lobby, so well-funded by the oil and gas industries, demands that the U.S. not be expected to take serious climate action until Russia, China, and India do so first—i.e., why should we be responsible?—I cringe with despair. If it were children making such arguments, we would scold them about taking personal responsibility for their own actions. But national sovereignty seems always to override sanity. And so it is with dehumanization and hatred. Perhaps if nation states all complied with and enforced international criminal law, then the probability of the rise of terrorist non-state actors would diminish significantly. Yet, we are where we are and it is incumbent on all moral people, wherever they live, to demand an end to the insanity.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 