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SvennoJ on 08 August 2024
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UN expert rebukes Germany’s staunch support of Israel amid ICC war crimes probe

The UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory has called out Germany’s staunch defence of Israel amid its war on Gaza, saying “it’s time to wake up to reality”.

In a post on social media related to Germany’s submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) challenging a request for warrants seeking the arrest of Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes in Gaza, Francesca Albanese asked: “How can this be forgiven?”

While Germany could stay “silent in the corner of history, you are doing all you can to make it wrong, once again,” the UN rapporteur said.

“I understand. The pressure you have been under. The Holocaust that the Third Reich committed and most ordinary Germans let happen (other Europeans also watched idle or supported it). The sense of guilt. Its collective dimension,” Albanese wrote.

Germany, she added, was torn between supporting the primacy of international laws and “the security of Israel (or its apartheid?)”.

Israeli protesters disrupt court hearing into abuse at Sde Teiman prison

Protesters shouting “shame” and “we are the sovereign” forced the Israeli Supreme Court to briefly suspend a hearing into a petition to close down the Sde Teiman prison, where Palestinian prisoners and Israeli doctors have accused Israeli soldiers of carrying out severe torture, including sexual abuse.

The protesters began disrupting the proceedings on Wednesday when a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) argued that Sde Teiman should be closed permanently over repeated allegations of detainee abuse, the Times of Israel and the Associated Press news agency reports.

The protesters were removed from the court and after the hearing resumed the judges asked the state’s lawyer for greater clarity on the conditions in which Palestinians prisoners are being held.

State lawyer Aner Helman said there are currently about 30 Palestinians at Sde Teiman and that “core principles” of Israeli laws on detaining combatants were being upheld. He said that an upgraded facility will be opened at the site on September 5.

The ACRI’s lawyer, however, rejected the claims, saying: “We’re not talking about a new facility, it’s the same place, in which [the same] things have been happening since October."