The tension surrounding Iranian nuclear ambitions and regional control is mounting in the Middle East. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also know as the Iran Deal or JCPOA, is being held up as a model for future dealings with Iran, but was the Iran Deal a triumph of diplomacy, or did it fuel greater instability in the region?
A procession of survivors makes its way to mass graves near the village of Kocho containing the bodies of their loved ones, on the fifth anniversary of the start of the ISIS genocide against Yazidis. ISIS rounded up everyone in the village at gunpoint in the school past the wall, shooting men and older boys and taking women and children captive. (Andrea DiCenzo for NPR)
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu responded to a claim by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday, characterizing the body’s decision to include Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under its war crimes jurisdiction as “pure Antisemitism,” recalling the fact that the International Criminal Court was created in order to prevent genocides such as the Jewish Holocaust, and not to single out the only Jewish State while turning a blind eye to crimes against humanity in places like Syria and Iran.
A lower court of the ICC handed down a ruling last week claiming jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, making any defensive Israeli military action in the territories a potential “war crime.” The decision comes five years after the Palestinian Authority appealed to the ICC to prosecute Israeli “occupation.” The US State Department criticized the ruling, citing that the Palestinian territories are not a member state in the United Nations, and therefore the Palestinian Authority has no standing to bring cases in the ICC. Neither Israel nor the United States are signatories to the Rome Statute of 1998, which is the foundational document for the ICC. The statute clarifies that only individuals who commit genocides and war crimes in member states (or which are committed elsewhere by their nationals) can be prosecuted by the ICC, unless referred by the UN Security Council. No such resolution was passed by the Security Council regarding Israel in the Palestinian territories.
Also on Friday, the Yazidi community of the Shingal region in northern Iraq gathered to mourn as over 100 victims of the world’s most recent genocide. A chorus of wailing arose just outside the Yazidi village of Kocho, where hundreds were gathered near rows of dozens of graves to commemorate the re-burial of family members who were murdered by the Islamic State in the summer of 2014, when ISIS swept into Shingal and ravaged the non-Muslim Yazidi people group. The jihadis murdered hundreds of men and boys in a school near the burial site, while taking women and girls as sexual slaves. As the ISIS caliphate was dismantled in Iraq by the determination of the Kurdish Peshmerga and other Arab militias, evidence of their atrocities were unearthed, and the remains of victims were sent to Baghdad for years of analysis and identification before their eventual return to Shingal this week. Over 5,000 Yazidis were murdered and at least as many taken captive by ISIS between 2014-2017, with thousands still missing today.
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The ICC’s preoccupation with a nation born from genocide at the expense of actual genocides and war crimes occurring in places like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, China and the Democratic Republic of Congo is ironic, if not tragic. We would implore the Maranatha global family to join us in prayer for a spirit of wisdom and discernment in the ICC, for the Body of Christ and godly political leaders to speak and act on behalf of those who are “harassed and helpless” throughout the 10/40 Window, while interceding on behalf of the covenant nation, which continues to provoke the nations to “stumble” and “rage.”
Maranatha.
As the domination of coronavirus in the international headlines wanes, news from war-torn Libya is again getting attention. But of what significance is the swift military reversals of the last few weeks, who are the parties continuing to fight nine years after the dawn of the Arab Spring, and why are Russia and Turkey so involved in the conflict?
