Nuremberg II – Israel preparing

Even as Israel negotiates somewhat porous cease-fire agreements to try to retrieve at least some hostages, it is actively preparing a prosecution case for another set of Nuremberg trials. The trials might not actually take place at Nuremberg, but Israel wants the same or comparable results. To that end, they are gathering evidence, including some rather chilling eyewitness testimony.

Preparing for a second Nuremberg round

The first reports of this evidence-gathering activity appeared November 21 in The Jerusalem Post. According to this story, the European Leadership Network (ELNET) had already filed a criminal lawsuit in France. They will charge the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS) with crimes against humanity, per Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

ELNET announced their intention to aid in prosecuting HAMAS on October 22. Five days earlier, 47 leading French intellectuals signed an op-ed in Le Monde condemning HAMAS for its atrocious acts. The intellectual manifesto seeks international recognition of these acts as crimes against humanity. (Read it in the original here, and in English here.) In fact ELNET does not limit its outrage to the October 7 beginning of the Fourth Arab-Israeli War. They seek to condemn HAMAS for an atrocious posture it has taken since its 1987 inception.

A terrorist organization claiming affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood and supported by Iran, Hamas has never been legally held accountable for its actions by the international community. However, since its establishment in 1987, the list of its crimes is long: terrorist attacks, the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, the storage of military equipment under hospitals and schools, indiscriminate rocket attacks, torture of Palestinians. This list is confirmed by the United Nations.

ELNET calls for the immediate release of all hostages, “regardless of citizenship,” and urges that International Criminal Court’s “state parties” to file appropriate criminal complaints.

Gathering evidence

Yesterday morning, Madeleine Hubbard of Just the News published details of the evidence ELNET is gathering.

WARNING! The details of this evidence are not for the squeamish. Parental judgment and discretion are advised.

By far the most helpful evidence is actual video footage that HAMAS operatives themselves took as they went. This could include video from so-called journalists who embedded themselves with HAMAS as they committed their atrocious acts. Israel also has confessions (avowals?) from HAMAS prisoners-of-war, and testimony from those who, by some miracle, survived. HAMAS and its sister group Palestinian Islamic Jihad actually posted some of this footage online.

This illustrates a maxim that is as horrific as it might prove helpful to a Nuremberg style prosecution. Deputy U.S. National Security Adviser Victoria Coates says HAMAS actually boasts of what they’ve done.

Maybe the most jarring thing is that Hamas is not in any way trying to hide this. You know, they’re not being furtive or in any way bashful about what they’ve done. They’re proud of it.

Israel has shared some of this footage privately with Members of Congress and other interested officials. None of these visiting officials is taking any pleasure at the site.

Oddly enough, The Washington Post – which has taken heat for watering down earlier coverage of HAMAS’ atrocities – is now reporting openly that HAMAS appears to have used massive gang rape as a weapon of war. As further evidence, many of these amateur stormtroopers committed their acts while under the influence of fenethylline (Captagon).

CNN published a report quoting a witness who feigned death while several operatives gang-raped a woman. They cut off one breast and eventually shot her in the head during their assault on her.

Call for a tribunal

That is arguably the worst individual story,l but not by much. More to the point, this is not an isolated incident. The evidence that Just the News reported yesterday (and Bob Unruh of WorldNetDaily repeated today) mostly repeats stories the world has already heard – or to which it should have been paying attention. Sadly, it has become fashionable with too many people to run away from judging any atrocities against Jews. CNAV readers will recall an attempt to debunk a HAMAS video that turned out to be authentic.

Michael Oren, former Ambassador of Israel to the U.S. and author of Six Days of War, mentioned a call for a war-crimes tribunal, similar to the Nuremberg trials. He has reviewed “interrogation evidence” and confirmed: no one needed any enhanced interrogation methods to get HAMAS operatives to talk. To the contrary, they “passionately” avowed – not confessed to – their actions.

Israel has used the death penalty only twice in its history. The first execution was of a soldier convicted in 1948 of espionage. Later evidence showed his innocence, which could explain Israel’s reluctance to use the maximum penalty again. But they made an exception in 1962 in the case of Adolf Eichmann. Some Israeli authorities are talking of making that exception again – but others express concern for hostages still in enemy hands, and the conduct of any international war-crimes tribunal.

Brief history of Nuremberg

Before it became synonymous with bringing war criminals to justice, Nuremberg was the site of several rallies by the Nazi Party. The laws stripping Jews of their rights were in fact known as the Nuremberg Laws. Those were two of the reasons the Allies chose Nuremberg to bring German officials to trial after the war.

The International Military Tribunal convicted nineteen ranking officials for their crimes. Ten suffered death by hanging; Hermann Göring killed himself the day before he was to hang. (Martin Bormann was condemned in absentia, and either committed suicide or died trying to escape Soviet troops in Berlin.) Another seven served out sentences in Spandau Prison.

Exactly where a Nuremberg II round of trials might take place, no one will say. Worth noting is that the massive influx of migrants, many from Arab countries, will complicate any efforts to bring HAMAS to trial in Europe.

HAMAS did call for a “Muslim Day of Rage” the week after the attack. That “day of rage” was almost pathetic in its lack of response. But unless the civilized world does bring HAMAS to trial – whether at Nuremberg or elsewhere – any claim of the defense of civilization will ring hollow. Commentators who worry about “war being the health of the state” should remember: sometimes war is necessary. That applies particularly when one comes under direct attack. But some acts are so atrocious that those who perpetrate them makes themselves enemies of humanity by so doing. This is one such case.