Dutch MPs call for answers on Israel ICC intimidation claims | Dutch News - 10 June 2024 |
Dutch MPs are calling on the government to clarify claims made recently by The Guardian and others that senior officials working at the International Criminal Court in The Hague have been spied on and intimidated by Israel.
The paper said at the end of May that Israel has run an almost decade-long secret "war" against the court. "The country deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries," the paper said.
The investigation was carried out together with Israeli-Palestinian news organisation +972 Mag and Israeli website Local Call.
Surveillance and interference: Israel's covert war on the ICC exposed | +972 Mag - 28 May 2024 |
Top Israeli government and security officials have overseen a nine-year surveillance operation targeting the ICC and Palestinian rights groups to try to thwart a war crimes probe, a joint investigation reveals.
According to several sources, Israel's underhanded efforts to interfere with the investigation -- which could amount to offenses against the administration of justice, punishable by a prison sentence -- have been managed from the very top. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to have taken a keen interest in the operation, even sending intelligence teams "instructions" and "areas of interest" regarding their monitoring of ICC officials. One source stressed that Netanyahu was "obsessed, obsessed, obsessed" with finding out what materials the ICC was receiving.
The agency's former head, Yossi Cohen, personally attempted to "enlist" Bensouda and manipulate her into complying with Israel's wishes, according to sources familiar with his activities, causing the then-prosecutor to fear for her personal safety.
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The former prosecutor was far from the only target. Dozens of other international officials related to the probe were similarly surveilled. One of the sources said there was a large whiteboard with the names of around 60 people who were under surveillance -- half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including UN officials and ICC personnel in The Hague.
'If you don't want me to use the law, what do you want me to use?'
Because Palestinian human rights groups were frequently providing the prosecutor's office with materials about Israel's attacks on Palestinians, detailing incidents they wanted the prosecutor to consider as part of the probe, these organizations themselves became key targets of Israel's surveillance operation. Here, the Shin Bet took the lead.
According to the sources, the primary surveillance targets were four Palestinian human rights organizations: Al-Haq, Addameer, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). Addameer sent appeals to the ICC about torture practices against prisoners and detainees, while the other three groups sent multiple appeals over the years regarding Israel's settlement enterprise in the West Bank, punitive house demolitions, bombing campaigns in Gaza, and specific senior Israeli political and military leaders.
One intelligence source said the motive for surveilling the organizations was stated openly: they harm Israel's standing in the international arena. "We were told that these are organizations that operate in the international arena, participate in BDS, and want to harm Israel legally, so they're being monitored too," the source said. "That's why we're engaging with this. Because it can hurt people in Israel -- officers, politicians."
Another goal of surveilling the Palestinian groups was to try to delegitimize them, and, by extension, the entire ICC investigation.
In October 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz -- who himself was named in several of the appeals that Palestinian organizations sent to the ICC, due to his role as chief of staff during the 2014 Gaza war and defense minister during the May 2021 war -- declared Al-Haq, Addameer, and four other Palestinian human rights groups to be "terrorist organizations."
European states were compliant with Israel's request and stopped all funding to legitimate Palestinian human rights groups.
Adding to legitimacy of fake intelligence and disinformation from the Hasbara sources of the Prime Minister
