(May 23, 2024 / JNS) - Germany will detain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant against him, a German government spokesman said Wednesday.
Asked by reporters in Berlin if Germany would execute an ICC warrant against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Steffen Hebestreit, a spokesman for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, said, “Of course. Yes, we abide by the law,” Politico reported.
This is kinda huge. Germany is one of Israel’s most ardent supporters. It’s really great to see such a clear and concise answer that confirms a commitment to international rule of law over international politics.
Edit: I hope I did not speak too soon, as this seems like relatively positive news. However I am having a hard time finding the original Politico source that this link refers to. I am also unaware of this source’s integrity. Does anybody else have another source; or the original Politico source that is referred to in this article?
Second edit: apparently this is coming from the Twitter/xitter of politico. I don’t have one of those, so I can’t personally verify the veracity of this statement, but it does seem as if Politico (Peter Wilke (@peterjwilke)) reported this. [I put the name and handle in here for others who may be interested in digging a bit more than me before this is more widely reported]
I found this excerpt in an (automatically translated) article at Kronen Zeitung (Austrian):
In response to a question from journalists at the Federal Press Conference on Wednesday, government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit explained that Germany is “fundamentally” a supporter of the International Criminal Court. “And that remains the case. We abide by the law,” said Hebestreit, indicating that the possibility of Netanyahu being arrested in the event of a case cannot be ruled out. However, the spokesperson spoke of a “hypothetical question”.
So it’s more of a case of ‘we will follow orders’ then. Somehow not surprising…
I hate that I’m surprised by the clarity of this answer. Hopefully Netanyahu is too.
I’m pretty surprised too. Of all the countries, Germany is the only one that could get away with waffling on this due to the whole World War II thing. Like, it makes perfect sense that Germany wouldn’t want to be critical of Israel
Man though, if even Germany is saying they’ll execute this warrant, then no country can even pretend to have an excuse because the only country with any excuse is making a statement now
The US – like Russia and China and a couple more countries – doesnt recognize to the ICC.
Germany is turning itself into the reliable arsenal of democracy.
Don’t jump there just yet, they’ve just gone through a wave of suppression of freedom of speech related to the conflict. This response is welcome and surprising because their other actions were pretty questionable.
We have freedom of opinion and it stops when you call for the destruction of countries or genocide.
Marching against a currently occurring genocide isn’t calling for genocide. Germans have a freedom of opinion as long as it’s the one approved opinion.
Thats simply not true. Its just that Germany has rules against demanding the extinction of the state of Israel – you know – due to historical reasons and mainly against Nazis.
The claim ‘from the river to the sea’ calls for the extinction of Israel, because it calls for a Palestinian state between Jordan and Mediterranean, therefore Israel has be desolved. Therefore ‘from the river to the sea’ is a prohibited phrase in Germany and you are not allowed to chant it at demonstrations. If you do so, the demonstration might get cancelled.
Freedom of speech in Germany is just more restricted compared to the US. There are a lot of things you are not allowed to say – mainly things associated with Nazis.
A sad day when following international law is considered exceptional.
