Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Norman Finkelstein: CONSPIRACIES DO HAPPEN


MAY 28, 2024

The British Guardian reported today that Israeli secret services were blackmailing former ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Already four years ago I wrote a full book documenting Bensouda’s disgraceful record of whitewashing Israel.

It was perfectly obvious at the time that extra-legal pressures were being exerted on Bensouda. Indeed, I stated in the very last sentence of my book that Israel was bringing “to bear every squalid and sordid instrument in its arsenal” against the ICC. It was also obvious that extra-legal pressures were exerted on Richard Goldstone to recant his milestone report on Israeli crimes in Gaza, even as “Goldstone’s secret will perhaps never be revealed” (from my book Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom). It is also my considered opinion that ICC Judge Peter Kovacs was subject to extra-legal pressures or enticements and current ICJ Vice-President Julia Sebutinde has been subject to extra-legal pressures or enticements by Israel. At the very least, Israel has assisted their whitewashing endeavors. (The flagrant, shameful and shameless lie that former ICJ president Joan Donaghue uttered on BBC last month—she purported that the ICJ did not find that Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza--was morally debased but almost certainly traced back to careerism and opportunism, not Israeli dirty tricks.) One of the redemptive aspects of the current horrible moment is that a lot of the dirt is finally coming out. It was, for example, always assumed, but couldn’t be proven, that a class of Jewish supremacist billionaires acting at Israel’s behest were exerting financial pressures on academia. The machinations of the Ackmans, Krafts, Sternlichts et al. have now been exposed. If the Harvard Corporation wouldn’t let the 13 anti-genocide students attend graduation, was it not because “he who pays the piper calls the tune”?

Please go here for the original: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/conspiracies-do-happen

No comments: