JUSTICE isn't living in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. It left the moment the Zionists arrived. But justice may be on the way there to do right to the long-persecuted Palestinians living there.
On Friday, the International Criminal Court ruled, by a majority decision, that it had jurisdiction over Palestine, thus opening the door for its chief prosecutor to investigate war crimes there.
It is not going to be easy for the ICC,though. Israel, where many war criminals reside, will do its dirtiest best to block the ICC from doing its job. And so will the United States, despite the change of presidency there.
The US has already fired its unfriendly shot towards the ICC by saying it "disagrees" and has "serious concerns" about the court's decision. We say, let the ICC do its job. Justice is blind to colour and creed.
So must the US be. President Joe Biden mustn't miss the chance to show the world his "power of example". Otherwise, Biden might as well be a Donald Trump, or worse, a George W. Bush. Biden knows this, but we will remind the US president so that he knows that we know.
We begin with Trump, a president who took away from the Palestinians everything they valued in "The Steal of the Century".
When the ICC, for the first time ever opened investigations into the US forces, Trump went on a punishing trail of the court and its officials. The former US president was quick to issue an executive order on June 11 criminalising the work of the court and its officials.
Thus were their bank accounts frozen and visas revoked. As if this wasn't enough, Trump followed up with sanctions against the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and her top officials.
Is this a behaviour consistent with that of a country that subscribes to international law? Trump claimed that the ICC's move to investigate the US for war crimes was "a threat to national security". Could then President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan have claimed national security when the ICC charged him with war crimes?
Or is it a case of one law for "them" and one for "us", America? And by "us" we mean the US, its allies, including state-terror sponsor Israel. Now for America's either/or president, Bush — "you are with us or you are against us".
To this aggressive unilateralist, as one American academic describes him, the world is divided into two, one is the US and its allies, and the other, the rest of the world. The job of the ICC, the US implies, is limited to the rest of the world.
As if there isn't a war criminal in the American and allied world. Truth be told, just in the Bush administration alone there were a generous number of tainted souls.
Small wonder, Bush unsigned the Rome Treaty that created the ICC and went on a spree signing bilateral treaties with countries making it almost impossible for the ICC to go after American war criminals.
And if the ICC should dare to investigate, as the brave Bensouda had done during Trump's presidency, and is doing now, America and its allies will do everything within their power to cripple the court.
America is once again being tested. Biden has a choice. He can make the US a just nation or an unjust one.