ISRAEL on Thursday gave yet another reason why it is a rogue state. Expect no cooperation from Israel, the Zionist regime told the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating war crimes in occupied Palestinian territories. Brazen.
A trademark of a rogue state. Yet, the Zionist regime never ceases to tell the world that it lives by the law.
If it is truly a law-abiding nation (though there are good grounds to say Israel is an illegal state settled on Palestinian land by force), it would have done one of two things.
One, Israel could have told the ICC that it is investigating the war crimes that the Hague court is probing. This it didn't do. The ICC is said to have given Israel and the Palestinian Authority such an opportunity in its notice of March 9.
We know why Israel didn't conduct its own probe. It is neither able nor willing, two criteria that would have kept the ICC at bay.
Two, having failed to lodge such a deferral notice with the ICC, it is only right for Israel to allow the court to do the job the Zionist regime didn't do. Now, this is the trait of a law-abiding state.
Israel is a rogue state on, at least, two other counts. Assassinations and cyberattacks.
Take assassinations first. There have been several, some by by Mossad, the Zionist regime's spy agency. Some, the Iranian media say, a combo effort with its
American spy counterpart, the Central Intelligence Agency.
The latter's role is unsurprising as the United States was the midwife of a nation forced onto the Palestinians. The "umbilical cord" has long gone, but the midwife has chosen to remain.
Much of the Middle East muddle, if not all, is the work of the two countries.
The most recent assassination on Nov 27 will show the roguish traits of both. Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed, Mossad-style, by a satellite-controlled machine gun mounted on a pickup truck as he travelled in a car east of Teheran. Reason? The US and Israeli intelligence believed that Fakhrizadeh was "the force behind what they call Iran's covert push for nuclear weapons", to use the words of the New York Times report on the brazen killing.
This is a blatant disregard for international law. To kill a senior public servant of another country remotely or otherwise when there isn't a declared war is a crime. It is also roguish. Plus, it is a signal to Iran and other countries that it is permissible to get by aggression what they can't by negotiations.
The US may not have set off the machine gun that killed Fakhrizadeh in Absard, but it shared intelligence that made his killing possible. Now for the cyberattacks.
There was one on Sunday at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, triggering a large-scale blackout.
This time, if The Guardian is right, Israel wants the world to know it was behind the cyberattack. You can't be more shameless. On the very day of the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by the English daily as having said: "The struggle against Iran and its proxies and Iranian armament efforts is a huge mission." If there was any doubt as to who did it, Israel's public radio removed it: the Mossad intelligence agency played a central role.
Western officials, according to The Guardian, believe Israel has become increasingly brazen. We told you so.