by Terry Hansen, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Montana Representatives Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke both voted in support of this bill. Zinke calls the Court a “corrupt international body.”
However, in its statement regarding these warrants, the ICC contends that there is reasonable evidence to conclude that Netanyahu and Gallant “intentionally and knowingly” deprived the civilian population of Gaza of food, water and medical supplies, including anesthesia.
Furthermore, according to the ICC, this lack of anesthesia forced doctors to perform amputations on adults and children with no safe ways to sedate them.
Dr. Mike M. Mallah is a trauma surgeon from Charleston, S.C. who volunteered at a hospital in Gaza. In an interview, Mallah’s voice shook as he described “anesthesiologists who don’t have anesthesia who are holding people down and singing to them so that they can comfort them and do their surgery.”
And according to a doctor from Gaza, “Because of the shortage of painkillers, we leave patients to scream for hours and hours.”
The ICC, which also issued an arrest warrant for one of the few surviving leaders of Hamas, is not equating Israel with this terror group. Rather, the ICC is evaluating Israel’s actions against the standards of International Humanitarian Law.
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