NEWS: Sanders Statement on ICC
Seeking Arrest Warrants for Israeli
and Hamas Leaders

"The ICC prosecutor is right," said Sanders.

WASHINGTON, May 20 - Sen. Bernie Sanders (1-Vt.) today released the following
statement on the decision of the International Criminal Court (IC) prosecutor to
seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders relating to the Israel-Gaza
conflict:

In the last several years, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest
warrants for political leaders who violate international law and engage in war
crimes and crimes against humanity. That includes Russian President Vladimir
Putin, whose illegal invasion of Ukraine initiated the most destructive war in
Europe since World War I; Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who started the
horrific war in Gaza by launching a terrorist attack against Israel, which killed
1,200 innocent men, women, and children; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who, in response, has waged an unprecedented war of destruction
against the entire Palestinian people, which has killed or injured over 5 percent of
the population.

The ICC prosecutor is right to take these actions. These arrest warrants may or may
not be carried out, but it is imperative that the global community uphold
international law. Without these standards of decency and morality, this planet may
rapidly descend into anarchy, never-ending wars, and barbarism.

The White House has condemned an attack on an aid convoy heading to Gaza by Israeli settlers who threw packages of food into the road and set fire to the vehicles.

Video of the incident on Monday at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, showed settlers blocking the trucks and throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and drifts of rice and flour across the road.

Late on Monday, photos began circulating on social media showing the trucks on fire.

Israel has faced heavy international pressure to step up the flow of aid into Gaza, where international organisations have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis threatening a population of more than 2 million people.

Families of the hostages are protesting for an immediate truce hostage deal outside the Israeli military HQ in Tel Aviv. Statement “Now is the time for all that are involved, to fulfill their commitment and turn this opportunity into a deal for the return of all the hostages”

This is a brief follow up on my post earlier that touched on the violence on Tuesday night at UCLA. As I noted, and has been widely reported, on Tuesday night a small contingent pro-Israel counter-protesters attacked the Gaza encampment on campus. This group appears to have been willfully violent and focused on tearing down the barricades of the encampment, throwing various projectiles at pro-Gaza demonstrators, throwing anywhere from one to four firecrackers into the encampment and using something like pepper spray or other similarly noxious spray on people in the encampment. In short, a group of vigilantes or thugs who went in to break up the encampment and terrorize the protestors.

...

There seems to be uniform agreement that they didn’t appear to be students and that they were mostly or all men. But from there any agreement breaks down. One spokesperson for the encampment said they appeared to be teenage boys. ... The thugs were wearing balaclavas or other face coverings and it was a chaotic situation.

...

He has this paragraph about the Tuesday night violence.

I do not know whether there was overlap between the counterdemonstrators on Sunday and those who provoked last night’s violence, who carried Israeli and American flags, as well as at least one Chabad flag celebrating “Mashiach,” or the Messiah. But the behavior of the two groups bore striking similarities, making it all the more unsettling that UCLA wasn’t better prepared.