Iranian President deserves International Court

Perhaps many people among us, while making their way this evening to the demonstration against Ahmadinejad, guest of the FAO in Rome, will be asking themselves which more direct and effective actions should be undertaken in order to delegitimize the fanatic and violent discourse of the Iranian President, who was denied every meeting with the Government or the Pope. Still, if not with a war, how could be stopped his almost ready atomic bomb, his policy of human right’s violation, the religious aggression that arms Hezbollah and Hamas and threaten to death Israel and the whole West? The answer exists, even if partial, and it is practical and nonviolent. But, before advancing it, let’s have a look at the Iranian President’s last declarations. On Monday, at a gathering of foreign guests in Iran, he said: “The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene…”. And added, referring to the United States: “The era of decline and destruction of its satanic power had begun, the bell on the countdown of the destruction of the empire of power and wealth has begun to ring”. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki quoted Khomeini, saying “if each Muslim throws a bucket of water on Israel, Israel will be erased”. Is a long time since the verbal aggression has reached, as defined by Professor Robert Wistrich, the “biological” dimension, which always foregoes the actual slaughter: thus Israel is called “stinking corpse”, “dead rat”, “rotten tree”.

Is this attitude legal? Is it indictable? The answer is yes, as all the course of Ahmadinejad’s insults and deeds shows us. Some of the world most famous human rights advocates studied how to put this into practice; with them, cooperates Professor Eliahu Richter of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, providing us with a preview of the text of a long and detailed lawsuit formulated according to international law. Among the lawyers there are former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler, Professor Alan Dershowitz from Harward University School of Law, Professor Gregory Gordon from University of North Dakota and Dr. Justus Weiner, of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Thus is written in the text that Ahmadinejad could be indicted by an International Court of Justice on several charges: “Incitement to commit genocide”, “Threat or use of force against territorial integrity or political independence of any State”, “Perpetration of crimes against humanity”, “Promotion of hatred and contempt against Israel and the Jewish people as prologue and justification for its genocide”, “Violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and UN Securety Council resolutions”, “Commission of mass atrocities against Iranian civilians”.

Reading the document, the actual peril implied in Ahmadinejad’s menaces results evident and it is also clear that, if the world wants to avoid a not inferior genocide to World War II one, it needs to remember that the United Nations, in one of its first acts, has created the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the International Court of Justice. If we succeed to implement this Convention, this would make us much more reliable than we have been toward the recurrent genocides that infested, or keep infesting, the world, as it was for the Cambodians, Bosnians, Tutsi, Sudanese. A genocide leaves early signals: the Nazis preached it at length; the Hutu used to call the Tutsi “cockroaches” since 1994; the Serbians invoked openly for years and an “ethnic cleansing”; in Cambodia, the menace pending on the “imperialistic exploiters” was patent; and today, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, call the Jews “sons of dogs and apes”, while Iranian Ambassador in Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, announces his State has supplied Hezbollah with arms for destroying Israel; and Nasrallah is sadly reliable when he says that “if they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide”. Preaching has always come together with genocide. The biological step according to which the victim becomes a “cancer”, an “infected root”, a “parasite”, should make us understand that the extermination is not too far, as long as there are arms – and here there are.

A recent UN Security Council resolution, number 1674, reaffirms the international responsibility to protect every populations threatened by extermination. Perhaps it is time to implement it, arresting Ahmadinejad to make him answer for the listed crimes. Self-determination should be limited when it comes to preaching and exalting genocide.

ll Giornale daily, 3/6/2008

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