The West, the ICC and ‘mtu wetu’ in Israel | ICC

The arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have brought back not-so-good memories for many Kenyans. More than a decade ago, then Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy – current President William Ruto – became the first sitting heads of state or government to actually face trial at the ICC, having been indicted before coming in office.

But while both Kenyatta and Ruto chose to cooperate with the court – at least immediately – and attended their trials, thereby avoiding the need for an arrest warrant, Netanyahu and Gallant are unlikely to be making a trip to The Hague anytime soon .

Kenyatta and Ruto were accused of being responsible for the violence that followed the country’s disputed 2007 election, in which more than 1,300 people lost their lives. The two had been on opposite sides of the conflict and were alleged to have organized and funded “tribal” militias to carry out killings.

To date, only a handful of people have ever been prosecuted for the murders, rapes and mutilations that led to the forced displacement of 660,000 people, and it was only after the Kenyan state proved unwilling to act that the ICC stepped in.

Similarly, when he applied for the warrants to the Israeli leaders in May, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan – who happened to be heading Ruto’s defense team – also indicated that he would be happy to delay prosecution if Israel’s legal system shows any willingness to act against Netanyahu and Gallant and “participate in independent and impartial judicial processes that do not shield suspects and are not a sham”.

The ICC judges have now agreed that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the two bear criminal responsibility for the many crimes that Israel has committed against the Palestinians during the ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza. With an official death toll of more than 44,000, Gaza has witnessed mass murder, rape and displacement, as well as mass starvation and deliberate attacks on schools, hospitals and places of worship.

Many have complained about the seven-month delay in ICC judges issuing arrest warrants, but Kenyans had to wait two years for the ICC prosecutor to send a request for an investigation and then another five months for the court to approve it . . After that, it took another 12 months before the actual charges against specific people – six of them – were brought.

In comparison, the Palestine cases have thus progressed much faster.

Among the reasons for the delay in the Palestine case were the numerous letters challenging the jurisdiction of the court and the admissibility of the presumptions. There was also a lot of pressure on the ICC from Israel and its Western friends.

There were Israeli attempts to intimidate the court even before the war started last year, when Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, faced threats from the Mossad not to launch an investigation into Israel’s war crimes in 2021. Khan himself now faces charges of sexual offences.

It is noteworthy that few Western nations came to the aid of Kenyatta and Ruto. On the contrary, there was more than a subtle hint given to Kenyans that electing Kenyatta and Ruto would be a bad idea – that “choices have consequences”.

I’m not saying they should have opposed the duo’s accusation, but there is more than a whiff of double standards here. It seems that there is more interest in seeing justice done when those in the dock are Africans and not just anti-Westerners.

That point is driven home when one considers how the accusations against Israeli officials have been framed in the Western press. The Guardian, for example, described it as “the first time a Western ally of a modern democracy has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by a global court”.

This report comes as a surprise to Kenya, which for more than six decades has considered itself a “Western ally” and which – having held regular elections throughout that time – can be described as something of a “modern democracy”. whatever that means. Unless, of course, they are euphemistic descriptions of more problematic conditions.

Kenyans have a name for this sort of thing: “mtu wetu (our guy) syndrome”. Every time our politicians find themselves under investigation or – God forbid! – accused of crimes, they try to rally their ethnic relatives around the idea that it is the “tribe” that is the target.

The mobilization of a imagined identity is a political tactic that is very effective in intimidating prosecutors and intimidating judges both locally and internationally. “Mtu wetu” is how Kenyatta and Ruto were able to avoid prosecution at home and then instrumentalize their control over the Kenyan state to undermine their cases at the ICC.

This is why the ICC was accused of “race hunting” – for focusing on prosecuting black Africans, a claim that conveniently ignored the fact that most of the situations the court pursued had been referred to it by African governments.

“Mtu wetu” is why Netanyahu is today accusing the court of anti-Semitism and suggesting that his prosecution is an attack on all Jews. “Mtu wetu” is why Germany suddenly seems less keen on upholding its obligations under international law, and why American politicians are threatening anyone and everyone, even those in Canada and Europe who perhaps mistakenly believed they would always be part of the tribe.

It is unfortunately ironic that on 140th anniversary of the Berlin West Africa Conference – which set the stage for European colonization of Africa and which subsequently introduced the scourge of tribalism to the continent – ​​that the same irrational and totalizing notion of identity is being weaponized in the West to defend people accused of some of the worst categories of crimes imaginable themselves. .

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.