Netanyahu wants Iran president tried for genocide at The Hague

Benjamin Netanyahu has always been an extreme Israeli politician. I remember him marching in front of coffins bearing the legend "Oslo is the death of Zionism" shortly before the murder of Yitzhak Rabin for daring to attempt to make genuine peace with the Palestinians.

Now, Netanyahu is calling for Ahmadinejad to be tried at the Hague for war crimes yet to be committed. That's an utterly bizarre concept and yet it's one that he is putting forward.

"We must cry Gevalt before the entire world," Netanyahu said recently. "In 1938, Hitler didn't say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is his intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a program for genocide."

No matter what one thinks of Ahmadinejad's slightly insane pronouncements, it would be hard to seriously say that any of them constitute a threat as they are mostly vague statements about Israel disappearing just as the Soviet Union disappeared. So, Netanyahu has no serious legal case here.

No, what he is doing is lining himself up for a challenge against Olmert, who - since he announced he does not intend to evacuate the West Bank - has left himself in charge of a government who no longer seem to have a purpose, since evacuating the West Bank was the very thing that he was elected to do.

I have long argued that Olmert's impotence is dangerous as it will open the way for extremists like Netanyahu. And Netahyahu is now stepping into the void that Olmert is operating in.

With regard to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu says, "There is a general sense of slack, as if there were no government. All previous prime ministers felt a supreme responsibility; they had an agenda. They were committed to the future of the State of Israel, with the exception of the current prime minister, who said the prime minister doesn't need an agenda. So why is he there? In my opinion, this is the first time that Israeli citizens have encountered a prime minister who is there simply because he is there."

It's hard to argue with that. Olmert was elected with a clear purpose. He was to evacuate the West Bank just as Sharon had evacuated Gaza. However, since launching his disastrous war against Hizbullah, Olmert has backed away from carrying out the task that the electorate set him.

This has left me often wondering just what his government is for anymore, if it is not there to do what it said it would do.

Into such vacuums step people like Netanyahu. He doesn't seriously think anyone will cart Ahmadinejad before the Hague but, like the neo-cons in the US, he simply hopes enough people will be frightened to give his words more credence than they deserve.

Olmert's stagnant, futile, government should have fallen after the Israel-Lebanon war. He is now forced to allow fascists like Lieberman into his government just to keep it afloat.

This is dangerous territory. A government that stands for nothing will eventually fall and be replaced by a government with a clear agenda.

Even if that agenda is one as hostile to peace in the Middle East as Netanyahu's would surely be.

This is the nightmare that Olmert's weakness is lining us up for.

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tag: Iran, Israel, Netenyahu, Olmert, Lieberman, Ahmadinejad