Trump and Netanyahu share many things, and one of them is their claim to be above the law, exactly the position of the monarchs against whom the American and French revolutions rose and who paved the way for the current liberal systems governed by the law and the rule of law. As in an alignment of the stars, the itineraries of both politicians now fall under the severe scrutiny of justice,…
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Trump and Netanyahu share many things, and one of them is their claim to be above the law, exactly the position of the monarchs against whom the American and French revolutions rose and who paved the way for the current liberal systems governed by the law and the rule of law. As in an alignment of the stars, the itineraries of both politicians now fall under the severe scrutiny of justice, that of the United States the first and the universal one the second.
It is not new that there are rulers and countries that have acted and placed themselves outside or above the law, on the contrary. The novelty that is being settled before the courts, the American ones in the case of Trump and the international ones in that of Netanyahu, is the possibility of some judges recognizing, either by action or by omission, the right of certain rulers and countries to a special treatment with respect to all other rulers and countries, to the point of placing them above the laws that apply to everyone and legalizing the crimes they have committed, are committing or may commit in the future.
Trump’s case is serious, with four open criminal proceedings, 88 crimes investigated and the dilatory help of a handful of judges appointed by him when he was president, including three of the nine that make up the Supreme Court, for far from venial charges that range from insurrection to interference in electoral processes. And so are the consequences of his re-election for the future of American democracy and for the maintenance of security commitments with his allies, especially with Ukraine vis-à-vis Putin.
Netanyahu’s case is as serious or more serious. Unlike Trump, he has the support of Joe Biden and the encouragement of numerous European countries in the face of the accusations of the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan. In addition to the rights of Palestinians, individual and collective, the democratic system at stake is only that of Israel, now under the strain of the most authoritarian and extremist government in its history. But the process opened in The Hague goes beyond the Middle East framework in terms of consequences and affects the very idea of a universal criminal justice that defends all victims without exceptions and equally punishes those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. whether they are African or European.
The preferred argument in favor of Netanyahu blames the prosecutor for the unbearable moral equivalence between a terrorist group like Hamas and a democratic state of law like Israel that could be deduced from his accusations. Against it, there is the symmetrical argument of double standards, which authorizes international justice whenever it suits the United States and its friends, that is, when it comes to African countries or an autocracy like Putin’s, but declares exempt allied democracies, even if their judicial systems have proven insufficient and even obsolete to deliver justice, as is the case in Israel when the victims are Palestinian citizens.
