«Today, my colleagues and I published an editorial (on Financial Times, ed.) and a detailed report on the results of our group’s work. My approach is not to provide constant comments on my work: I prefer to let the work speak for me.” So he wrote Amal Alamuddin Clooney after publication of the legal opinion signed by youas a consultant, with other leading British jurists, which supported the request of the International Criminal Court in The Hague to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh.
It’s all a bit surreal — Neither the US nor Israel recognize the Court’s authority, and Hamas does not appear concerned about the Hague’s decisions — but when in doubt George ClooneyAmal’s husband since 2014, awarded by Biden two years ago during a gala ceremony at the Kennedy Center, called the White House. They didn’t pass him the presidentbut he expressed his concern with one of Biden’s closest collaborators, chief of his staff at the time of the vice presidency and director of the 2020 election campaign, lawyer Steve Ricchetti.
The prospect of being with his wife — British and Lebanese citizen, 48 years old, Muslim, professor at Columbia, degree from Oxford and doctorate from New York University — sanctioned by the American government prompted him to telephone Washington just days before a Biden campaign fundraising ceremony in Los Angeles. The news inevitably filtered into the press (Washington Post). Bidena supporter of Israel but not of Netanyahu (with whom he already had an uneasy relationship during the Obama presidency), he called the Hague’s decision “outrageous”..
But on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington – invited by the Republicans essentially to further enrage the democratic left which is already threatening not to vote in November – Biden has more pressing problems than Clooney’s calls, primarily immigration, a theme on which Trump pursues with frightening detachment even in the states – only three, essentially: magic of American electoral law – without which he would not be re-elected.
Amal Clooney is silent in all this – she was also silent in the months immediately following October 7, when especially from the campuses in turmoil they asked her to express herself – because her statement published on the website of the CFJ foundation, Clooney Foundation for Justice, is enough: «As a lawyer specialized in human rights, I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than that of another child. I do not accept that a conflict should be outside the reach of the law, nor that anyone should be above the law. For this reason, I support the historic step taken by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to bring justice to the victims of atrocities in Israel and Palestine.”
