This must be a Pinochet moment for Israeli president Herzog – his world must become very small
The following piece is a guest article from Mogamat Reederwan Craayenstein. He is a hero of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, a former political prisoner who now lives in the UK and continues his fight against racism and discrimination everywhere.
The imminent arrival of the Israeli president in the UK is a critical moment for the police and judiciary of the UK. He is the head of state of Israel, which has been accused of genocide at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The president of Israel stands accused of aiding and abetting war crimes committed by the IDF in Gaza and the West Bank.
The relevant precedent for the UK is the arrest of General Pinochet in London in 1998. The House of Lords Judicial Committee ruled that immunity is not absolute. On 25 November 1998, it ruled on the immunity of a former head of state.
Herzog is the current head of state of a state that is committing the first live-streamed genocide in history. It also commits torture and Apartheid. These are crimes that are prosecutable on a ‘universal jurisdiction’ basis. As the head of state of a state that commits these kinds of crimes, Herzog is arguably an enemy of all of mankind.
Isaac Herzog: culpable as the head of a state committing genocide and war crimes
He must be arrested under the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Israeli courts do not punish Israeli officials for any of these crimes against Palestinians. Herzog is the head of this state of mendacity.
Israeli human rights group B’tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch all accuse Israel of committing genocide. Herzog is the head of the government that is carrying out genocide. Under customary international law, universal jurisdiction exists for crimes against humanity. The UK has unequivocal jurisdiction to arrest him.
The current Labour Party government aims to repeat the poor decisions of the 1998 Labour government regarding the interaction between public international law and domestic law. There is no doubt that the UK has the authority to arrest Herzog. It has the right. So if he comes to the UK, he should be arrested. If he wishes to avoid arrest, then he should stay at home.
We are witnessing the impunity that the Labour government allows to Israeli politicians, diplomatic staff, and IDF personnel. The Tories and Reform share the same views.
Diplomatic, economic, military, and cultural support by the USA, the EU, UK, Australia, Canada, and NATO have destroyed the credibility of the rules that govern the international order since WWII. Arresting Herzog like Pinochet in 1998 would begin retrieving the remains of universality under the law from the graveyard that Israel has created. After the Nazi Holocaust, it cannot be that the life of a Palestinian matters less than that of a Jewish Israeli. It cannot be that the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinian children are less valuable than those of Jewish Israeli children in Tel Aviv.
Send Herzog to the Hague to stand trial
We have observed how the Labour government, led by a human rights lawyer, refuses to recognise that Israel is committing gross violations of international law, human rights law, and humanitarian law. The UK government does not have a factual problem. The facts are being live-streamed. It has an attitudinal problem. A Palestinian is less of a human being than a Jewish Israeli: that is the logic. President Herzog leads the state that is the grave-digger of the rules-based international system established after World War II. He must be arrested when he arrives in the UK.
A democracy cannot endure with only two elements: isegoria (the equal right of citizens to participate in public debate in democracy) and parrhesia (the license to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom). The former demands informed citizens who participate in all matters of public concern. It should not be the case that major issues are controlled by corrupt politicians within the government and powerful corporations, and that the public is misled by a manufactured consensus. The media is as culpable as our government and corporations, which act as shields for the Israeli genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the settler colonial project of Apartheid.
This piece is part of our effort to engage in parrhesia, regardless of the costs of speaking truth to power. We see hundreds of activists offering themselves for arrest in defence of the non-violent direct action of a Palestinian activist group. We see hundreds of thousands turning out for monthly demonstrations in defence of the international rules-based order.
Labour and the Tories: indifferent to Israeli war crimes
President Herzog must be arrested when he comes to London. He must suffer the same fate as General Pinochet. However, unlike Pinochet, Herzog must be sent to the Hague to stand trial. Jack Straw, home secretary at the time, sent Pinochet to Chile instead of Spain, which was waiting to put him on trial. Shabana Mahmood, another lawyer, should get ready. How many more Palestinians have to die at the hands of this rapacious, racist state before its head of state is arrested?
We have seen that indifference to the crimes of Israel is a bipartisan consensus position. Labour and the Tories are shields for Israeli crimes against humanity. The opposition to those crimes is outside of parliament, on the streets, and in our small demonstrations across the country.
William James, the American philosopher, said that indifference is the one human trait that makes even the angels weep.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that indifference is worse than evil itself.
Herzog should be detained and put on trial for war crimes and assisting and facilitating a genocide. We must not allow the government to use the same kind of ruse with him as Blair’s government used when Jack Straw allowed Pinochet to get away on medical grounds.
Israeli war criminals must live in fear of arrest, or rules-based international law falls apart
Like Nuremburg, the voices of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust had to be heard. We honour the Palestinian dead by arresting Herzog and putting him on trial. There must be integrity and universality if we claim to have a rules-based international order. Integrity means moral and legal consistency. We cannot just arrest leaders from the Global South and put them on trial. When there are white people from the Global North, then we want to ‘um and ah’. Arrest Isaac Herzog and put him on trial for war crimes and for aiding and abetting genocide so that we might believe that the law applies to everyone equally.
The Israeli political, business, media, academic, sports, and other cultural elites must live in fear of being arrested. If we do not arrest them, then our own humanity is at stake. Do not be as complicit as Germany and hypocritical as France when it comes to the dignity of Palestinians. Herzog’s arrest in London, September 2025, would be as significant as the referral of Israel to the ICJ by South Africa.
Herzog: stay home, or face arrest
It will force the Israeli public to accept their complicity in the genocide in Gaza. They are most likely as guilty as the German public that supported the Nazi Holocaust. The arrest will also force the Israeli judiciary to stop acting as a rubber stamp for Apartheid and genocide by Israeli governments since 1947.
It will also cause the IDF to think twice about committing genocide and implementing an Apartheid project in the Palestinian-occupied territories and the IDF and Israeli police to review and reconsider their complicity with the racist, bigoted armed settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The pro-Israel lobby in the UK will also have to shut up shop or they too will be arrested for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. They have had a free ride for too long.
Herzog must be put on notice. Come to London and you will be arrested. If you do not want to be arrested, stay at home. His world, and the world of those like him, must become very small.
Featured image via the Canary
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Like very many (I imagine) I am thoroughly ashamed of my government. As in TOTALLY ashamed that people might think they represent me. They don’t. And Starmer is the worst of the worst.
WHEN … are we going to debate our support, or otherwise, for this genocidal war in Parliament. Starmer has no right whatsoever to make an executive decision without reference to Parliament. He also MUSDT be sent to the Hague. Before or after he is impeached.
With regards to sending Starmer to the Hague …
In 2003, US Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act.
It contains a clause called the “Hague Invasion Act,” which states that if a U.S. or allied national is detained by the ICC, the U.S. military can use armed force to extricate them.
Yes, the Americans have given themselves the power to save any monster they regard as their friend from justice.
This is why Netanyahu, Starmer or indeed Blair, Trump, Biden or any of the other warmongers and genocidist will never face justice at the hands of the ICC.
Excellent article. But is there an error at the start of para 10? “A democracy cannot endure with only two elements: isegoria (the equal right of citizens to participate in public debate in democracy) and parrhesia (the license to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom).” I don’t understand. Did you mean a democracy cannot endure without both isegoria and parrhesia? Have I got the wrong end of the stick
A few days ago, I received an email from my local (‘Labour’) MP in response to a standard letter (which I had added to) from an online petition to MP’s on the Gaza issue a while back.
Much of the content was clearly a standardised wording provided by the Party Central Office.
Under the heading “Illegal Settlements” we had this:
“I am clear in my condemnation of illegal settlements. I do not recognise the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the West Bank, as part of Israel. I consider Israeli settlements there illegal under international law.
The Government has taken clear action on this issue, including sanctions against outposts and entities linked to West Bank violence. I welcome the Government’s decision to sanction extremist settlers.
I also support the Government’s responsible for inciting settler violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, leading to the death of Palestinian civilians and the displacement of whole towns and villages. It is cruel, degrading, and completely unacceptable.
I understand the Government cannot speculate on future sanctions, as this is likely to reduce their impact.”
In a nutshell: The UK Government will continue to make token gestures against the lowest of the hanging fruit but will not touch the tree or its roots.
Abysmal does not cover it.
And, once more, we got the double standards of the narrative about Israeli hostages without any attempt to apply the same standards and principles to the far larger number of Palestinian hostages held in Israel, including children.
In this regard, nothing seems to have changed in Britain (along with the rest of the Collective West) since Churchil declared in 1937:
“I do not admit that any great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America,
or the black people of Australia by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race has come in and taken its place”
The racism of the Garden/Jungle metaphor of a paid up member of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (Josep Borrell) and the ‘White Mans Burden’ remains an integral part of the culture of the Oligarchy which has been running the Collective West for centuries.