The Hind Rajab Foundation has submitted a formal request to the United States Department of Justice for criminal proceedings to be opened against the Israeli minister of Security, an ultranationalist figure, to whom it attributes war crimes and genocide for inciting torture, rape, murder, and extermination since the beginning of the Gaza war, in the exercise of his duties.
Ben Gvir, considered one of the most radical representatives of the current Israeli cabinet, has repeatedly advocated for the forced displacement of the entire population of Gaza and, in recent months, has been the subject of widespread international condemnation for abuses against members of humanitarian flotillas and for proposing the complete destruction of Lebanon as collective punishment for the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah. A staunch defender of colonialism in the occupied Palestinian territories, he has also staged repeated incursions into the Esplanade of the Mosques.
The Hind Rajab Foundation, dedicated to investigating Israel's actions during the Gaza war, has sent this request before the minister's planned trip to the United States starting July 7. Ben Gvir will lead an official delegation to the Summit of Police Chiefs, which will take place at UN headquarters in New York on July 7 and 8.
"Since his appointment to office at the end of 2022, he has used his authority to impose a policy of systematic torture, murder, abuse, and forced displacement throughout occupied Palestine, and particularly within the Israeli prison system," the NGO points out.
"Given that several of his victims have been American citizens," the NGO argues that the United States "has both the jurisdiction and the legal obligation to prosecute him" under its own domestic legislation on War Crimes and Genocide. It should be recalled that the United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court, but it has partially incorporated the crimes defined in the Rome Statute, the foundation of the international court, into its national laws.
The organization further emphasizes that Washington is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stipulates that signatory states "shall have the duty to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before their own courts."
"Itamar Ben Gvir ranks among the greatest criminals of our time," points out the NGO's representative for the United States, Jake Romm. "A man responsible for directly inciting genocide and for giving orders to ensure its execution; a man for whom even the slaughter of the last two and a half years is not enough," he added.
"All states in the world, including the United States, have an obligation to arrest him and bring him to justice for his crimes. Moreover, Ben Gvir's torture and abuse of American citizens activate the most basic sovereign duty: to protect one's own nationals," he concluded.