AIPAC-bought-and-paid-for moonbat calls on US to invade The Hague over ICC arrest warrants

The term “moonbat” is a pejorative political epithet originating in the 19th century and used widely in the US. It is normally used to insult those on the political left, but I think it is eminently suitable to describe Tom Cotton, the Republican US Senator for the state of Arkansas. Cotton, 47, was incandescent with rage on hearing that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s genocidal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Yes, I’m using the g-word and I’m buoyed to see that Wikipedia is now referring to the “Gaza Genocide” even if international lawyers like British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has prosecuted at the ICC, are incapable of describing it thus because of their Zionist leanings. While Starmer, it could be argued, is an English moonbat, allow me to tell you why I believe Senator Cotton presents us with a perfect example of “moonbattiness”.

Yesterday, having spent nearly five hours digesting the ICC statement, the Harvard-trained lawyer and former US soldier called the ICC a “kangaroo court”. More sinisterly, he then insulted Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan by labelling him a “deranged fanatic”. Not content with that, he threatened: “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.”

The Act was dreamt up by a strong candidate for the title Chief Moonbat.

Former US President George W Bush produced the US legislation which protects American soldiers from all sorts of heinous war crimes charges.

READ: US Senator vows legislation to punish nations who work with ICC after Israel arrest warrants

Like Senator Cotton, I also gave the ICC charges a great deal of thought, although it took me less than five hours to retire and cogitate before reaching this conclusion. You, Senator, are definitely a moonbat, having just threatened, on social media, to invade the Netherlands. A sovereign state. A founding member of NATO. As you said: Think about it.

Now while I’m quite sure AIPAC’s generous $4.5m funding may have influenced the thought processes of this witless hick Senator Cotton, he obviously does not understand — Harvard educated or not — that Karim Khan KC sought counsel from some impressive experts who sat on a panel to advise the ICC’s equally respected chief prosecutor.

One of those experts was 94-year-old Theodor Meron, a renowned scholar of international and humanitarian law and a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned for four years in a Nazi concentration camp. During the early part of his career, the polymath Meron was a practicing attorney, a diplomat and an ambassador representing the state of Israel. Since the late 1970s, when he left Israel and relocated to New York, he has been a professor of international law, a judge and a scholar of human rights law, and is now advising the ICC on Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.

Is anyone better qualified to counsel such an important decision than a Jewish genocide survivor and former Polish refugee who once served as an Israeli diplomat?

The war has killed and wounded almost 150,000 Palestinian civilians and displaced millions multiple times. An estimated 11,000 are missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by Israel. Most of those displaced are from families which have been refugees since 1948, when the state of Israel was created in their land and Zionist terror groups forged ahead with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Our Arkansas moonbat could be accused of anti-Semitism for his crass dismissal of the likes of Meron and his considered opinion, given that the esteemed lawyer has profound knowledge and first-hand experience of genocide and war crimes. Furthermore, the ICC and International Court of Justice were formed post-World War II as a direct result of the Nazi war crimes and genocide committed in Europe against Jews and other minority groups.

Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are now being committed by those taking orders from Netanyahu and his war cabinet which, until very recently, included Gallant, who was fired earlier this month. The man with his finger on the button, no less than Netanyahu himself, was compared recently to Adolf Hitler in the UN by Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

So, are the eight districts in the Netherlands which constitute The Hague bracing themselves for an invasion by Uncle Sam? The US Sixth Fleet is in Naples, after all, moored alongside the US Navy in Europe (NAVEUR).

READ: British MPs urge government to endorse ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu, Gallant

Alarmingly, Cotton has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump and the admiration of Steve Bannon, although Trump wants to follow a peace-making path with Putin while Cotton wants the opposite. He is quite a hawk, the Arkansas moonbat. When it comes to torture, for example, Cotton is on record as saying that he believes waterboarding is not torture and if Trump wants to reintroduce it in his next term then he would support his right to “make those tough calls”.

Moreover, in the aftermath of George Floyd being killed by a US cop in Minneapolis in 2020, Cotton called on social media for the US military to be deployed and for US police to give “no quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters”. The then President Trump listened and, threatened to follow his advice.

For the sake of the half-a-million Dutch citizens who live in The Hague, let’s hope that those tough calls don’t involve a military reaction to the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and a Hamas official. We are living in strange times when a call for such action can be made by an elected official in what claims to be the world’s defender of democracy and law and order.

Common sense must surely prevail, but it is in short supply when it comes to US foreign policy. We must watch and wait to see if his moonbattiness becomes part of mainstream thought.

Senator Cotton is pro-Israel through and through.

On his website on Thursday, he decided to attack the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by introducing a Bill to ban “anti-Semitic” labels on goods produced in the illegally-occupied Palestinian territories. “Left-wing activists abuse country-of-origin labels in order to stigmatise products made in Israel,” he said. “Our bill will defend the integrity of the Jewish State by ensuring that Israeli products may proudly bear the label ‘Made in Israel’.” Like all good Zionists bought and paid for by AIPAC in the US, he draws no distinction between products from Israel and those from the occupied Palestinian territories. He is, it seems, keen to see US troops invade a fellow NATO-member because he doesn’t like the expert legal advice provided by a Holocaust survivor, and equally keen to oppose international law which deems Israel’s occupation of stolen Palestinian land to be unlawful. He clearly regards international law and its institutions with contempt.

It is hard to believe, therefore, that Cotton is a lawyer with a website that pushes his strong law and order credentials. AIPAC’s money has clearly been well spent in Arkansas, but I think to the epithet “moonbat” we must now add “hypocrite”.

OPINION: What’s next after ICC issues warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.