In a column for the Jewish Chronicle, the former Tory MP and minister said “maybe it’s time” for US president Joe Biden and his Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken to “make amends” with Benjamin Netanyahu before they leave office.
The Israeli prime minister was issued an arrest warrant two months ago by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as judges deemed there were “reasonable grounds” to believe he bore “criminal responsibility” for war crimes.
The BBC host and editor of The Spectator then wrote: “Words are all very well, but what about something more tangible? Why not nominate the men and women of the IDF for the Nobel Peace Prize?”
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Gove said it was perhaps “provocative”, before adding: “But as a sign that Team Biden finally recognises that it’s weakness that really is more provocative than strength, it would be truly enlightening.”
Opening his column with a quote from disgraced former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld – who gave the orders that resulted in the abuse and torture of hundreds of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay – he then claimed the Israeli government “demonstrated the sort of strength that is the only path to enduring peace”.
Israel has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians during its brutal war on Gaza so far, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
A further 109,378 have been wounded by the IDF in the ongoing 15-month war.
(Image: AP Photo)
Women and children make up more than half of the fatalities, the ministry says.
The war has flattened large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its 2.3 million people, with many forced to flee multiple times.
Israel has been found by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to be plausibly committing genocide in Gaza.
A UN special committee has also said policies and practices carried out by its military are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.
The committee, set up in 1968 to monitor Israel’s occupation, said in its annual report that there were serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war” and was running an “apartheid system” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.