A British court recently issued a subpoena for the arrest and indictment of Israel’s former foreign minister in response to a petition by Hamas and its supporters in Britain. The court claimed historic precedent for its attempt to indict Tzipi Livni.
I have done a considerable amount of research and believe I found, somewhere in the back of my mind while in a fatigue-induced haze, that the court may indeed be correct, as witness this petition to indict a prime minister for war, submitted to the World Court in 1946.
To: The International Court of Justice
From: Professors and Other Nice People for Peace and Justice (PONPPJ)
Date: September 11, 1946
Regarding: Petition to arrest and try Winston Churchill
We, the Professors and Other Nice People for Peace and Justice (PONPPJ), do hereby call upon the International Court of Justice in The Hague, established last year by the newly formed United Nations, to take immediate steps and seek the arrest and indictment of a war criminal. The Court, as the new institution that has just replaced the Permanent Court of International Justice, must take a moral stand make it clear that ex-Prime Ministers who have engaged in war crimes must be brought to justice.
The war criminal in question, Winston Churchill, was until the last election prime minister of Great Britain. Now that he has been replaced, we believe the time is right for him to be arrested and placed on trial if he enters as a tourist any countries that seek peace and justice.
To begin with, Churchill is guilty of unspeakable war crimes against innocent German civilians. In battling against German “terrorists” (and let us bear in mind that one man’s terrorist is the other’s freedom fighter), Churchill ignored the fact that masses of innocent German civilians were living in the areas of military conflict. Churchill sent in the Royal Air Force to indiscriminately bomb broad areas in acts of disproportionate response to German provocations.
The English had no right to enter sovereign German territory in the first place in response to the bombings of London and other English cities. Churchill should have entered negotiations with Hitler if he really wanted the attacks on Britain to end. After all, one can only make peace with one’s enemies and the Germans had legitimate grievances. The Nazi Party was the legitimate representative of the German people, chosen in open elections.
In addition, British land forces infiltrated German territories in many acts of aggression. The violence that resulted from British occupation of the legitimate territories of the German people is understandable. After all, the German people are suffering from British occupation and embargo. Germans are being prevented from using the Suez Canal. The Germans cannot freely import and export arms from the ports in the neighboring countries or from Bristol.
Indeed they have been prevented from doing so for years by the British occupation authorities. The anger at this occupation is understandable. The fact that the British ended their earlier illegal occupation of Dunkirk in no way lessens their responsibility for the situation.
German activists have been killed mercilessly by British armed forces, which behaved themselves little better than primitive beasts. The German victims were executed by British forces without so much as the benefit of a trial or a Miranda warning. All those nice English words about people being innocent until proven guilty have been forgotten by the British occupation forces.
The British have behaved barbarously in all of this. Numerous German churches and schools have been destroyed in indiscriminate bombings and artillery attacks by the British military. As prime minister of Britain during the anti-insurgency campaign, Churchill bears direct personal responsibility for this. Moreover, an objective panel of experts who served in the commission of investigation into British war crimes in Germany has studied the matter. Led by Judge Oswald Mosley and representatives of General Franco, the commission issued its findings recently, including an unambiguous condemnation of the excesses carried out by the British.
Indeed, when it was discovered that Wehrmacht and SS fighters were hiding among the civilian population in Germany, Churchill should have ordered an immediate halt to all bombing and fighting. Instead, he ordered an escalation. The deaths of those innocent German civilians now cry out for justice. Churchill must be held accountable.
Churchill should have known the V-2 rockets and the problem of German terrorism cannot be resolved through military action. He should have sought to end the violence by first ending occupation. After all Britain today occupies large swathes of land that properly belong to the German tribe of the Saxons, not to mention territories rightly belonging to Welsh, Irish and Scots.
The Saxons are a people deserving independence and self-determination, unlike the English who are nothing more than converted Celt interlopers. The Saxons deserve their own state some place within the British Isles. The English are guilty of having seized land legitimately belonging to the Saxons in a land grab. Those same English refuse to share land and resources, and that is what ultimately led to the buzz bomb attacks on London.
Finally, Germans living inside Britain have been victimized and have suffered from racial discrimination. Britain obstinately refuses to release from prison the peace activist Rudolf Hess. German-Brits and British Saxons have complained of being targets of surveillance.
Meanwhile, the suffering on the continent is directly attributable to the selfishness, racism, and obstinacy of Britain under Winston Churchill. As the occupying power, Britain bears responsibility for any violence that takes place in its areas of control.
Signed, Professors and Other Nice Peace for Peace and Justice (PONPPJ)
Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University and makes no claim of authenticity for the document cited above. His book “The Scout” is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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