"Wir haben es nicht gewusst" - Iran Army day parade truck displays massive banner reading “Death to Israel”. (ToI).
Iran on Saturday marked Army Day with a military parade featuring new weapons systems, as well as a truck carrying a massive banner reading “Death to Israel.”
A televised broadcast of the parade was punctuated by repeated cries of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
“If Israel makes a mistake,” the announcer on Iran television said during the broadcast, as heavy trucks carrying armored personnel carriers rolled past, “those in Tel Aviv and Haifa will not sleep at night, not one person.” Hmmm......Obama's BFF Iran.
Incitement To Genocide:
Generally speaking, “incitement” means encouraging or persuading another to commit an offense by way of communication, for example by employing broadcasts, publications, drawings, images, or speeches.
It is “public” under international law if it is communicated to a number of individuals in a public place or to members of a population at large by such means as the mass media.
Among other things, its "public" nature distinguishes it from an act of private incitement (which could be punishable under the Genocide Convention as “complicity in genocide” or possibly not punishable at all).
Incitement to genocide must also be proven to be “direct,” meaning that both the speaker and the listener understand the speech to be a call to action. Prosecutors have found it challenging to prove what “direct” may mean in different cultures, as well as its meaning to a given speaker.
Moreover, public incitement to genocide can be prosecuted even if genocide is never perpetrated. Lawyers therefore classify the infraction an “inchoate crime”: a proof of result is not necessary for the crime to have been committed, only that it had the potential to spur genocidal violence. It is intent of the speaker that matters, not the effectiveness of the speech in causing criminal action. This distinction helps to make the law preventative, rather than reactive.
HATE SPEECH VS. INCITEMENT TO GENOCIDE
What is the difference between hate speech and direct and public incitement to commit genocide? The Rwanda Media Case emphasized that incitement to commit genocide required a calling on the audience (be they listeners or readers) to take action of some kind. Absent such a call, inflammatory language may qualify as hate speech but does not constitute incitement. In many jurisdictions hate speech itself has been criminalized.
INCITEMENT TO GENOCIDE IN RECENT LEGAL DEBATE
The crime of incitement remains firmly in place on the international legal stage. In 1998, an incitement provision was included in Article 25(3)(e) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (in conjunction with Article 6—Genocide). And on November 28, 2008, after seven years of negotiations, the European Union (EU) adopted a Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia.
The document’s principal contribution is the EU-wide prohibition of public incitement and hatred against persons of a different race, color, religion, or national or ethnic origin, punishable by a prison sentence of one to three years. This document also prohibits public approval, denial, or gross trivialization of international crimes, notably genocide, and is an outgrowth of pre-existing European laws prohibiting Holocaust denial.
The Genocide Convention’s Article III (c) has recently been invoked in the spirit of genocide prevention.
On October 26, 2005, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the “World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran, called for the State of Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Ahmadinejad has continued to make public speeches either directly or indirectly calling for Israel's destruction.
In 2006, Israeli diplomats proposed to charge Ahmadinejad with direct and public incitement to genocide before the International Criminal Court. Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian Minister of Justice and currently Member of the Canadian Parliament, has also argued that the Iranian president is guilty of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, incitement that is both “direct and public” as defined in the Genocide Convention.
Additionally, in June 2007, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution calling upon the United Nations Security Council to charge Ahmadinejad with violating the Genocide Convention by his repeated calls for Israel to be annihilated. Government officials in the United Kingdom and Australia have adopted similar stances to that of the Americans. To date, no international legal proceedings for incitement to genocide have moved forward against Ahmadinejad. Hmmm........Now the US Obama 'admin' is at the brink to charge Israel and embraces Iran
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