We went to see Operation Finale this week. Here’s the summary of the plot from the website, Rotten Tomatoes:

Fifteen years after the end of World War II, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad and security agency Shin Bet – led by the tireless and heroic agent Peter Malkin (Isaac) – launched a daring top-secret raid to capture the notorious Eichmann (Kingsley), who had been reported dead in the chaos following Nazi Germany’s collapse but was, in fact, living and working in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina under an assumed identity along with his wife and two sons. Monitoring his daily routine, Malkin and his operatives plot and execute the abduction under the cover of darkness just a few feet from Eichmann’s home. Determined to sneak him out of Argentina to stand trial in Israel, Malkin and Eichmann engage in an intense and gripping game of cat-and-mouse.

The summary doesn’t mention the war crimes that made up the Halocaust during WWII, or Eichmann’s status as a war criminal who had escaped the Nuremberg Trials and taken up residence in Argentina.

I didn’t come in cold on this topic. Years ago, I read and was deeply affected by Hannah Arendt’s account of the subsequent Eichmann trial (“Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil,” and Raul Hilberg’s exhaustive account of the bureaucracy of the Halocaust, “The Destruction of the European Jews.”

This week also was marked by an attack by National Security Advisor John Bolton on the International Criminal Court, described by Newsweek as “mandated by most of the international community to prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Crimes such as those that Adoph Eichmann was tried for and convicted of.

In the movie, Argentinian Nazis and Nazi sympathizers were trying to block the Israeli team from hustling Eichmann out of the country to face a public trial. You can’t help seeing them as the bad guys.

Yet here, while this movie , Bolton put the United State’s rather firmly on the side of those accused of war crimes, going so far as to threaten sanctions against judges on the International Court involved in such prosecutions.

I wasn’t born when the Nuremberg Trials were held after WWII to bring those alleged to have carried out acts of genocide to justice. The U.S. was a leading force in establishing this forum, along with the basic premise that there are consequences for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the defense of “I was only following orders” is not sufficient.

I’m sad and embarrassed by Bolton’s attack on the international court. As a nation, we should be able to say that we do not participate in, support, nor condone war crimes.

Bolton’s posture seems to be that if we may commit such crimes with impunity because, well, the United States just doesn’t care.

That’s a very sad position for a country that used to take pride in being seen as a promoter of global human rights.