Israel supporters worldwide are up in arms over the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision, under the auspices of its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for potential crimes against humanity. This egregious attempt to put Israel’s democratically elected leaders next to Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar as potential war criminals is an insidious notion to consider, just as the Jewish state has been waging a costly war against a terrorist regime in Gaza.
The Biden Administration denounced the ICC’s decision, calling it “outrageous.” At the Rose Garden to commemorate Jewish American Heritage Month on May 20, Biden said, “Let me be clear: We reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.” In a statement earlier in the day, Biden also said, “Whatever the prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas.”
“It’s shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and it’s still holding dozens of people hostage, including Americans,” added U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Grace Meng (NY-6), an Israel advocate with her solid Jewish constituency, directed Queens Jewish Link to her Twitter/X page, where she underscored, “There is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas as Israel responds to the October 7th attack. The ICC has no jurisdiction to issue warrants against Israel in this case. I will always stand with Israel in our shared goal to defeat Hamas and bring the hostages home.”
Ritchie Torres (NY-15), also a stalwart Israel defender, wrote on his Twitter/X account, “Israel is not a member of the ICC, and therefore [it] has no jurisdiction. The decision to seek arrest warrants is not law but politics. It is not justice but rather retribution against Israel for the original sin of existing as a Jewish state and the subsequent sin of defending itself amid the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. [This] decision in effect makes it criminal for a state like Israel to defend itself against an enemy shrewd enough to embed itself in a civilian population, as Hamas has done to an extent never seen before in the history of warfare.”
The notion that Israel may be committing war crimes remains absurd, as the Israeli Defense Forces have gone through great measures to protect innocent civilians. “The Israeli Defense Forces have used many types of precision guided munitions (PGMs) to avoid civilian harm, including the use of munitions like small-diameter bombs as well as technologies and tactics that increase the accuracy of non-PGMs,” reported Newsweek earlier this year. «Israel has also employed a tactic when a military has air supremacy called dive bombing, as well as gathering pre-strike intelligence on the presence of civilians from satellite imagery, scans of cell phone presence, and other target observation techniques. All of this is to pinpoint targets to avoid civilian deaths.»
For their part, Israel’s politicians, including Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, reacted with collective rage against the double standard of equating a democratically elected government like Israel’s with Hamas’ tyrannical regime in Gaza.
“The prosecutor’s statement at the International Court of Justice in The Hague is scandalous and shows how much the international justice system is collapsing,” wrote President Herzog on Twitter/X. “The unilateral move is an anti-Israeli political step whose meaning is the strengthening of terrorist organizations around the world. It violates the basic rules of the world of international law according to the principle of complementarity and other legal norms. The leaders of Hamas are oppressive dictators who are guilty of mass murder, mass rape, and mass kidnapping of men, women, children, and babies. We will not forget our abductees, whose return should be the main goal of the international community.”
“[Karim Khan] is a rogue prosecutor who’s out to demonize the one and only Jewish state,” added Prime Minister Netanyahu in an NBC News interview on May 21.
The prime minister’s refrain that “Never again is now,” which he proclaimed in a Yom HaShoah ceremony earlier this month in Jerusalem, reflects Israel’s existential dangers, which are prevalent on both diplomatic and military levels. “I pledge that if Israel is forced to stand alone, it will stand alone. But we know we’re not alone because countless decent people around the world support our jobs’ cause, and I say to you, we will defeat a genocidal enemy,” Netanyahu also said during the ceremony.
In an interview with I24News on May 21, Natasha Hausdorff, a barrister in London and Director of UK Lawyers for Israel, argued, “It is very possible that if issued, these arrest warrants would split several members of the court, and certainly the United States, which is not a member state (of the ICC), would doubtless come under domestic pressure to renew the sanctions that have been placed on the ICC and on certain staff there. Those sanctions were withdrawn by the Biden administration in April 2021, so all eyes will be on it to see what steps they will take to back up their comments.
“It’s unfortunate and perhaps surprising that we’ve seen them reportedly cooperate with the ICC. The fact that the prosecutor was allowed entry to Israel to pursue an investigation where the state has been cleared that the court has no jurisdiction begs certain questions, which I hope in the coming weeks will be answered,” added Hausdorff.
By Jared Feldschreiber
