Israel’s allies in Congress slammed the ICC prosecutor’s decision to file an application for an arrest warrant against Israel’s leaders
By Amir Tibon Ben Samuels Jonathan Lis Reuters
Israel will try to convince the White House and Congress to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court in The Hague, after the ICC’s chief prosecutor called on Monday to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’ leaders.
While the United States doesn’t recognize the ICC’s authority, the Biden administration has so far decided against taking any concrete action against it. Now, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington will try to propose punitive measures to be taken against the ICC and the office of Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, with the encouragement of the Israeli government.
In late April, a group of Republican Senators wrote to the chief prosecutor and warned him that if he issued warrants against Israeli officials, they would promote sanctions against him and his employees and his family, including barring them entry to the United States. But such measures require bipartisan support, and it’s not certain whether enough Democratic lawmakers would support them.
President Biden called the application for arrest warrants “outrageous,” adding, “let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
Secretary of State Blinken added that the U.S. “fundamentally rejects the announcement.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, Israel’s top Republican Senate ally, said on Monday he will “feverishly work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle in both chambers to levy damning sanctions against the ICC,” adding that “Prosecutor Khan is drunk with self-importance and has done a lot of damage to the peace process and to the ability to find a way forward.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres, among the most vocally pro-Israel Democrats, said “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,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, among the most vocally pro-Israel Democrats, in the first reaction from a U.S. lawmaker since Khan revealed his findings.
Conversely, Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, one of the most strident critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, said that “If Netanyahu comes to address Congress, I would be more than glad to show the ICC the way to the House floor to issue that warrant.”
Senator Jim Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the ICC’s decision “absurd,” adding that it “continues to be obsessed with targeting Israel during its time of need. There is no cause for why the court should be investigating Israel as it is not a party to the Rome Statute and Israel has a fully functional judiciary.”
Risch added that “the fact that the court applied for warrants for Hamas and Israeli officials at the same time provides a false moral equivalency between their actions. Israel has responded to reckless Hamas aggression with extreme caution for civilians, while Hamas raped and murdered Israeli and American civilians. Today’s actions have hurt the credibility of the court and seriously harmed legitimate accountability efforts where true war crimes are occurring, like Ukraine, Syria, and across Africa.”
Republican Senator Tom Cotton said he will work to ensure ICC employees and their families will not be permitted to enter the U.S. following its “antisemitic and politically motivated ‘charges.’”
“My colleagues and I look forward to making sure neither Khan, his associates nor their families will ever set foot again in the United States,” said Cotton, who spearheaded previous efforts warning the ICC against taking legal action against Israel.
In addition, Israel will be asking friendly countries in Europe to take steps against the ICC, though the chances of obtaining such cooperation from many of the most important Western countries are slim. Last year, the chief prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and a host of Russian military officials, on suspicion of war crimes committed in Ukraine.
Most European governments supported the warrants against Putin and view them as a deterrent against the Russian leader and the top regime officials in Moscow, and therefore will not rush to take punitive action against the ICC for Israel’s sake.
“This action is not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in,” a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, “referring to the decision made by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
“The U.K., as with other countries, does not yet recognize Palestine as a state and Israel is not a state party to the Rome Statute”, which outlines the ICC’s areas of jurisdiction, the spokesperson added.
Asked if the police would arrest Netanyahu if he came to Britain, the spokesperson said he would not comment on what he called “hypotheticals”.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala harshly condemned the ICC prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, saying “[The proposal] to issue an arrest warrant for the representatives of a democratically elected government together with the leaders of an Islamist terrorist organization is appalling and completely unacceptable.”
“We must not forget that it was Hamas that attacked Israel in October and killed, injured and kidnapped thousands of innocent people. It was this completely unprovoked terrorist attack that led to the current war in Gaza and the suffering of civilians in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon,” he continued.
Karl Nehammer, the Chancellor of Austria, also blasted Khan’s decision. “We fully respect the independence of the ICC. The fact however that the leader of the terrorist organization Hamas whose declared goal is the extinction of the State of Israel is being mentioned at the same time as the democratically elected representatives of that very state is non comprehensible [sic.].”
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