International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants against both Israeli and Hamas top officials, including PM Benjamin Netanyahu, over alleged crimes against humanity, Khan said in a statement issued on Monday, May 20th. While the move caused a massive uproar among many leaders in the West, some Western governments took the announcement as an opportunity to further abandon Israel’s fight for survival. Unsurprisingly, given the deep divide on the topic, the EU failed to denounce the court. Sharp-tongued commentators have noted that it represents the “final nail” in the coffin of ICC’s legitimacy.
According to Khan’s statement, the prosecutor believes he has “reasonable grounds” to suspect that the five men—PM Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas top brass Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh—“bear criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Among other charges, the Israeli prime minister and his defense chief are accused by the Hague of deliberate starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, intentional targeting of the civilian population, and “extermination.”
The case is now submitted to a panel of pre-trial judges who will determine whether the evidence supports the need for arrest warrants. However, Israel is not among the 124 state parties of the ICC, meaning the court has no means to enforce such warrants nor to carry out investigations on its soil—but, if approved, such arrest warrants can make traveling to ICC partner countries difficult for the officials.
“Complete distortion of reality”
The move was met with outrage across the West as many leaders joined Tel Aviv’s immediate dismissal of the allegations. Netanyahu himself said he was appalled by the “disgusting” comparison between “the democratic state of Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas,” which is a “complete distortion of reality.” For once, Israeli opposition figures also stood firmly by the side of the prime minister, calling the legal step a “moral failure” of the ICC and a “deep distortion of justice.”
Even U.S. President Joe Biden was quick to react by denouncing the allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant as “outrageous,” rejecting the notion that Israel’s actions would be anything close to “genocide.”
“We stand with Israel to take out Sinwar and the rest of the butchers of Hamas. We want Hamas defeated; we will work with Israel to make that happen,” Biden said on Monday in response. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in turn, warned that the ICC’s relativizing actions might embolden Hamas and significantly jeopardize ceasefire and hostage negotiations.
Similar tones were struck across much of Europe, with Central European countries expressing the strongest support for Tel Aviv, as usual. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, for instance, called equating democratically elected officials with terrorists “non-comprehensible,” while Czech PM Petr Fiala called it “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,” Fiala said, adding that it was Hamas who caused the suffering of Palestinians too—not Israel.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán described the prosecutor’s proposal as “absurd and shameful,” warning that decisions like this can only escalate the conflict instead of bringing both sides closer to peace.
Berlin also joined the capitals who denounced Khan’s move, although it took some time until the German statement was published in the evening, implying that the socialist-green government may not have a firm, unified opinion, especially because of the high-level international organization involved.
“The ICC is a fundamental achievement which Germany has always supported,” the German foreign ministry’s statement reads. But, “the simultaneous application of arrest warrants against Hamas and two Israeli officials gives the false impression of an equation.”
There were leaders in Europe who took the opposing side, showing the deep and continued split within the EU as member states retreat from the support for Israel—which explains why no joint condemnation has emerged from the bloc.
France, while denouncing Hamas’ October 7th attacks as “anti-Semitic massacres,” said in a statement from the foreign ministry that they support “the International Criminal Court, its independence and the fight against impunity in all situations. … As far as Israel is concerned, it will be up to the court’s pre-trial chamber to decide whether to issue these warrants, after examining the evidence put forward by the prosecutor.”
And Belgium’s Foreign Affairs Minister Hadja Lahbib said Brussels will continue to support the ICC no matter what, because “crimes committed in Gaza must be prosecuted at the highest level, regardless of the perpetrators.”
The EU’s other notoriously anti-Israel countries (including Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia) all came out with similar statements, hailing the importance of ICC’s “impartial and independent” work.
In Britain, while Rishi Sunak’s Tory government also denounced Khan’s decision, ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corby absurdly called it a “sobering wake-up call” for leaders who continue to aid alleged war criminals, calling for London to fully support the ICC and end all arms sales to Israel.
“Final nail” in the coffin of ICC’s legitimacy
Commentators across Western conservative media see Khan’s application as proof of ICC’s moral bankruptcy and illegitimacy while also pointing out the absurdity of equating murderous terrorists with democratic officials defending their country. After all, there’s no other country that has done so much to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths or provide as much humanitarian aid to its opponents, with Hamas’ actions (using civilians as human shields and looting supply trucks for black market profits) consistently undermining those efforts.
British author and The Times columnist Melanie Phillips, for instance, wrote that the prosecutor’s “blood libel” was part of a “pincer movement of genocidal terror, brainwashed street insurrection, and ‘human rights’ lawfare.” The result, she warns, will be the complete destruction of the court’s reputation as well as the legitimacy of human rights instruments in general. As Phillips explained:
Far from restoring it, Khan’s move will now bury [the ICC’s reputation] in the eyes of all fair-minded and decent people. It will also hammer a nail into the coffin of human rights law, the legal instrument of the international “humanitarian” establishment of the UN and anti-Israel non-governmental organizations for which this kind of “lawfare” has become a principal weapon aimed at Israel’s destruction. … The beneficiary will be Hamas; the victims will be Israel, the rule of law, and civilization itself.
Spiked’s chief political writer Brendan O’Neill noted in his commentary that there’s nothing impartial in persecuting both sides at the same time, because a terrorist organization couldn’t care less about the opinion of some court in The Hague, but it desperately seeks international validation by having its opponents “frogmarched before the world as a potential war criminal.”
The Wall Street Journal editor Elliot Kaufmann said that Khan’s decision essentially put the ICC “to the torch,” while the Somali-born Dutch-American author and well-known Islam critic Ayyan Hirsi Ali described the ICC as “morally bankrupt parasites living lavishly on taxpayer money,” calling for defunding the Court.
Pro-Israel groups in the U.S. are considering avenues of sanctioning the ICC, including asking Israel-supportive countries to withhold their funding for the court.
