Israeli government and opposition parties resoundingly rejected the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. On Thursday, the Hague-based court ruled that these two Israeli leaders bore “criminal responsibility” for overseeing a military operation against the terrorist group Hamas in response to the October 7 massacre.
“ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I rejects the State of Israel’s challenges to jurisdiction and issues warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant,” the tribunal posted on X, without mentioning the real atrocities and war crimes committed by Hamas terrorists.
Prime Minister Netanyahu slammed the so-called international court’s decision as ‘antisemitic’ for going after Israel as the country fights for its existence against Gaza-based Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist groups. The Jewish State also faces a multi-pronged attack from Iran and its terror proxies across the Middle East.
The Jerusalem Post reported PM Netanyahu’s response:
Israel claimed that the court has no authority to discuss the Palestinian complaint against it, which recently led to the prosecutor’s request to issue arrest warrants against the prime minister and the defense minister.The Prime Minister’s Office responded to the warrants, calling the decision antisemitic.”The antisemitic decision of the International Criminal Court is equivalent to a modern-day Dreyfus trial—and it will end the same way,” the PMO said.”Israel vehemently rejects the absurd and false actions and accusations against it by the International Criminal Court, a biased and discriminatory political body.”The PMO also said that the decision was made by “a corrupt chief prosecutor attempting to save himself from severe allegations of sexual harassment, and by biased judges driven by antisemitic hatred toward Israel,” accusing prosecutor Karim Khan of lying to US senators when he said he would not “act against Israel before visiting” Israel.
The ICC ruling was rejected by leaders across the Israeli political spectrum, The Times of Israel reported:
Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf characterized the warrants as “antisemitic accusations against all citizens of Israel” and pledged that Jerusalem would “not be deterred and will continue to fight murderous terrorism.”“Simply antisemitism, always antisemitism,” said Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, citing a verse from the Book of Numbers that describes the Jews as “a people that dwells alone, not reckoned among the nations.”President Isaac Herzog said that the ICC decision marked “a dark day for justice [and] humanity.”By issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the ICC has “chosen the side of terror and evil over democracy and freedom, and turned the very system of justice into a human shield for Hamas’ crimes against humanity,” Herzog charged, calling for “true moral clarity in the face of an Iranian empire of evil that seeks to destabilize our region and the world.”
The Associated Press continued:
Israel’s opposition leaders fiercely criticized the ICC’s move. Benny Gantz, a retired general and political rival to Netanyahu, condemned the decision, saying it showed “moral blindness” and was a “shameful stain of historic proportion that will never be forgotten.”Yair Lapid, another opposition leader, called it a “prize for terror.”
Israel and the United States do not recognize the jurisdiction of the so-called international court. In May 2020, the court pushed for an absurd ‘war crimes’ investigation against U.S. servicemen fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban Islamic terrorist groups in Afghanistan.
President Donald Trump responded to the witch hunt with sanctions on the then-ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. In 2021, the Biden administration dropped the sanctions, with Secretary Antony Blinken calling the Trump-era sanctions “inappropriate.”
The tribunal has been toying with the idea of a similar probe against Israel even before the October 7 massacre and mass-kidnappings forced the IDF to launch a military operation against Hamas in Gaza.
The arrest warrants against Israeli leaders come as ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan faces multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, raising speculations that the anti-Israel witch hunt could be a desperate bid to divert attention away from the looming scandal.
“The International Criminal Court has announced an external investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct against its chief prosecutor,” the BBC reported on November 11. “The announcement followed media reports about a document outlining accusations against Mr Khan, understood to include unwanted sexual touching and “abuse”.”
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