The Patriot Post® · Arresting Netanyahu Would Be Absurd

The International Criminal Court, a 2002 creation that has little to no power and even less jurisdiction, has issued an arrest warrant application for both Israeli and Hamas leaders. Under the advisement of a panel of five advisers including Amal Clooney — human rights lawyer and wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney — ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan articulated his intentions on Monday.

On Israel’s side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were the individuals named. The ICC cites the following bogus infractions via prosecutor Kahn: “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”

Israel has been held to a wholly unreasonable and unattainable standard for conducting warfare against an opponent that uses civilians as human shields, but even worse is that the charges are spurious.

However, Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh gladly and proudly cop to their war crimes. Sinwar is one of the architects of the October 7 attack, which Kahn correctly states included “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”

After Kahn pronounced that he sought the arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant for crimes against humanity, the United States immediately came to the defense of Israel, which is a change of tune from a few weeks ago when President Joe Biden withheld military aid because the Israel Defense Forces went into Rafah. Biden said: “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 Antony Blinken later added in a much more detailed statement: “We reject the Prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans.”

Netanyahu excoriated the ICC, saying:

The outrageous decision by the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to seek arrest warrants against the democratically elected leaders of Israel is a moral outrage of historic proportions. It will cast an everlasting mark of shame on the international court.

Israel is waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hamas massacred 1200 Jews, raped Jewish women, burned Jewish babies, [and] took hundreds hostage.

Now, in the face of these horrors, Mr. Khan creates a twisted and false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas. This is like creating a moral equivalence after September 11th between President Bush and Osama bin Laden, or during World War II between FDR and Hitler.

Hamas leaders also denounced the ICC, stating that it “equates the victim with the executioner.” This is rich considering that the Palestinians consider the Israelis the executioners even though the former were the butchers on October 7.

Most importantly, regardless of what the ICC decides to do in terms of arrest warrants, it has no jurisdiction and no right to stick its nose into this matter. Israel, as well as other world powers like China, Russia, and the U.S., do not recognize its authority.

Israel isn’t a signatory member of the ICC. “Palestine” is and has been since 2015, but Palestine isn’t a country.

At the end of the day, the ICC has no real power beyond being a nuisance. Case in point: The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin last year for war crimes against Ukraine. The Russian dictator, probably while laughing to himself, issued a counter-warrant for the arrest of the ICC members.

The ICC is also setting a bad precedent. If any country that isn’t popular with the ICC goes to war to defend itself, are its leaders in danger too of being issued arrest warrants?

The ICC would do well to back down from this fight.