President Biden and moderate Democrats united with Republicans in Congress criticized the ICC shortly after the Monday notice that arrest warrants had been filed for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three top Hamas officials.
They argued the ICC has no jurisdiction in the case and was undermining its own credibility, while House Republican leaders threatened to sanction the court over the warrants.
Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the ICC inserted a “false moral equivalency” for issuing arrest warrants targeting both Hamas and Israel.
“Today’s ICC decision is absurd. The ICC, like the rest of the international community, continues to be obsessed with targeting Israel during its time of need,” Risch said in a statement. “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.”
The White House also criticized the ICC for the arrest warrants, with Biden calling it “outrageous” in a statement and denouncing the equivalence of Hamas and Israel.
The U.S. and Israel have repeatedly contrasted the army’s actions with Hamas, saying the militant group deliberately targeted Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 when fighters killed more than 1,100 people and took another roughly 250 hostages, about 130 of whom are still being held captive, an unknown number alive. They also accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields in Gaza.
But ICC top prosecutor Karim Khan deflected criticism in a Monday interview with CNN, noting he appointed an independent panel of international law experts to review the warrant process.
Khan said Israel has a right to defend itself, but it must still comply with international humanitarian law because no country has a “get out of jail free card.”
“This is not a witch hunt. This is not some kind of emotional reaction to noise,” he said. “The way I look at things is look at the evidence. Look at the conduct. Look at the victims and airbrush out the nationality and if a crime has been committed, we should move forward.”
The arrest warrants will have to be finalized by a pretrial chamber at the ICC, which has the power to add or remove charges. The chamber will also hear arguments on whether the ICC has jurisdiction in this matter, which the Biden administration has argued it does not.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
