Moderate Democrats, aligned with President Biden and Republicans in Congress, called the ICC shortly after being informed on Monday that arrest warrants had been issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three senior Hamas officials. criticized.
They argue that the ICC lacks jurisdiction in the case, undermining its own credibility, while House Republican leaders have threatened to sanction the court over the warrant.
Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the ICC was applying “false moral equivalence” to issuing arrest warrants targeting both Hamas and Israel. He said he had inserted it.
“The ICC’s decision today is irrational. The ICC, like the rest of the international community, remains obsessed with targeting Israel when it needs to,” Risch said in a statement. “Today’s actions undermined the court’s credibility and seriously damaged legitimate accountability in places where true war crimes are being committed, including in Ukraine, Syria, and across Africa.”
The White House also criticized the ICC over the arrest warrant, with Biden calling the arrest warrant “outrageous” in a statement and denouncing equivalence between Hamas and Israel.
The United States and Israel have repeatedly said that the extremist group deliberately targeted Israeli civilians on October 7, when Israeli forces killed more than 1,100 people and took about 250 more hostage. We have compared the actions. Approximately 130 people were still captured at the time, and the number of survivors is unknown. It also accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields in Gaza.
But Karim Khan, the ICC’s top prosecutor, fended off the criticism in an interview with CNN on Monday, saying he had appointed an independent panel of international law experts to review the warrant process.
Khan said Israel has the right to defend itself, but it still needs to abide by 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 response to noise,” he said. “The way I look at things is to look at the evidence. Look at the act. Look at the victim and airbrush out the nationality and if a crime was committed, you should move forward.”
Arrest warrants must ultimately be processed by the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber, which has the power to add or remove charges. The chamber will also hear arguments about whether the ICC has jurisdiction over the issue, which the Biden administration says it does not have jurisdiction over.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
