ICC ‘Hangs Democracy Out to Dry’
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) recent decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza is an underhanded effort to prevent the Jewish state from defending itself against Islamic terrorism. Palestinians and other enemies of Israel are increasingly resorting to lawfare, the weaponization of international law, to accomplish through specious legal proceedings what they have been unable to achieve on the battlefield.
The Hague-based ICC accused Netanyahu and Gallant of committing “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” during Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. The court falsely claimed that the two men had carried out a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza” and determined they “each bear criminal responsibility” for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
Israeli officials vehemently deny those charges. Netanyahu called the ICC’s decision “baseless and without any factual or legal foundation whatsoever.” He noted that Israeli officials have done “everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties,” including issuing “millions of text messages, phone calls and leaflets” to the citizens of Gaza “to get them out of harm’s way.” At the same time, Hamas operatives did “everything in their power to keep them in harm’s way, including shooting them, using them as human shields.” He added that Israel has supplied Gazans with more than 700,000 tons of food, supplies that are “routinely looted by Hamas terrorists.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz characterized the ICC’s decision as “a moral disgrace, entirely tainted by antisemitism,” and one which “drags the international judicial system to an unprecedented low.” He vowed that the Israeli government “will continue to defend the citizens of Israel with determination and pride, standing firm against anyone who attempts to undermine our right to self-defense.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, founding member of the High Level Military Group, an independent body of senior military officers from NATO and other democratic countries, was part of an observer mission monitoring the war in Gaza. He assessed that the Israeli military was fully complying with international law. “We pointed out that they have been making greater efforts and employing more sophisticated procedures than any other armies to mitigate harm to civilians.”
Kemp warned that the ICC’s decision creates a “two-tier international justice system under which terrorists are effectively inviolable while democratic states trying to resist them are hung out to dry.” He accused the ICC of moral bankruptcy by “creating a false equivalence between arch terrorists whose currency is blood and suffering and the leaders of a democratic state defending their people from attack.”
The ICC’s decision has heightened the global legal risks for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel. The IDF recently cautioned more than two dozen soldiers and officers who fought in the Gaza Strip to avoid traveling abroad. At least eight were ordered to leave countries, including Cyprus, Slovenia, and the Netherlands, due to fears they could be arrested. The IDF is now conducting “risk assessments” for each soldier requesting to travel abroad.
Netanyahu’s office said that “no anti-Israel decision will prevent the State of Israel from defending its citizens. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not give in to pressure. He will continue to pursue all the objectives that Israel set out to achieve in its just war against Hamas and the Iranian axis of terror.”
