The latest outrage from the International Criminal Court: arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
International Kangaroo Court is more like it, and one more reminder why the United States should never recognize the ICC.
The warrants come over utterly false charges of “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024.”
That’s antisemite for “waging a humane and justified counterattack against genocidal butchers” — note the start date and that poisonous “at least.”
The charges refer specifically to “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
What to know about the International Criminal Court
What is the International Criminal Court?
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a global court established in 2002 with the power to prosecute the gravest crimes of concern to the international community, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It is a court of last resort that intervenes when member states are unwilling or unable to do so themselves. It is governed by an international treaty called the Rome Statute and is based in the Dutch city of The Hague.
Are Israel and the US members?
The ICC has 124 member states and can prosecute crimes committed by nationals of member states or on the territory of member states by others. Israel and the US are not members and do not recognize its jurisdiction. Palestinian territories were admitted as a member state in 2015.
Will Netanyahu be arrested?
All 124 member states of the ICC are obliged by the court’s founding statute to arrest and hand over any individual subject to an ICC arrest warrant if they set foot on their territory. However, the court has no police force and has no means of enforcing an arrest. Sanctions for not arresting someone despite a warrant are also little more than a diplomatic slap on the wrist.
Can Netanyahu still travel?
Yes, an ICC arrest warrant is not a travel ban. However, the prime minister does risk arrest if he travels to a member state. There are also no restrictions on political leaders, lawmakers or diplomats from meeting individuals with an ICC arrest warrant against them.
Yet Gazans aren’t starving — the “expert” analysis that claimed to find famine turned out to be utterly false, as the United Nations itself later admitted.
The analysis ignored all private-sector food deliveries, and a big chunk of aid from the World Food Programme.
And the only ones murdering and persecuting and committing other inhumane acts (including looting a major aid caravan this week) in Gaza are the terrorist cadres of Hamas and their Iranian masters.
Hamas uses all Gazans as an endless supply of human shields.
It hides terrorist fighters and ordnance beneath hospitals.
On Oct. 7, the group sent squads of killers across the border into Israel to murder, rape and kidnap civilians.
But for the organs of institutionalized antisemitism like the ICC, the precise inversion of reality is the point.
This latest effort is simply another part of the international push spearheaded by Jew-hating high officials around the world to delegitimize Israel.
That kicked into overdrive after the Oct. 7 attacks, when Hamas atrocities generated a global outpouring of support not for the victims but for the perpetrators.
Propaganda enabled by the Biden administration’s kowtowing to the Democratic Party’s left on the issue.
And because Jew-hate is written into the DNA of the ICC, as it is written into the DNA of the United Nations, the haters will continue to lie and smear as long as Jews anywhere dare to defend themselves from people who want to see them wiped off the face of the Earth.