George W. Bush’s 2002 decision to pull the United States out of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court was vindicated once again on Thursday when the body issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the nation’s former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant.
The ICC said that the warrants were for “crimes against humanity and war crimes,” accusing Israel of intentionally starving the people of Gaza and targeting civilians in its campaign against Hamas in the wake of the October 7 attacks. The charges are without basis, as Israelis have demonstrated the great lengths they go to to limit civilian casualties against an enemy that deliberately hides behind civilians and civilian infrastructure. So by taking this action, the ICC is putting more Palestinian civilians in danger by convincing Hamas that its strategy is working.
As for the charges of “starvation,” the reality is that Israel has allowed more than enough food to enter Gaza, but it is regularly stolen by either Hamas or local gangs, as happened just this week when nearly 100 United Nations aid trucks were looted.
Even in theory, there is no place in the world for the ICC, an international organization that seeks to enforce a transnational-progressive, antisemitic political agenda disguised as make-it-up-as-you-go-along “international law” against sovereign countries who are not participants and over which it has no credible claim to jurisdiction. (In the U.S., even before Bush pulled out of the Rome Statute that established the ICC, it did not have the force of law because it had never been approved by the Senate as required by the U.S. Constitution.) In practice, the biased institution is disproportionately targeting Israel while doing little to target actual war criminals.
In recent years, the ICC has not issued arrest warrants against Bashar Assad or investigated Syria for war crimes, despite the fact that over 300,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict and Assad gassed his own people; it has not issued arrest warrants for the leaders of Iran. While these countries are not parties to the Rome Statute, that did not stop the court from going after Israel.
Egregiously, the ICC had been investigating U.S. servicemembers as part of a broader look into war crimes in Afghanistan until the Trump administration imposed sanctions on ICC officials and the court announced they would be focusing on the conduct of other parties in the conflict.
The U.S. should take a similar approach here. Representative Chip Roy and Senators Jim Risch and Tom Cotton had already drafted the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to impose visa bans and financial restrictions on ICC officials. It passed the House in June but has stalled in the Democrat-controlled Committee on Foreign Relations since then. In the wake of this moral abomination, the Senate should pass it and President Biden should sign it as one of his last acts in office. If the Democrats won’t act, Republicans should make it a priority as soon as they take control in January, with the goal of getting it on Donald Trump’s desk for approval by Day One of his presidency.
While this would be a start, the incoming administration should be prepared to issue even harsher sanctions, as well as pressure other countries to announce that they will not allow the warrants to be enforced on their soil.
While the ICC is targeting Israeli leaders today, it could always target American leaders in the future.