ICC Warrants: The Fantasy World of the International Criminal Court

We should be grateful to the International Criminal Court. Its functionaries have done their utmost to convince those who still believe in its legitimacy that their faith is unfounded. For those with some attachment to reality, the ICC’s most recent missives read like dispatches from an alternate universe.

On Monday, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced his office’s intention to seek warrants for the arrest of both Hamas’s leadership and members of Israel’s governing coalition. The — we might call it aspirational — document begins fancifully enough with the claim that it is a response to “the Situation in the State of Palestine.” That language is good news for critics of the ICC insofar as there is no legal entity that goes by that name. Nor is there such a thing as the “territory of Israel,” which is how the ICC refers to the Jewish state (though some in the ICC’s ranks surely believe granting Israel its name represents a gracious dispensation to “the Zionist entity”). Those who understand that the ICC’s jurisdiction is an imaginary construct likely find it unsurprising to see the institution steadfastly refusing to commit to our shared experience in the real world.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.

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We should be grateful to the International Criminal Court. Its functionaries have done their utmost to convince those who still believe in its legitimacy that their faith is unfounded. For those with some attachment to reality, the ICC’s most recent missives read like dispatches from an alternate universe.

On Monday, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced his office’s intention to seek warrants for the arrest of both Hamas’s leadership and members of Israel’s governing coalition. The — we might call it aspirational — document begins fancifully enough with the claim that it is a response to “the Situation in the State of Palestine.” That language is good news for critics of the ICC insofar as there is no legal entity that goes by that name. Nor is there such a thing as the “territory of Israel,” which is how the ICC refers to the Jewish state (though some in the ICC’s ranks surely believe granting Israel its name represents a gracious dispensation to “the Zionist entity”). Those who understand that the ICC’s jurisdiction is an imaginary construct likely find it unsurprising to see the institution steadfastly refusing to commit to our shared experience in the real world.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.