Penalizing the criminal international court Ruthie Blum
Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune (R-S.D.) on Thursday called the International Criminal Court’s issuing of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “outrageous, unlawful and dangerous.”
Thune then demanded that current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “bring a bill to the floor sanctioning the ICC,” warning that “if he chooses not to act, the new Senate Republican majority next year will.”
The double threat—aimed simultaneously at Schumer and the kangaroo court at The Hague—was significant for two reasons.
First, Thune has good reason to finger-wag at his Democrat counterparts, thanks to their disturbing attitude towards Israel. Professing an “ironclad commitment” to the Jewish state’s “right to defend itself” while withholding crucial arms shipments to America’s key ally and only democracy in the Middle East has made them deserving of suspicion by the likes of Thune and the rest of the unflinchingly pro-Israel Republicans.
The fact that a whopping 19 Democrat senators voted this week to advance resolutions put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block the transfer to Jerusalem of offensive weaponry necessary for its self-defense is a case in point.
Though Schumer—like President Joe Biden and other members of his party who have been critical of Israel’s prosecution of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon—opposed those resolutions, they’ve been openly hostile to the Netanyahu government since its inception; so much so that they’ve never concealed their desire for it to be toppled.
Similar to Thune, Johnson pulled no punches.
“The ICC’s decision to target America’s ally, Israel, is antisemitic, reprehensible and completely ridiculous,” he declared. “It has absolutely no jurisdiction over Israel or the United States, and these illegitimate warrants are an attack on the very concepts of sovereignty and due process. … If Senator Schumer and President Biden do not act now, they will most assuredly invite future lawfare against Israel and the United States. We cannot afford to show weakness.”
It’s a bit late for Biden and the Democrats to hide their weakness, however, since they long ago let the ICC off the hook. They did this by canceling Executive Order 13928—“Blocking Property of Certain Persons Associated with the International Criminal Court”—signed on June 11, 2020, by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.
The impetus for the order, which went into effect three months later, was the repeated attempt by then-ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and co-worker Phakiso Mochochoko to investigate “war crimes” committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghani forces and—you guessed it—the American military.
It authorized entry bans on the families of Bensouda and Mochochoko, as well as the freezing of their U.S. assets. Its implementation came a year after Trump revoked Bensouda’s visa to the United States.
Determined to undo as many of his predecessor’s policies as possible, Biden took a proverbial machete with him into the Oval Office. Among his “victims” was E.O. 13928.
Its cancelation on April 2, 2021, was announced in a press statement by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who explained that his administration deemed the measures spelled out in the E.O. (you know, sanctions and bans) to be “inappropriate and ineffective.”
The top diplomat went on to claim that despite a “longstanding objection to the court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of [non-Rome Statute parties], such as the United States and Israel … our concerns about these cases would be better addressed through engagement with all stakeholders in the ICC process, rather than through the imposition of sanctions.”
We see how that worked out. With appeasers at the helm of the free world, Bensouda’s successor let it rip against Israel.
Yes, Karim Khan has been targeting Israel with a vengeance from the moment it was invaded by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. That these barbarians, along with Gazan civilians along for the bloodthirsty joy ride, committed atrocities against Jews not seen since the Holocaust seemed only to enhance ICC Jew-hatred.
It’s the only conclusion to reach from the court’s twisted depiction of the events that followed the massacre of 1,200 people and the abduction of some 250 others. According to Khan and his cohorts, Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.”
Furthermore, the ICC “found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”
Shame on Team Biden for having imagined that it’s “better to engage” with the ICC than impose sanctions on it. Israel is the one in its crosshairs right now, but the United States is high on its hit list.
This is by no means the only injustice that Trump will have to rectify when he takes up where he left off. Tragically, this particular travesty is one he already tackled.
His incoming administration will have no choice but to prove, yet again, that the international court really is criminal and punish it accordingly.
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