“Downright embarrassing.” An “absolute farce.” “Outrageous, unlawful and dangerous.” “No standing, relevance or path.”
Those are among the responses from members of the U.S. House and Senate, of both parties, to the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister.
The ICC, based in The Hague, is a stand-alone body that isn’t part of the United Nations.
The court’s decision “represents the weaponization of international law at its most egregious,” wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), who added that the court “has set a precedent for criminalizing self-defense: any country daring to defend itself against an enemy that exploits civilians as human shields will face persecution posing as prosecution.”
Torres added that the ICC is a “kangaroo court” with an “ideological crusade against the Jewish state.”
“The ICC ignores the cause and context of the war. Israel did not initiate the war. The war was imposed upon Israel by the unbridged barbarism of Hamas on Oct. 7,” he wrote. “Not only did Hamas wage war on Israel, causing the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, it carefully constructed a battlefield designed to maximize the loss of civilian life.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) wrote that the court “officially outed itself as the legal arm of the global antisemitic movement to attack the State of Israel.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) stated that it is “laughable” that the court, which “lost all legitimacy today,” issued a warrant for the arrest of Mohammed Deif, the Hamas leader whom Israel killed in July.
Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), both members of the far-left so-called “Squad,” both praised the court’s decision.
