Israeli FM mocks ICC prosecutor’s trip to meet Syrian rebel

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Saturday criticized the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, after his meeting in Damascus with the de facto leader of Syria, an Islamist who used to be part of Al-Qaeda.

“Karim Kahn [sic] didn’t find the time to come to Israel, a democratic country governed by the rule of law and with an independent judiciary, before issuing arrest warrants against its democratically elected leaders,” Sa’ar tweeted.

“Yet he already ran to Damascus to meet with al-Julani, head of HTS (designated as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council), and former al-Qaeda operative. So much for ‘international legal institutions.’ Show me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,” Sa’ar wrote.

Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the non de guerre of Ahmed al-Sharaa, hosted Khan in Damascus on Saturday, and the two men shook hands while posing for photographs.

“Birds of a feather flock together,” Sa’ar wrote under the picture on X in Hebrew.

Under al-Julani, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadist militia perpetrated numerous attacks on civilians and carried out many executions of dissidents without trial, including after it became the predominant military force in Syria last month, following the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime.

Khan visited Israel in December 2023. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued, at Khan’s request, arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on suspicion of war crimes, including starving Gazans. Israel appealed the warrants, citing procedural failures and disputed jurisdiction. Khan advised the judges in The Hague to reject the appeal.

Israel has denied the allegations, which the United States and several other countries also said were false.