Legal Affairs
Nitzan Horowitz’s remark “justifying the political and anti-Semitic action of the court at The Hague and its persecution of IDF soldiers is a disgrace to the Israeli Knesset,” says Ayelet Shaked of Yamina.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris expressed “the administration’s complete opposition to the decision of the prosecutor in The Hague.”
There is “no moral or legal equivalence between Israel, a democratic state seeking to protect the lives of its civilian population, and Palestinian terrorist groups committed to indiscriminate atrocities and the destruction of the Jewish state,” said B’nai B’rith International.
“We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
“The decision has no basis in law or precedent; rather, the ICC has become just another anti-Israel international organization,” Professor Eugene Kontorovich, director of International Law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, told JNS.
Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) Cardin and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said they are “concerned that the court’s recent actions” have “inappropriately infused politics into the judicial process.”
The date set for beginning to hear witnesses in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial comes less than two weeks after the March 23 Knesset elections.
“This is among the most painful affairs in the history of the State of Israel,” says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a letter to the incoming ICC prosecutor, a group of 16 leaders, including the former premiers of Canada, Australia, Spain and Uruguay, state their concern at the “unprecedented campaign of delegitimization against Israel.”
“StandWithUs is confident that the desire of the state—to refuse to use taxpayer dollars to enter into contracts with companies that discriminate against Israel—will prevail,” said co-founder and CEO Roz Rothstein.
One of his first tasks in his nine-year term will be to decide whether or not to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes.
“The court has no jurisdiction because of the absence of the element of Palestinian statehood required by international law,” says German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
