Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday slammed the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor for meeting with the president of Turkey and the head of the Palestinian Authority, whom he described sarcastically as “two great champions of human rights.”
“Under the category of ‘This can only happen at the UN’: ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan met yesterday with two great champions of human rights— Turkish President [Recep] Tayyip Erdoğan, renowned for slaughtering Kurdish civilians and jailing journalists, and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who denies the Holocaust and pays terrorists who murder Jews,” said Netanyahu.
“Rather than issuing arrest warrants for war crimes against Erdoğan and Abbas, Khan remains obsessed with casting as war criminals Israel’s democratically elected leaders, who are pursuing a just war with just means against genocidal terrorists. What a joke!” continued the premier.
Israel filed an official petition to the ICC that it drop the prosecutor’s request to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Foreign Ministry announced on Friday.
“Israel initiated two separate legal proceedings,” the Foreign Ministry statement read.
The first legal case challenges the legal authority of the ICC to file such arrest warrants, the statement said. The second proceeding argues that chief prosecutor Karim Khan violated the court’s constitution and the principle of complementarity by not granting Israel the right to investigate itself the claims made by the ICC.
“No other democracy with an independent and respected judicial system—as exists in the State of Israel—has received such discriminatory treatment from the prosecutor,” the statement went on to say.
“Despite this, Israel remains steadfast in its commitment to the rule of law and justice, and will continue to protect its citizens from the ongoing attacks and atrocities of Hamas and Iran’s other terrorist affiliates, in accordance with international law.”
Earlier in the month, Khan pressed ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber to file the arrest warrants, urging action ahead of Netanyahu’s scheduled address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sep. 27.
Netanyahu excoriated the chief prosecutor, stating that the comparison between Israelis and Hamas terrorists is “pure antisemitism.”
“Unfortunately, we have seen from the beginning that the proceedings in The Hague are politically biased and have no professional legal basis whatsoever,” said Netanyahu.
The ICC has no jurisdiction as Jerusalem is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. But in a legalistic sleight of hand, the court claimed jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, even though no such state exists under international law.
