THE President of the United States (US) Joe Biden, has slammed the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Thursday, November 21, Biden said the arrest warrants issued for top Israeli leaders were outrageous..
Biden said suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity had no equivalence between Israel and Hamas after the international tribunal issued arrest warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
“We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” the President stated.
In an earlier statement, the White House strongly denounced the ICC’s arrest warrants, stating that it “fundamentally rejects” the calls for the arrests of Israeli officials.
The White House said it was concerned with the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the ‘troubling’ process errors that led to its decision.
“The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter,” a National Security Council spokesperson said.
The statement ignored the fact that the ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Deif, the top military commander of Hamas, in addition to the warrants for Israeli leaders.
Mike Waltz, US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration’s new national security advisor, lauded Israel and pledged a robust response to the ICC and UN’s ‘antisemitic bias‘ in January.
“The ICC has no credibility, and these allegations have been refuted by the US government,” Waltz posted on the social media platform X.
Neither the United States nor Israel is a member of the ICC and both have rejected its jurisdiction.
The ICIR reported that the Hague-based court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over war crimes allegations.
The ICC emphasised that Israel’s acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction was not required.
The ICC stated that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe they committed war crimes, including starvation as a method of warfare and “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
The ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu puts him in the same league as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who’s also been charged by the ICC.
Even though ICC warrants do not ensure arrests, it could severely limit Netanyahu’s travel to ICC member states.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s office dismissed the warrants on him and Gallant as “absurd and antisemitic.”
On October 7, 2023, a Hamas attack on Israel claimed more than 1,000 lives. Since then, many Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, the majority of whom were women and children.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), as of November 21, 2024, more than 100 journalists have also been killed in the attacks, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.
On Thursday, Al Jazeera reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had continued their intense airstrikes and ground campaigns in Gaza, despite the ongoing case against Netanyahu.
A reporter with the ICIR
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