The International Criminal Court on Friday denounced U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order sanctioning the ICC in response to arrest warrants issued for Israeli leaders over their devastating 15-month military assault on the Gaza Strip.
“The ICC condemns the issuance by the U.S. of an executive order seeking to impose sanctions on its officials and harm its independent and impartial judicial work,” the tribunal said in a statement. “The court stands firmly by its personnel and pledges to continue providing justice and hope to millions of innocent victims of atrocities across the world, in all situations before it.”
“We call on our 125 states parties, civil society, and all nations of the world to stand united for justice and fundamental human rights,” added the Hague-based ICC, which was established by a global treaty known as the Rome Statute to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
A spokesperson for the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Ravina Shamdasani, also slammed Trump’s order targeting the ICC, which she called “a central institution of the international criminal justice system and fundamental to ensuring justice and achieving accountability for the most serious crimes.”
“We fully support the independent work of the court—across all situations within its jurisdiction,” Shamdasani said Friday. “We deeply regret the individual sanctions announced yesterday against court personnel, and call for this measure to be reversed.”
“The court should be fully able to undertake its independent work—where a state is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution, as stated in the Rome Statute. The court is an essential part of the human rights infrastructure,” she added. “The rule of law remains essential to our collective peace and security. Seeking accountability globally makes the world a safer place for everyone.”
Since Trump signed the order—which specifically cites the court’s November warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant—civil society groups around the world have also spoken out against the U.S. president, who previously targeted ICC officials with sanctions during his first term.
“This reckless action sends the message that Israel is above the law and the universal principles of international justice. It suggests that President Trump endorses the Israeli government’s crimes and is embracing impunity,” saidAmnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard, a former U.N. special rapporteur, in a statement.
The “aggressive” and “vindictive” order, she continued, “is a brutal step that seeks to undermine and destroy what the international community has painstakingly constructed over decades, if not centuries: global rules that are applicable to everyone and aim to deliver justice for all. The sanctions constitute another betrayal of our common humanity.”
“At an historic moment when we are witnessing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and the global rule of law coming under threat from multiple fronts,” she argued, “institutions like the court are needed more than ever to advance human rights protections, prevent future atrocities and secure justice for victims.”
Trump’s sanctions will not only “embolden perpetrators,” Callamard warned, “they will negatively impact the interests of all victims globally and those who look to the court for justice in all the countries where it’s conducting investigations, including Darfur, Libya, the Philippines, Palestine, Ukraine, and Venezuela.”
“The sanctions are also an affront to 125 member states who have collectively resolved that the court must be able to effectively pursue justice—which means it must be able to undertake independent judicial functions, such as issuing arrest warrants, for example, against Benjamin Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin,” said added, referring to the Russian president.
“Governments around the world and regional organizations must do everything in their power to mitigate and block the effect of President Trump’s sanctions,” Callamard concluded. “Through collective and concerted actions, ICC member states can protect the court and its staff. Urgent action is needed, like never before.”
While some governments, such as Hungary, have backed Trump’s move, others have joined the chorus of condemnation and reiterated support for the ICC.
“We reaffirm our continued and unwavering support for the independence, impartiality, and integrity of the ICC,” 79 nations—including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—said in a joint statement reported by Reuters. “The court serves as a vital pillar of the international justice system by ensuring accountability for the most serious international crimes, and justice for victims.”
President Joe Biden talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, July 25, 2024.(Susan Walsh, File / AP Photo)
Past the 20-foot-high aluminum doors of the Justice Department’s Robert F. Kennedy Building, and down a long limestone hallway lined with art deco accents, Room B-206 has long served as the epicenter of the Biden administration’s prosecutorial war against former president Donald Trump. Behind the heavy wooden door is the office of special counsel Jack Smith, a highly secure redoubt where attorneys spent years building criminal cases against Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, as well as for his alleged improper handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
But now, instead of heading to trial, the prosecutors are scrambling to empty file cabinets and stuff their contents into cardboard storage boxes. As a result of Trump’s election win, the prosecution is officially halted by the Justice Department’s policy prohibiting the filing of criminal cases against a sitting president. But while President-elect Trump will likely never face the consequences of his alleged criminal actions, President Biden may one day face trial for his, albeit in a far different courtroom in The Hague.
Three thousand eight hundred miles to the east from Washington sits the International Criminal Court (ICC), a complex of six modern towers in the Netherlands not far from Peace Palace and Europol in The Hague. In the largest building, Court Tower, are three courtrooms that carry out the institution’s mandate: to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, thereby providing justice to victims.
According to Article 1 of the Genocide Convention, the Contracting Parties, including the United States and Israel, must prevent and punish acts of genocide. Under Article III, those punishable acts include “Complicity in genocide,” such as by knowingly providing the deadly weapons used to carry it out. In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in a case involving Bosnia and Serbia, established that the obligation to refrain from providing weapons or other assistance begins the moment a state becomes aware of the existence of a serious risk that genocide may be committed.
For the Biden administration, that moment came in January, when the ICJ found that there was a “plausible” risk of genocide being committed in Gaza against the Palestinian people by Israel. Shortly after, in February, the Dutch Appeals Court halted the transfer of F-35 munition parts to Israel on account of the serious risk of International Humanitarian Law violations. Further notice came in May with the applications for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others by the chief prosecutor of the ICC, Kharim Khan. Among the charges against Netanyahu related to Gaza were crimes against humanity, including extermination, murder, starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, intentional attacks against a civilian population, and “other inhumane acts.” It was the first potential ICC arrest warrant issued for the leader of a Western-style democracy. Nevertheless, European countries including France and Germany issued statements affirming their support for the legitimacy of the ICC.
Despite the clear indication that American weapons were being used to carry out an alleged Israeli genocide, the bombs continued to flow and the wholesale massacres never stopped. According to a report last week by the UN Human Rights Office, close to 70 percent of the fatalities in Gaza have been children and women, “indicating a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” said the report. Nizam Mamode, a retired surgeon with Britain’s National Health Service who recently returned from working at a hospital in Gaza, testified last week to members of Parliament that he treated children “day after day after day” who had been deliberately targeted by Israeli drones following bomb attacks.
In July, an analysis published by the medical journal The Lancet estimated that the actual number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, including those decomposing beneath the rubble of bombed-out hospitals, schools, and densely packed refugee camps, is likely more than 186,000. And if the deaths continue at the same rate, said Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, the estimated deaths by the end of the year would total 335,500.
In spite of those grim statistics, the Biden administration last month decided to play politics with the lives of the desperate and starving survivors in Gaza, most of whom had been forced to flee from multiple Israeli evacuation orders. To help the Harris campaign with pro-Palestinian voters, Biden pretended to turn tough and issued a highly publicized letter giving Netanyahu a 30-day deadline to increase the flow of food and other aid to Gaza or face a potential cutoff in military support. But it was simply a scam, since the deadline would fall after the election was over. When the time limit expired last week, there was no longer a need for Biden to pretend that the United States would take action. Instead, his administration continued to deceive the American public by falsely claiming that it found no evidence that Israel was obstructing shipments of food and other aid into Gaza.
The announcement was greeted with disbelief and anger by aid groups, including Save the Children, Oxfam, Refugees International, and Mercy Corps. “Israel’s actions failed to meet any of the specific criteria set out in the U.S. letter,” said a joint statement. “Israel not only failed to meet the U.S. criteria that would indicate support to the humanitarian response, but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in Northern Gaza. That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago. The principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee now assess that ‘the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.’” According to an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “Israel is unleashing an apocalypse in Northern Gaza.”
Further evidence of the Biden administration’s deliberate cover-up of the ongoing genocide came days after the administration’s announcement when a UN special committee released a report that said, “The policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period [the past year] are consistent with the characteristics of genocide” and “Civilians have been indiscriminately and disproportionally killed en masse in Gaza.” The report went on to say that there were also serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war”—a fact made clear by numerous reports of humanitarian aid convoys being looted right next to the Israeli troops, who stand by and do nothing to stop it. Israel’s decision to stop cooperating with UNRWA, the critical relief agency providing welfare services to Palestinians, is another clear war crime. “Since the beginning of the war,” the report concluded, “Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of the very necessities required to sustain life—food, water, and fuel.” The very definition of genocide.
Also last week, Human Rights Watch issued a report charging that Israel is using its frequent evacuation orders to cause the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, actions that appear to “meet the definition of ethnic cleansing” as well as crimes against humanity. The report, entitled “Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” went on to say that the group has collected clear evidence pointing to “the war crime of forcible transfer [of the civilian population].” They described these actions as “a grave breach of the Geneva conventions and a crime under the Rome statute of the international criminal court.”
That same evidence of genocide, starvation, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement was clearly available to the Biden administration, yet it lied to the American public to hide its own criminal culpability in the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
There is no statute of limitations when it comes to support for genocide, nor does it make a difference whether an individual is in or out of office. What matters is evidence of the crime, and there is more than enough for the ICC’s chief prosecutor to issue an application for an arrest warrant for Biden, just as it did for Netanyahu. After all, it’s the United States that builds the bombs, pays for them, ships them to Israel, provides intelligence on targets in Gaza, and supplies the planes that carry them. All Israel does is drop them, with US approval, on the tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
By June, the Biden administration had sent Israel at least 14,000 massively deadly 2,000-pound MK-84 bombs, made in Oklahoma and dropped on hospitals, apartment blocks, and crowded refugee camps. In addition, it sent 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions. Added to that is the approval of additional ground attack aircraft to Israel’s existing American-made F-15s, F-16s and F-35s and Apache helicopters. And in January, following a visit to Washington by Eyal Zamir, Israel’s Defense Ministry director-general, defense sources told the Times of Israel that Israel plans to procure a new squadron of 25 F35i stealth fighter jets, a squadron of 25 F-151A fighter jets, and a new squadron of 12 Apache helicopters.
In the end, it’s the American taxpayers who are financing the genocide. According to Bruce Fein, an expert in international law, “The United States has clearly become a co-belligerent with Israel in its war against Hamas-Gaza Palestinians by systematically supplying the IDF with weapons and intelligence without conditions.”
If the ICC were to seek an arrest warrant for Biden before he leaves office or shortly thereafter, it would also serve as a warning to his successor, President-elect Donald Trump, who appears to have even less regard for the Palestinians. And his return to the White House will allow Netanyahu to not only speed up the genocide, but also to achieve his ultimate goal: the annexation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, illegal actions under international law.
“Netanyahu has stalled until Trump’s election, and it paid off. Now there’s nothing standing in his way,” Palestinian political scientist Nour Odeh told Le Monde. He added: “He can wage his war as he sees fit, especially as he has just sacked his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who had opposed him. As for Trump, he’s not interested in the Palestinian Authority, the state of which is getting worse all the time, nor in a dialogue with Mahmoud Abbas, because they’ve already fallen out. He’s going to do whatever Israel wants. And international law won’t hold him back any more than American law will.”
Among those overjoyed by Trump’s triumph is far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “Trump’s victory brings an important opportunity for the State of Israel,” he told supporters at a conference of his Religious Zionist Party. During Trump’s first term, he said, “we were on the verge of applying sovereignty over the settlements” in the West Bank. “Now,” he said, “the time has come to make it a reality.”
And on November 12, Trump sent the same signal back to Smotrich and Netanyahu by naming as his new ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian. Shortly afterward, Huckabee said in an Israeli radio interview that “of course” annexation of the West Bank is possible in the next administration, but the policy hasn’t been set. And in 2017, he claimed, “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.” He went even further in a statement during his 2008 presidential campaign. “Basically, there really is no such thing as—I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset—there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” he said. “There’s not.”
Although neither the United States nor Israel recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICC, most other countries of the world, including in Europe, do. So, should Biden join Netanyahu on the ICC’s wanted list, he would remain safe as long as he never leaves the country. But if he were to give a speech or attend a ceremony outside the country, an Interpol Red Notice would likely be waiting for him, followed by a quick trip to the ICC’s Court Tower in The Hague. According to The Architectural Review, those awaiting trial at the ICC are confined in a “dark gray holding cell complete with steel table and chair bolted to the floor, a slab for a bed, seatless stainless-steel prison toilet and sink.” And there is plenty of room for both Netanyahu and Biden.
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Meanwhile a senior minister in the Israeli government has been quoted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying that when the full extent of the destruction brought on Gaza becomes known “I will not be taking my holidays in Amsterdam”. This possibly “humorous” observation referred to the possibility that leaders of the Israeli government may yet be arraigned before the International Criminal Court in The Hague – or a similar tribunal – to answer charges of war crimes.
Indeed some 300 human rights organisations have already prepared an initial 37-page dossier to be presented to the court. At the same time, in a move which could be equally damaging to the international standing of the Israeli government, a number of United Nations humanitarian agencies have insisted that there must be an independent, internationally approved, legal inquiry into the prima facie evidence of crimes committed. It is clear now that Israeli shelling and missile attacks – including those on UN facilities used as shelters for civilians during the war – have taken many hundreds of innocent civilian lives.
There is one obvious problem with taking steps to ensure that those responsible for the horrific massacres of civilians in Gaza are held accountable for their actions: Israel is not a member state of the ICC. The initial reaction of the ICC has been that it is therefore not open to the court to examine these charges. According to some senior French jurists, however, it should still be possible for the ICC to pursue named individuals for alleged crimes committed in Gaza.
There is also a precedent for the ICC to be asked by the United Nations to conduct such a trial – namely the current hearings into crimes against humanity allegedly committed by forces under the control of the government of Sudan in Darfur. It may be possible for the UN to establish a specific war crimes tribunal to hear the charges arising out of the actions of the Israeli forces in Gaza. After all, something very similar happened after the atrocities committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Rwanda genocide.
The Israeli government has denied that it was responsible for any war crimes committed during the course of its three-week campaign in Gaza. Interestingly, however, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert has expressed “remorse” for what happened to the civilian population of Gaza. One obvious question is: what does he feel guilty about? Some Israelis may also argue that Hamas has also committed crimes worthy of international condemnation. But, of course, it open to them to present such a legal dossier to the ICC authorities in the Netherlands.
Obviously, a UN mandate for a legal inquiry into alleged Israeli war crimes would only come about if the Obama administration decides not to use its veto in the UN Security Council. But by allowing a legal investigation to proceed, the US would send the clearest possible signal that it intends to exercise far greater even-handedness between Israel and the Palestinians than it has ever done in the past. Moreover, the incoming administration is under growing pressure to sanction an inquiry into possible criminal action by the Bush administration in its use of torture.
No doubt, the British government, among others, will say that the priority of the international community must be to underpin the current ceasefire with a permanent peace agreement which provides for a two-state solution. But there is no reason why the push for a permanent agreement should exclude the rule of law from operating without inhibition. After all, this was the case in the former Yugoslavia.
According to Israeli opinion polls, the present coalition government is heading for defeat in the general election in three weeks’ time. The responsibility for negotiating a permanent peace settlement is likely to fall to an even more right-wing government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu.
That said, an inspiring feature of the feature of the worldwide demonstrations against Israel’s Gaza offensive has been the prominent role played by Jews and Jewish organisations in the protests. Organisations like Jews for Justice for Palestinians, along with a small but heroic opposition to the massacres in Israel itself. Israeli human rights activists have also now launched a website to identify alleged Israeli war criminals and assist their transfer to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Peace and Justice Post 
Israel and the white heat of justice
January 23, 2009A political solution for Gaza must not preclude the investigation of war crimes, including Israel’s use of white phosphorus
<Link to this video Amnesty International has now joined the United Nations and Human Rights Watch in accusing the Israeli government of breaking international law outlawing the use of white phosphorus shells in the middle of highly populated areas of Gaza. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, has condemned Israeli attacks on UN humanitarian centres in Gaza as “outrageous” and has called for an independent, international inquiry.
Meanwhile a senior minister in the Israeli government has been quoted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying that when the full extent of the destruction brought on Gaza becomes known “I will not be taking my holidays in Amsterdam”. This possibly “humorous” observation referred to the possibility that leaders of the Israeli government may yet be arraigned before the International Criminal Court in The Hague – or a similar tribunal – to answer charges of war crimes.
Indeed some 300 human rights organisations have already prepared an initial 37-page dossier to be presented to the court. At the same time, in a move which could be equally damaging to the international standing of the Israeli government, a number of United Nations humanitarian agencies have insisted that there must be an independent, internationally approved, legal inquiry into the prima facie evidence of crimes committed. It is clear now that Israeli shelling and missile attacks – including those on UN facilities used as shelters for civilians during the war – have taken many hundreds of innocent civilian lives.
There is one obvious problem with taking steps to ensure that those responsible for the horrific massacres of civilians in Gaza are held accountable for their actions: Israel is not a member state of the ICC. The initial reaction of the ICC has been that it is therefore not open to the court to examine these charges. According to some senior French jurists, however, it should still be possible for the ICC to pursue named individuals for alleged crimes committed in Gaza.
There is also a precedent for the ICC to be asked by the United Nations to conduct such a trial – namely the current hearings into crimes against humanity allegedly committed by forces under the control of the government of Sudan in Darfur. It may be possible for the UN to establish a specific war crimes tribunal to hear the charges arising out of the actions of the Israeli forces in Gaza. After all, something very similar happened after the atrocities committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Rwanda genocide.
The Israeli government has denied that it was responsible for any war crimes committed during the course of its three-week campaign in Gaza. Interestingly, however, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert has expressed “remorse” for what happened to the civilian population of Gaza. One obvious question is: what does he feel guilty about? Some Israelis may also argue that Hamas has also committed crimes worthy of international condemnation. But, of course, it open to them to present such a legal dossier to the ICC authorities in the Netherlands.
Obviously, a UN mandate for a legal inquiry into alleged Israeli war crimes would only come about if the Obama administration decides not to use its veto in the UN Security Council. But by allowing a legal investigation to proceed, the US would send the clearest possible signal that it intends to exercise far greater even-handedness between Israel and the Palestinians than it has ever done in the past. Moreover, the incoming administration is under growing pressure to sanction an inquiry into possible criminal action by the Bush administration in its use of torture.
No doubt, the British government, among others, will say that the priority of the international community must be to underpin the current ceasefire with a permanent peace agreement which provides for a two-state solution. But there is no reason why the push for a permanent agreement should exclude the rule of law from operating without inhibition. After all, this was the case in the former Yugoslavia.
According to Israeli opinion polls, the present coalition government is heading for defeat in the general election in three weeks’ time. The responsibility for negotiating a permanent peace settlement is likely to fall to an even more right-wing government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu.
That said, an inspiring feature of the feature of the worldwide demonstrations against Israel’s Gaza offensive has been the prominent role played by Jews and Jewish organisations in the protests. Organisations like Jews for Justice for Palestinians, along with a small but heroic opposition to the massacres in Israel itself. Israeli human rights activists have also now launched a website to identify alleged Israeli war criminals and assist their transfer to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
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Tags:Amnesty International, Ban Ki-moon, crimes against humanity, human rights organisations, ICC, investigation of war crimes, Israeli government, massacres of civilians, UN secretary general, use of white phosphorus, violations of international law
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