OPINION:
On Sept. 2, 2020, President Trump imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and another ICC senior prosecutor and restricted U.S. visas for ICC personnel. They had threatened to investigate U.S. personnel for supposed war crimes in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump has again sanctioned the ICC, restricting its personnel, including its new chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, in the same way.
Mr. Trump did so this time because of two facts.
First, nations that prosecute their military members, as do the U.S. and Israel, are perfectly capable of dispensing justice on their own terms. The ICC is superfluous and a challenge to U.S. and Israeli sovereignty.
Second, because of the ICC’s November issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC alleges that they began “war crimes” on the day after Hamas’ genocidal attack on military and civilian Israelis, in which 1,200 were killed and about 250 taken hostage.
Intentionally killing civilians and taking hostages are war crimes. At the same time it issued those warrants, the ICC issued a warrant for Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, who was unavailable at the time because he was dead. No other warrants were issued against Hamas leaders, which indicates an ICC bias against Israel.
The ICC won’t say what evidence it has of the supposed crimes. It has “classified” the warrants internally.
The ICC has no means of taking people into custody and has to rely on the actions of its members to do so. The warrants were well-received by the anti-Israel elements in European governments and the press.
Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovenia and Spain have indicated that they would enforce the warrants against Messrs. Netanyahu and Gallant. France, characteristically, is waffling. Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg described the warrant as “utterly incomprehensible” and “absurd” but added that “international law is non-negotiable and applies everywhere, at all times.”
In January, the House voted to sanction the ICC again, and President Biden tried to cancel Mr. Trump’s sanctions. However, Democrats voted against the bill, and it died in a Senate procedural vote.
To prove the point of ICC’s bias against Israel and the United States, one need only look to Hamas’ obvious war crimes on and after Oct. 7, 2023 — intentionally targeting civilians and taking hostages — and refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war to conquer Ukraine. Under the Rome Statute, the crime of “aggression” includes an invasion of a peaceful state. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is such a crime.
There is a mountain of evidence, growing daily, that Russian forces have committed the war crime of intentionally killing civilians since that war began nearly three years ago. There are no ICC arrest warrants for Mr. Putin or any of his generals despite an ongoing ICC “investigation.”
The United States, Israel and Russia are not parties to the Rome Statute that created the ICC, but “Palestine” is a member.
Start with the fact that the ICC has admitted “Palestine” as a “state” to its Rome Statute, which established the court. There is no Palestinian state. The ICC has assumed the power to create one. It has undertaken to continue to “investigate” Israel’s supposed war crimes in the Gaza Strip on the complaint of the “Palestinian state.”
The arrest warrants were approved by ICC judges, several of whom come from nations where the rule of law is unknown, such as Uganda and Benin. Those judges are unqualified to render justice in any case.
The ICC improperly claims jurisdiction over Israeli forces in their war. Because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, only that statute — which, despite the ICC’s connection to the United Nations, does not have the force and effect of international law — gives the ICC jurisdiction over the “Palestinian State’s” claims.
What evidence the ICC may have is most likely based on Hamas allegations, the Gaza Health Ministry’s information, social media and Hamas-compelled “witnesses.” The Gaza Health Ministry is an arm of Hamas. Its information and the Hamas-controlled testimony of Gaza residents are entirely unreliable.
What is reliable is the Israeli information, which the ICC no doubt discounts, and the information we obtained from a U.S. military observer.
In July, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula became the first U.S. senior officer to visit Gaza. The best evidence of how the Israeli military is and was fighting the war against Hamas is in his Forbes article published shortly after his visit. Gen. Deptula recounted how the accusation of starving Gazans was inconsistent with what he saw.
Gen. Deptula also wrote how the Hamas strategy of killing civilians is illegal under the Geneva Conventions and that, from what he saw, Israel is complying with the laws of armed conflict.
Mr. Trump’s 2020 and 2025 ICC sanctions were and are the right thing to do. The ICC should withdraw its arrest warrants against Israeli officials, but that would require it to recognize its reliance on ideology rather than evidence.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.