Biden and Congress Are Destroying International Law for Israel

The current American threats to sanction the ICC could spell the death of International Law. Whatever little hope people had for a just international system will disappear.

MondoWeiss, BY MITCHELL PLITNICK MAY 23, 2024

“Let me be clear, we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders,” U.S. President Joe Biden told his audience at a Jewish American Heritage Month event at the White House on Monday.

Biden criticized the request for arrest warrants as creating a “false equivalence” between Israel and Hamas. By making that statement, Biden took a clear stance against the rule of law, under which any party, regardless of any other status, must be dealt with the same way.

He also clarified again, if anyone was still unclear on the point, that the United States rejects accountability for itself and its allies, but holds rigorous standards in that regard for its enemies. Just over a year ago, Biden said that an ICC arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin was “justified” because he had “clearly committed war crimes.”

The hypocrisy is par for the American course. But Biden is now faced with a dilemma. He and other senior officials in his administration have indicated that they will use more than words in response to the ICC Prosecutor’s request. Some in Congress are essentially calling for all-out war on the Court. But Biden is likely to be reluctant to go that far.

Republicans target the ICC

It had been clear for the past several weeks that the International Criminal Court (ICC) was preparing a case against Israeli leaders, and on Monday, the Chief Prosecutor of the Court, Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders and two Israelis. The Israelis were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Predictably, both Israeli and American leadership lapsed into hysterics. As usual, Netanyahu immediately labeled the request for the warrants “the new antisemitism.” He also claimed that the Prosecutor “should be worried about his status,” a thinly veiled threat of violence, and that Khan was “turning the ICC into a pariah institution” and was “pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism spreading around the world.”

That kind of reaction reflects a profound concern about the charges potentially being brought against him — and it should not be overlooked that his statement did not include a denial of those charges. Netanyahu ran through the entire tired propaganda playbook, yet in doing so, he only highlighted the legitimacy of Khan’s request. But this was far from the beginning of the war on the Court.

Last week, before the warrants had been requested, a group of twelve Republican senators threatened Khan directly in a letter against bringing charges against Netanyahu. The letter was signed by some of the most prominent Republicans in the Senate, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Tim Scott.

The letter threatened sanctions against the ICC and Khan himself, saying “Target Israel and we will target you.” This is language that should be more characteristic of the Mafia than of government officials, though increasingly, it is hard to tell the difference. It closed by stating flatly, “You’ve been warned.”

Khan also told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that a “senior elected official” had told him ‘This court (the ICC) is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin.” It seems likely that such a blunt and racist bit of bullying came from an American leader……………………………………………………………………….. more https://mondoweiss.net/2024/05/biden-and-congress-are-destroying-international-law-for-israel/