JERUSALEM — The scandal-plagued International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish state’s former defense minister has brought the court into the crosshairs of a potent American sanctions regime.
The ICC last week slapped arrest warrants on Netanyahu and ex-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their war plans involved in rooting out Hamas terrorism in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas slaughtered nearly 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, in southern Israel, including over 40 Americans.
Israeli news outlet Kan said President-elect Trump’s administration plans to initiate sanctions against the ICC judges who issued the warrants, including the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.
The British chief prosecutor, Khan, is currently the subject of a probe based on allegations that he committed sexual misconduct, something that he has vigorously denied, noting that there was "no truth to suggestions" of such behavior, according to reports.
Avi Bell, a professor of law at the University of San Diego and Bar Ilan University in Israel and founding dean of the Israel Law and Liberty Forum's annual program on law and democracy, told Fox News Digital, "Several years ago, the ICC threatened to charge American soldiers for alleged crimes in Afghanistan. The fact that the ICC lacked jurisdiction did not cause the ICC to pause even for a second. It was only President Trump’s sanctions against the ICC (during his first term) that forced the ICC to obey the law and drop its threat to prosecute Americans. Sanctions against the ICC will work; persuasion will not."
Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, announced on X, "You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC and U.N. come January."
One of Trump’s key Senate partners, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., upped the ante in a recent Fox News interview, saying, "To any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we’re going to sanction you."
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean for the L.A.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, warned democratic states that they could face persecution from the judicial activism of the world’s top war crimes court based in The Hague, Netherlands.
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He told Fox News Digital, "The warrant from a kangaroo court makes a mockery of justice and is a victory for Iran and its terrorist lackeys. Israeli leaders are guilty of defending their citizens from genocidal terrorists. France and the Netherlands were the first to confirm they would arrest PM Netanyahu and the list could reach 124 nations. Democracies beware you could be next."
Both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations branded the ICC a defective judicial system for Americans and rejected joining the international body.
"The arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant are legally a joke, but they constitute a very serious development," Bell said. "Under Karim Khan’s predecessors as ICC prosecutor, the ICC was merely ineffective. Khan has ushered in an era of political buffoonery in which the court devotes the bulk of its resources to political grandstanding. With the new indictments, the court is grandstanding on behalf of terrorists and some of the world’s worst criminals."
When approached for a comment about Bell’s criticism, ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told Fox News Digital, "We don’t comment on such declarations."
The legal scholar urged countries to walk away from the ICC, saying, "The ICC will only desist from its course if it is forced to pay a heavy price. Countries should withdraw from the Rome Statute and cease paying dues. They should impose sanctions on the ICC and forbid cooperation with the ICC. And so long as the ICC persists in issuing warrants for persons over whom it has no jurisdiction on trumped-up charges, ICC personnel should face criminal sanctions for attempted kidnapping and support for terrorism."
The ICC, which commenced operations in 2002, bases its authority on the signatories of the Rome Statute, which outlines four core international crimes that the court will prosecute: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression, all of which are "not subject to any statute of limitations" but limited to only crimes that occurred after the statute came into force.
When asked if anti-Jewish sentiments animated the ICC warrants, Bell said, "I do not get the impression that the warrants are due to the ICC judges’ personal antisemitism. The ICC has always preyed on the politically weak: formerly African countries and now the Jewish state. It is widespread antisemitism in the West, especially among progressives, that makes Israel politically weak and vulnerable. The ICC may be bigoted, but the ICC’s attempt to prosecute Israelis despite their legal innocence is really a sign of a much greater institutional moral depravity than mere bigotry."
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Gabriel Noronha, a former U.S. Department State adviser on Iran who is now a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told Fox News Digital the ICC has known that it could face penalties for its legal action against the Mideast’s only democracy, Israel, but the ICC "decided to ignore diplomacy and face the repercussions of the United States."
He added that U.S. sanctions would mean that affected ICC personnel will not be able to secure visas to enter the U.S. and their property and bank accounts will be frozen in America.
"The sanctions could be pretty broad and include family members," Noronha noted.
Noronha echoed Graham's remarks. A second Trump administration, he said, could implement a "Diplomatic strategy to impose penalties on countries that cooperate with these particular ICC warrants."
Some European countries have already slammed the ICC decision. Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg wrote on X, "The ICC decision to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant is utterly incomprehensible. International Law is non-negotiable and applies everywhere, at all times. But this decision is a disservice to the Court‘s credibility."
He continued, "It is absurd to create an equivalence between members of a democratically elected government and the leader of a terrorist organization."
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for the already dead Hamas terror leader Muhammad Deif.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala flatly dismissed the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
"The ICC’s unfortunate ruling undermines authority in other cases by equating the elected representatives of a democratic state with the leaders of an Islamist terrorist organization," he wrote on X.
Conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán accused the ICC of "interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes," saying the decision to issue the warrant for Netanyahu over his conduct of the war in Gaza undermined international law and escalated tensions.
The U.S. and the European Union have classified Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization.
The Associated Press and Fox News' Peter Aitken contributed to this article.
