U.S. lawmakers expressed dismay at the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek arrest warrants against two top Israeli leaders in addition to three senior Hamas officials.
U.S. officials preemptively criticized the possibility that the ICC could issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials amid reports last month that the court would do that. On Monday, the court announced it would be seeking warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Chief prosecutor Karim Khan, in a statement, said his office has “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant were responsible for crimes, including the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, willful killing and murder, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, and extermination.
“I will feverishly work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle in both chambers to levy damning sanctions against the ICC,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said in a statement shortly after the ICC announced its intent to seek warrants.
He noted several lawmakers and the Biden administration had engaged with the ICC regarding possible arrest warrants, and the South Carolina senator said, “I feel that I was lied to and that my colleagues were lied to.” Graham added, “Prosecutor Khan is drunk with self-importance and has done a lot of damage to the peace process and to the ability to find a way forward.”
The court also said it would pursue warrants for Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, Mohammed Deif, the head of the military, and Ismail Haniyeh, the head of its political bureau, for their roles in orchestrating the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that left roughly 1,200 people dead, while another 250 were taken hostage.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) described the ICC’s decision as “retribution against Israel for the original sin of existing as a Jewish State and the subsequent sin of defending itself amid the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” while Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) called it “extreme judicial overreach.”
Similarly, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said, “The International Kangaroo Court is trying to create a false equivalency between Hamas and Israel.”
“It’s time that Congress put this globalist organization in its place. House Republicans will send a clear message that although America doesn’t recognize the International Criminal Court — the court sure as hell will recognize what happens when you target our allies,” he added.
Mast, among others, has spearheaded a bill that would sanction any foreign person engaged in an effort by the ICC to investigate or arrest a U.S. citizen or an official from an allied U.S. country.
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Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) also urged Congress to pass this piece of legislation.
“The ICC is an illegitimate court that equivocates a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical terror groups that commit genocide,” she said in a statement. “Congress must pass my bill with Congressman Chip Roy, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, that will punish those in the ICC that made this baseless undemocratic decision.”