Actor George Clooney called the White House following President Joe Biden‘s reaction to the international warrants issued to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Three sources confirmed that the actor spoke to counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti after the ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar for their respective alleged war crimes. At the time, Biden referred to the warrants against Netanyahu as “outrageous.”
Clooney’s wife, Amal Alamuddin, is a prosecutor working with the ICC, where she has offered her legal expertise since 2005. Together, the couple created the Clooney Foundation for Justice in 2016 to pursue social justice causes. When the warrants were issued, Alamuddin shared her support.
“I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law,” she wrote in a statement. “So I support the historic step that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has taken to bring justice to victims of atrocities in Israel and Palestine.”
Meanwhile, Biden and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), among others, felt differently about the warrants. Jeffries has since invited the prime minister to speak before Congress.
“The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,” Biden said in a statement. “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
“The arrest warrant request by the International Criminal Court against democratically elected members of the Israeli government is shameful and unserious,” Jeffries said in a statement. “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad. I join President Joe Biden in strongly condemning any equivalence between Israel and Hamas, a brutal terrorist organization.”
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Clooney previously helped host a fundraiser on Biden’s behalf ahead of the 2020 election that earned him $7 million. He also personally donated $500,000 to the Biden-Harris campaign.
The Clooneys have been married since 2014 and have two twin children together who are approaching the age of 7.