According to press reports, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is preparing to issue arrest warrants for war crimes against Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over the war in Gaza. Such an indictment would not just further isolate Israel over this war; it also would create a dangerous precedent that could lead to indictments of U.S. officials and servicemembers by this unaccountable and unconstitutional international court.
The Biden administration’s response to possible ICC indictments of Israeli officials has been extremely mild. President Biden dismissed them as “over the top.” White House Spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre deflected a question about this issue by saying, “We don’t believe the ICC has jurisdiction. We don’t support this investigation.” House Speaker Johnson said on Tuesday that a Biden official would tell the ICC “to stand down.”
These tepid responses to potential serious abuse by an out-of-control international court suggest the Biden administration would not mind if the ICC indicts Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. If this is the case, this position could come back to haunt the United States and set the stage for future indictment of U.S. officials and servicemembers.
The controversial treaty that created the ICC—the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—was signed by the United States during the Clinton administration in 2000. Clinton officials never submitted this treaty for Senate ratification because of concerns about the threat the ICC would pose to U.S. national security and the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens.
According to John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and former deputy assistant attorney general, the ICC “represents another effort by a global elite — consisting of European governments, international organizations, and their supporting interest groups, academics, and activists — to threaten American sovereignty.”
David Rivkin and Lee Casey, both noted attorneys and former Bush administration Justice Department officials, warned about the creation of the ICC because…
[t]he creation of a permanent, supranational court with the independent power to judge and punish elected officials for their official actions represents a decisive break with fundamental American ideals of self-government and popular sovereignty. It would constitute the transfer of the ultimate authority to judge the acts of U.S. officials away from the American people to an unelected and unaccountable international bureaucracy. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his Democracy in America, “[h]e who punishes the criminal is . . .the real master of society.
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Author: Ruth King
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