B’nai B’rith asked why the court hasn’t sought to arrest “the genocide-seeking rulers of Iran engineering atrocities, conflict and human misery throughout the region and beyond.”
(By JNS staff
Jewish Federations of North America was one of several U.S. Jewish groups that denounced the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The efforts to arrest Israeli leaders “is a win for terrorists everywhere, who now see that the ICC has no compunction equating terrorists who target civilians with democratic states that employ legal frameworks and infrastructure to save as many civilians as possible,” the Federation said.
By targeting Israel, the court—which is based in The Hague but is a stand-alone, non-United Nations body, to which Washington isn’t a signatory—“turns a blind eye to the world’s real human rights violators” and “has shown that Jews and the Jewish state are held to a different standard than the rest of the world,” the Federation added.
B’nai B’rith International condemned the court’s decision “in the strongest terms” and asked why the ICC has neither charged nor issues warrants for “the genocide-seeking rulers of Iran engineering atrocities, conflict and human misery throughout the region and beyond.”
AIPAC stated that the decision is “a shameful stain on the court” and “a threat not only to Israel but to all democracies.”
The Anti-Defamation League stated that the ICC took “a shameful and wholly political action” that is “rooted in unsubstantiated and specious claims, which run counter to the realities on the ground in Gaza, and send a disturbing message equating Israel’s war of self-defense with Hamas’s terrorism.”
“The court has ignored its own principles and practices in service of a political ruling,” the ADL said.
The Israeli-American Council also slammed the court “in the strongest terms” for proving to be “a lawless and dangerous body that poses a significant threat to the United States and our allies.”
The IAC called on U.S. President Joe Biden to repeal Executive Order 14022, “thereby reinstating Executive Order 13928 that allowed for imposition of sanctions on the ICC for precisely this sort of illegal behavior, and immediately to impose punishing sanctions on the ICC and its personnel.”
“Only the strongest American response can preserve the rule of law in the face of the ICC’s contemptible conduct,” it added.
Ofir Akunis, the consul general of Israel in New York, called the ICC decision “disgraceful” and said it “again failed to distinguish between a lawful and democratic state and the world’s most brutal terrorist organizations.”
“The court’s decision will have only one result: emboldening terrorist groups everywhere, and strengthening Iran’s axis of evil at a time when it is threatening the entire free world,” the Israeli envoy stated. “I call on the international community to draw a clear line, and state clearly that they will not adhere to these political theatrics.”
The American Jewish Committee said it is “appalled” by the “reckless, irresponsible decision,” which it called “a gross distortion of international law that harms the court’s credibility, completely undermines its core mandate, and emboldens enemies of democracy around the world.”
The Endowment for Middle East Truth said that the ICC “is yet another example of an international institution suffering from the rot of anti-Israeli hatred.”
“This is a Kafkaesque moral inversion of history. No nation should be expected to allow the infiltration of thousands of Hamas terrorists, the rape and mutilation of its citizens, the burning of its children in ovens, the murder of 1,200 of its citizens and the taking of over 250 hostages,” stated Sarah Stern, EMET’s founder and president. “What nation would not respond to the relentless bombing of its people? This proves that the ICC is simply a dastardly embodiment of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.”
Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, told JNS that the court’s action is “nothing short of a modern-day antisemitic blood libel, masquerading as a quest for justice.” He added that “this is indeed a very dark day for justice and humanity, that will also severely curtail every democracy fighting terror, by exposing them to spurious and unfounded charges based solely on political considerations.”
The Zionist Organization of America and Abraham Global Peace Initiative stated jointly that “this reckless and politically motivated decision underscores the ICC’s troubling trend of weaponization against Israel, prepared by the Palestinian Authority and its allies since 2015.”
“The ICC, an institution founded after the Holocaust to bring justice to victims of atrocities, has tragically abandoned its principles. Together with the United Nations and affiliated agencies such as UNRWA, the ICC has perpetuated a false narrative accusing Israel of intentionally committing war crimes,” the two organizations said.
“These actions mirror historical antisemitic propaganda, further emboldening terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis—all backed by Iran, which funds and supports these proxies,” they added.