Editorial Board
WSJ, May 20, 2024
“The ICC’s disregard for procedure exposes its bias, and if the warrant request is an effort to undermine Mr. Netanyahu’s government, it won’t work.”
The International Criminal Court has lost more than the plot. In requesting arrest warrants on Monday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense chief, alongside a trio of Hamas leaders responsible for Oct. 7, the ICC has lost sight of the crucial distinction between the death squad and the bomber pilot, on which the possibility of just war depends. President Biden is right to call the court’s action “outrageous,” but the grotesque false equivalence demands more than tough words.
On one side are Israel’s democratic leaders, waging a war to reclaim hostages and root out terrorists in Gaza. On the other side is Hamas, which precipitated the war with its mass murder, rape and kidnapping on Oct. 7, and whose officials pledge to do it “again and again.” Lumping them together is a slander for the history books. Imagine some international body prosecuting Tojo and Roosevelt, or Hitler and Churchill, amid World War II.
The defects in the ICC’s allegations against Israel are many. Prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan alleges “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Hamas lists 31 Gazans whom it claims died of malnutrition and dehydration in seven months of war. That’s out of 2.3 million whom Egypt won’t let out over its border.
Israel has facilitated the entry of 542,570 tons of aid, and 28,255 aid trucks, in an unprecedented effort to supply an enemy’s civilians, even while Hamas steals the aid and tries to frustrate delivery. Israel has begged Egypt for two weeks to let in aid at Rafah, while Egypt refuses. Is this the behavior of an Israeli government bent on starving Gazans?
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