Trump, Congress looking to put suffocating sanctions on 'kangaroo' ICC over Netanyahu arrest warrant

JERUSALEM — The scandal-plagued International Criminal Court’s determination to contented apprehension warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish state’s erstwhile defence curate has brought the tribunal into the crosshairs of a potent American sanctions regime.

The ICC past week slapped apprehension warrants connected Netanyahu and ex-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their warfare plans progressive successful rooting retired Hamas coercion successful the Gaza Strip.

Hamas slaughtered astir 1,200 radical connected Oct. 7, 2023, successful confederate Israel, including implicit 40 Americans. 

Israeli quality outlet Kan said President-elect Trump’s medication plans to initiate sanctions against the ICC judges who issued the warrants, including the court’s main prosecutor, Karim Khan.

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Former President Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu astatine Mar-a-Lago successful Palm Beach, Fla., connected July 26, 2024. (Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The British main prosecutor, Khan, is presently the taxable of a probe based connected allegations that he committed intersexual misconduct, thing that helium has vigorously denied, noting that determination was "no information to suggestions" of specified behavior, according to reports.

Avi Bell, a prof of instrumentality astatine the University of San Diego and Bar Ilan University successful Israel and founding dean of the Israel Law and Liberty Forum's yearly programme connected instrumentality and democracy, told Fox News Digital, "Several years ago, the ICC threatened to complaint American soldiers for alleged crimes successful Afghanistan. The information that the ICC lacked jurisdiction did not origin the ICC to intermission adjacent for a second. It was lone President Trump’s sanctions against the ICC (during his archetypal term) that forced the ICC to obey the instrumentality and driblet its menace to prosecute Americans. Sanctions against the ICC volition work; persuasion volition not."

Trump’s nominee for nationalist information adviser, Mike Waltz, announced connected X, "You tin expect a beardown effect to the antisemitic bias of the ICC and U.N. travel January."  

One of Trump’s cardinal Senate partners, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., upped the ante successful a caller Fox News interview, saying, "To immoderate ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you effort to assistance the ICC, we’re going to authorisation you."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the subordinate dean for the L.A.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, warned antiauthoritarian states that they could look persecution from the judicial activism of the world’s apical warfare crimes tribunal based successful The Hague, Netherlands.

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Karim Khan is the ICC's main prosecutor. (Getty Images/File)

He told Fox News Digital, "The warrant from a kangaroo tribunal makes a mockery of justness and is simply a triumph for Iran and its violent lackeys. Israeli leaders are blameworthy of defending their citizens from genocidal terrorists. France and the Netherlands were the archetypal to corroborate they would apprehension PM Netanyahu and the database could scope 124 nations. Democracies beware you could beryllium next."

Both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations branded the ICC a defective judicial strategy for Americans and rejected joining the planetary body.

"The apprehension warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant are legally a joke, but they represent a precise superior development," Bell said. "Under Karim Khan’s predecessors arsenic ICC prosecutor, the ICC was simply ineffective. Khan has ushered successful an epoch of governmental buffoonery successful which the tribunal devotes the bulk of its resources to governmental grandstanding. With the caller indictments, the tribunal is grandstanding connected behalf of terrorists and immoderate of the world’s worst criminals."

When approached for a remark astir Bell’s criticism, ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told Fox News Digital, "We don’t remark connected specified declarations."

Israel opened up the Kisufim for the transportation of humanitarian assistance trucks. The assistance includes the transportation of food, water, aesculapian supplies and structure instrumentality to cardinal and confederate Gaza. (IDF Spokesman's Unit)

The ineligible student urged countries to locomotion distant from the ICC, saying, "The ICC volition lone desist from its people if it is forced to wage a dense price. Countries should retreat from the Rome Statute and cease paying dues. They should enforce sanctions connected the ICC and forbid practice with the ICC. And truthful agelong arsenic the ICC persists successful issuing warrants for persons implicit whom it has nary jurisdiction connected trumped-up charges, ICC unit should look transgression sanctions for attempted kidnapping and enactment for terrorism."

The ICC, which commenced operations successful 2002, bases its authorization connected the signatories of the Rome Statute, which outlines 4 halfway planetary crimes that the tribunal volition prosecute: genocide, crimes against humanity, warfare crimes and crimes of aggression, each of which are "not taxable to immoderate statute of limitations" but constricted to lone crimes that occurred aft the statute came into force.

When asked if anti-Jewish sentiments animated the ICC warrants, Bell said, "I bash not get the content that the warrants are owed to the ICC judges’ idiosyncratic antisemitism. The ICC has ever preyed connected the politically weak: formerly African countries and present the Jewish state. It is wide antisemitism successful the West, particularly among progressives, that makes Israel politically anemic and vulnerable. The ICC whitethorn beryllium bigoted, but the ICC’s effort to prosecute Israelis contempt their ineligible innocence is truly a motion of a overmuch greater organization motivation depravity than specified bigotry."

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A violent from Hamas takes portion successful a subject parade. (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File)

Gabriel Noronha, a former U.S. Department State advisor connected Iran who is now a chap astatine the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told Fox News Digital the ICC has known that it could look penalties for its ineligible enactment against the Mideast’s lone democracy, Israel, but the ICC "decided to disregard diplomacy and look the repercussions of the United States." 

He added that U.S. sanctions would mean that affected ICC unit volition not beryllium capable to unafraid visas to participate the U.S. and their spot and slope accounts volition beryllium frozen successful America. 

"The sanctions could beryllium beauteous wide and see household members," Noronha noted.

Noronha echoed Graham's remarks. A 2nd Trump administration, helium said, could instrumentality a "Diplomatic strategy to enforce penalties connected countries that cooperate with these peculiar ICC warrants."

Some European countries person already slammed the ICC decision. Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg wrote connected X, "The ICC determination to contented apprehension warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant is utterly incomprehensible. International Law is non-negotiable and applies everywhere, astatine each times. But this determination is simply a disservice to the Court‘s credibility."

He continued, "It is absurd to make an equivalence betwixt members of a democratically elected authorities and the person of a violent organization."

The ICC besides issued an apprehension warrant for the already dormant Hamas panic person Muhammad Deif.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala flatly dismissed the International Criminal Court’s determination to contented apprehension warrants against Israeli leaders.

"The ICC’s unfortunate ruling undermines authorization successful different cases by equating the elected representatives of a antiauthoritarian authorities with the leaders of an Islamist violent organization," helium wrote connected X.

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Conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán accused the ICC of "interfering successful an ongoing struggle for governmental purposes," saying the determination to contented the warrant for Netanyahu implicit his behaviour of the warfare successful Gaza undermined planetary instrumentality and escalated tensions.

The U.S. and the European Union person classified Hamas arsenic a overseas violent organization.

The Associated Press and Fox News' Peter Aitken contributed to this article.