Dutch leaders demand Israeli ambassador explain ICC spying allegations

Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands summoned to offer ‘clarifications’ to Dutch foreign ministry amid reports Israel spied on the International Criminal Court.

By World Israel News Staff

The Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands was summoned by the Dutch foreign ministry recently and asked to offer a “clarification” regarding reports Israel spied on the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Dutch officials reportedly requested that Ambassador Modi Ephraim “report” on allegations that Israeli intelligence agencies monitored the ICC over a nine-year period and, according to reporting by The Guardian, attempted to “undermine, influence, and allegedly intimidate” the chief prosecutor’s office.

Reports by The Guardian and +972 claimed that then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen had threatened Fatou Bensouda, then the chief prosecutor of the ICC, showing her photographs of her husband allegedly taken by covert operatives in order to intimidate her.

Israel rejected claims put forward by The Guardian, telling the British paper that its questions to the prime minister’s office were “replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the State of Israel.”

On Tuesday, the Dutch foreign ministry acknowledged that Ephraim had been “requested to report at the [ministry] in connection with allegations made in the articles in the Guardian,” the ministry said in a press release.

“The government regards such activities as a form of undesirable foreign interference and considers it totally undesirable.”

The Guardian report, which came out on May 28th, was published just days after ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan filed arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

Following the publication of the Guardian report, left-wing Dutch MPs in June demanded answers from the government, calling for an investigation into the allegations.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the summons by the Dutch Foreign Ministry.

ICCInternational Criminal CourtThe Netherlands