Israel applauds American sanctions on top ICC officials

The U.S. is showing its opposition to the International Criminal Court’s “judicial overreach,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel applauded Wednesday the newly announced U.S. sanctions on four judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“This is a decisive act against the false smear campaign against the State of Israel and the IDF and for truth and justice,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Although Israel is not a signatory to the court, the ICC had issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and then-Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant in November.

The global court alleged that they were ultimately responsible for war crimes due to the way the IDF was conducting the country’s fight against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, following the terrorists’ massacre of 1,200 people in a surprise invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel has claimed the exact opposite, as it cedes the element of surprise in battle by warning Gazans in upcoming war zones to leave ahead of time, provides humanitarian aid even though this helps Hamas to fight on, and has the extremely low ratio of 1.5 noncombatants killed for each combatant due to the care it takes to protect civilians.

The financial and property sanctions will target ICC Judges Kimberly Prost of Canada and Nicolas Yann Guillou of France, and ICC Deputy Prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan (Fiji) and Mame Mandiaye Niang (Senegal).

The latter three have supported the “illegitimate ICC actions against Israel,” while Prost ruled to “authorize the ICC’s investigation into U.S. personnel in Afghanistan,” the State Department announcement said.

“These individuals are foreign persons who directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of either nation,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a follow-up statement.

“The United States has been clear and steadfast in our opposition to the ICC’s politicization, abuse of power, disregard for our national sovereignty and illegitimate judicial overreach,” Rubio added.

Washington, he said, was determined to “protect our troops, our sovereignty and our allies from the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions.”

The ICC slammed the sanctions, calling them “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution” which it said also is “an affront against the Court’s States Parties, the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world.”

France’s Foreign Ministry also denounced the move, saying it was “shocked by the sanctions” imposed on its judge as well as the other three officials, and called for their immediate revocation.

This is the second round of U.S. sanctions on top court personnel following an executive order President Donald Trump signed soon after taking office in January, which already named ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan.

In June, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed four ICC judges on the sanctions list, two for having authorized the Afghanistan investigation and two for approving the Israeli arrest warrants.