The Hague-based ICC issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday lambasted the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for him and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, calling the ruling “antisemitic” and the charges on which it was based false.
“Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the International Criminal Court [ICC], a biased and discriminatory political body,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “No war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist organization launched a murderous assault and perpetrated the largest massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
The Hague-based ICC issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The war began last Oct. 7, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which rules Gaza, invaded neighboring southern Israel and perpetrated a bloody massacre that killed 1,200 people and wounded thousands more. During the onslaught, the terrorists perpetrated mass sexual violence and kidnapped over 250 hostages.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.
However, the ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave throughout the war.
The statement from Netanyahu’s office noted that the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, initially made his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
“The antisemitic decision of the International Criminal Court is a modern Dreyfus trial — and will end the same way,” the Israeli premier added.
Albert Dreyfus was a French army officer falsely convicted of espionage in a landmark case that sparked antisemitic violence across France.
Antisemitism has surged globally since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, amid the ensuing Gaza war, with countries around the world reporting record spikes in antisemitic attacks and other incidents targeting Jewish communities.
Netanyahu vowed that “no anti-Israel decision will prevent the State of Israel from defending its citizens.”
In a rare show of unity, bitter political foes of Netanyahu from across the Israeli political spectrum joined him in condemning the ICC decision.
“Israel defends its life against terrorist organizations that attacked, murdered, and raped our citizens. These arrest warrants are a reward for terrorism,” said Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid.
Benny Gantz, who joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack but quit in June, lambasted what he called the ICC’s “moral blindness,” calling the ruling a “shameful stain of historic proportion that will never be forgotten.”
Gallant, who Netanyahu fired as defense minister earlier this month, posted on social media that the ICC’s “outrageous decision will live in infamy.”
“It places the State of Israel and the brutal terrorist organization Hamas in the same equation. Today’s decision legitimizes and rewards the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israeli children, women, and men,” Gallant continued. “The State of Israel will not be deterred — long gone are the days when the nation of Israel could not defend itself. The IDF will continue fighting to achieve the goals of this war: Dismantling Hamas, ensuring the return of the hostages, and enabling Israel’s northern communities to return to their homes.”
The former defense chief added that he was “proud of the extraordinary privilege I had in leading Israel’s defense establishment during our hardest hour.”
President Isaac Herzog similarly said the ICC “chose the side of terrorism and evil over democracy and freedom and turned the international justice system itself into a human shield for Hamas’s crimes against humanity.”
The ICC has “lost all legitimacy” after issuing the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said.
“A dark moment for the International Criminal Court,” Saar posted on X, adding that it had issued “absurd orders without authority.”
Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the ICC showed “once again that it is antisemitic through and through.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich urged Netanyahu to sever contact with the court and impose sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and its leaders.
“Israel will continue to defend its citizens and its security with determination,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from Gallant on the ICC decision.
“Israel is fighting … the most just of wars against pure evil. All Israelis, left and right, stand behind the war, whose goals are to release the kidnapped Israelis, demolish Hamas and restore security to Israel. Shame on ICC,” wrote former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a right-wing critic of Netanyahu.
Amir Ohana, speaker of Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset, and a top member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, expressed similar sentiments: “Targeting the democratically elected leaders of Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state, is nothing short of an assault on justice, truth, and the universal right of self-defense.”
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
Countries that are signatories, including several in Europe, are bound by the charter to enforce its rulings and arrest warrants.