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‘Undiluted anti-Semitism’: Netanyahu outraged at ICC for investigating Israel

“We will never stop fighting this injustice. We will speak the truth in every forum, in every country, on every stage until this outrageous decision is reversed and becomes null and void.”

By David Isaac, World Israel News 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the announcement by the International Criminal Court on Wednesday that it would investigate Israel for war crimes.

“The decision of the International Court to open an investigation against Israel today for war crimes is absurd. It’s undiluted antisemitism and the height of hypocrisy,” he said in a videotaped statement.

Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor of the ICC, announced Wednesday that the court would initiate “an investigation respecting the Situation in Palestine.”

Netanyahu responded, “Without any jurisdiction, it decided that our brave soldiers, who take every precaution to avoid civilian casualties against the worst terrorists in the world who deliberately target civilians, it’s our soldiers who are war criminals.”

Netanyahu referred to the legal controversy over whether the court has jurisdiction to investigate Israel given the country is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Only signatories fall under the court’s jurisdiction.

It has also been pointed out that the court supposedly deals strictly with states and while the court repeatedly mentions “Palestine” in its statement, there is no such thing as a state of “Palestine,” only a Palestinian Authority.

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The senior ICC judge in the Feb. 5 court decision giving itself jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories in fact dissented, saying his colleagues were wrong.

Netanyahu also took issue with the ICC treating the construction of settlements in certain parts of Jerusalem as itself a war crime. He said, “They said that when we build a house in our eternal capital of Jerusalem, it’s been our capital for 3,000 years, that too is a war crime.”

Netanyahu addressed the irony that the intentions of the court’s founders were quite different from its recent actions.

“This court, that was established to prevent the repetition of the Nazi horrific crimes committed against the Jewish people, is now turning its guns against the one and only state of the Jewish people. It’s targeting Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. But of course it turns a blind eye to Iran, Syria and the other dictatorships that are committing real war crimes left and right,” Netanyahu said.

“We will never stop fighting this injustice. We will speak the truth in every forum, in every country, on every stage until this outrageous decision is reversed and becomes null and void.”