Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired back at the International Criminal Court, accusing its judges of holding “antisemitic hatred toward Israel” after they issued a warrant for his arrest over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Netanyahu personally rebuked ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan on Wednesday.
“The decision was made by a corrupt chief prosecutor attempting to save himself from serious allegations of sexual harassment, and by biased judges driven by antisemitic hatred toward Israel,” Mr Netanyahu said, according to The Telegraph.
Netanyahu is the first leader of a modern Western democracy to be wanted by the world’s highest criminal court.
The tribunal in The Hague has also accused his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes.
US officials slammed the ICC’s decision as a “dangerous” act that undermines the Jewish state’s right to defend itself.
“The United States fundamentally rejects the Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials. We remain deeply concerned by the Prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” said a White House National Security Council spokesperson.
The US is not a member of the ICC and the court has never arrested anyone on US soil in the past. Israel also is not a member.
Along with the Israeli leaders, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the supreme commander of Hamas’s military wing who orchestrated the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 people and started the war.