The ICC’s war crimes By Caroline B. Glick

JNS : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s initial response to International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s announcement that he intends to issue international arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders was brief and to the point:

“The international arrest warrants won’t deter me. This is a political, biased decision. It is a disgrace and a shame. We will continue on until victory.”

Netanyahu’s response was correct but too narrow. True, Khan’s accusation that Israel under Netanyahu and Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is deliberately starving Gazans and intentionally targeting civilians for death is a blood libel. Far from starving or deliberately killing civilians, Israel is doing more to protect the lives of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip than any military has done to protect the lives of civilians in war zones in human history.  

The ICC’s goal in propagating this slander against the Jewish state is to criminalize the State of Israel and pave the way for its annihilation by denying it the right to self-defense.

While it’s true that Khan’s move is a shameful, nakedly political disgrace, it is also illegal. The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel. Israel is not a signatory of the Rome Treaty, which founded the ICC, and set out its powers and jurisdiction. To get around that fact, the ICC illegally accepted “Palestine” as a signatory to the treaty.

The political entity that presents itself as the “Government of Palestine” is the Palestinian Authority. The P.A. was established in 1994 by force of the bilateral agreements the Palestine Liberation Organization signed with Israel during the 1990s. Those agreements—popularly known as the “Oslo agreements”—bar the P.A. from seeking membership as a sovereign state in international bodies, including the ICC.

Read it all here.......