Netanyahu: ICC akin to ancient Greeks who drove Jews out of Israel
Netanyahu drew an analogy between the ancient holiday of Hanukkah, in which Jews lead by the Maccabees persevered over their enemies.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lighting a candle for the first night of Hanukkah (photo credit: KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
The “antisemitic” International Criminal Court can be compared to the ancient Greeks that drove Jews from the land of Israel some 2200 years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday night.He spoke as he lit a Hanukkah menorah at the Western Wall together with US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to mark the first night of the eight-day holiday.Netanyahu drew an analogy between that ancient holiday in which Jews led the Maccabees persevered over their enemies. “The Maccabees fought the war of liberation for the Jewish people and the Jewish faith against the antisemitic decrees of the Seleucid Greeks,” Netanyahu said.“They wanted to extinguish our fate, to stamp out our freedom, to drive us out of this land, to say we do not have the right to exist,” Netanyahu said.“We have fought against immeasurable odds, as no people has fought in history. We crossed the abyss from extinction to survival, independence and now a thriving democracy,” he said.“Yet we find ourselves now in the beginning of the 21st century, in the year 2019, where the ICC, that should know otherwise, setting forth decrees that are just as antisemitic as the decrees of the ancient Greeks,” Netanyahu said.“They say that Jews do not have a right to settle in the Jewish homeland. They say that Jews do not have a right to live in the land of the Jews, in the land of Israel. Well we say, ‘shame on you,” Netanyahu said.The light of truth is ablaze here, and “we will overcome you, just as we overcame other antisemites in history. Pure antisemitism, that is what the ICC has done, and we will now bow our heads,” he said.
