The ICC’s arrest warrants issued against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday have significant security implications for the Western world and for the ongoing Israel-Hamas War, Anne Herzberg, a human rights expert and the legal adviser to NGO Monitor, told The Jerusalem Post.
“The ICC has gotten itself enmeshed in our conflict, which is a seven-front war,” Herzberg said.It doesn’t just affect Israel’s battlefronts, she explained, but other global conflicts as well, such as the Russia-Ukraine war.
“It significantly impacts the global fight against terror,” she said.
Herzberg explained that the ICC decision has “sealed the fate of the hostages. Hamas now has zero incentive to do any type of deal.”
She continued, “There has never been a conflict where a party that was subject to an invasion, missile threats from seven fronts, which has twice faced the largest ballistic missile attacks in history, where 1200 of its citizens were massacred, hundreds of hostages taken, and yet has taken the most extensive measures ever seen to allow for humanitarian aid to enter into enemy territory.
“Gallant and Netanyahu have allowed for airdrops, aid trucks, commercial aid, a humanitarian pier, a humanitarian corridor. They have gone above and beyond what the law requires, and yet they were prosecuted for that specifically.”
The warrant says that both were responsible for the mass starvation of Gazans.
“And yet, there is no mention of Hamas’s role in denying the aid, UNRWA’s role in preventing aid, the UN agency’s total incompetence in providing aid,” Herzberg added.
She also spoke of the hypocrisy of targeting Israeli officials while there have not been any arrest warrants against Iranian, Qatari, or Egyptian officials. On top of that, there may be other Israeli officials with a warrant threat over their heads – given that warrants are typically kept secret, she said.
“While it is highly unlikely [Netanyahu and Gallant] will be arrested or face trial, it severely limits in-person cooperation between Israel and Western national security officials,” Herzberg said.
She believed that the ICC‘s goal was to do as much as it could before the start of the Trump administration in January, given it is notoriously hostile to the court.
There is also the element of double standards, she said. “Prosecutor Karim Khan could have moved against Hamas on October 8. The Palestinians don’t dispute the jurisdiction of the ICC. And yet he moved against Israel. All the media attention was on Israel,” she said.
She also wondered whether Khan focused on the arrest warrants as a means of deflecting from the sexual harassment allegations against him.
She added that the ICC has been under a lot of pressure over the years for seemingly only going after African countries and that while other member states have abused human rights and have not faced the same repercussions, she believed the court was “targeting Israel simply because they can get away with it.”
Herzberg also noted that many of the groups providing evidence to the ICC were linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas.
When asked whether this will have an impact on antisemitism trends in the Diaspora, Herzberg agreed that stopping key Israeli officials from traveling to many countries reduces the ability of Israel to coordinate with national security.
She said that this could significantly impact Israel’s ability to provide necessary help to Jews and Israelis, in the way it did after the attacks in Amsterdam earlier this month, for example. Herzberg added that it directly “encourages antisemitism. Campus antisemitic movements, riots, the BDS wave – all justify their actions on the basis of the rulings of the ICC, the ICJ, and the UN.”
The warrants may lead to an increase in attacks on Jews and an increase in the BDS, as the ICC has effectively legitimized these things, she concluded.