War Criminals…ICC issue arrests warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, Hamas

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a wanted man and a warrant of arrested has been issued by the International Criminal Court.
Netanyahu, Israel former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and a senior Hamas official, have been accused of war crimes following the October 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel in 2023.
The ICC said in a statement Thursday, that “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for war crimes including “starvation as a method of warfare” and “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
The warrants mark a historic first, making Netanyahu the first Israeli leader summoned by an international court for alleged actions against Palestinians in the 75-year conflict. While ICC warrants don’t guarantee arrests, they could significantly restrict Netanyahu’s ability to travel to ICC member states.
The prime minister’s office dismissed the warrants as “absurd and antisemitic.”
“Israel utterly rejects the absurd and false actions and accusations against it by the International Criminal Court, which is a politically biased and discriminatory body,” his office said, adding that there is “no war more just… after the Hamas terrorist organization launched a murderous attack against it, carrying out the largest massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Netanyahu “will not yield to pressure, will not back down, and will not retreat until all the goals of the war set by Israel at the start of the campaign are achieved,” it said.
Israel, like the United States, is not a member of the ICC and has challenged the court’s jurisdiction over its actions in the conflict – a challenge the court rejected on Thursday. The ICC claims jurisdiction over territories Israel occupies, including Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, following the Palestinian leadership’s formal agreement to be bound by the court’s founding principles in 2015.