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ICC Prosecutor Wants to Rob Israel of Its Legitimate Right to Self Dense

The International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

On Monday, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Members of Congress from both parties have quickly condemned this action from ICC. Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres (NY) said:

The decision to seek arrest warrants is not law but politics. It is not justice but rather retribution against Israel for the original sin of existing as a Jewish State and the subsequent sin of defending itself amid the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Today’s decision in effect makes it criminal for a state like Israel to defend itself against an enemy shrewd enough to embed itself in a civilian population, as Hamas has done to an extent never seen before in the history of warfare.

Republican Representative Elise Stefanik (NY) said, “The ICC is an illegitimate court that [equates] a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical terror groups that commit genocide.” International legal expert Eugene Kontorovich explained that, “Diplomatically, it is an attempt to create moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel.”

As will be discussed below, the ICC prosecutor’s factual allegations have no basis. Indeed, Israel’s enemies have sought to use the ICC against it long before the October 7 war began. The recent actions of the ICC prosecutor merely highlight that Court’s illegitimacy and the way that the Jewish State is persecuted in international forums that are functionally controlled by Israel’s enemies.

Like most intergovernmental institutions, the ICC is the subject of the political whims of the undemocratic majority of states. Its very founding document, the Rome Statute, was even altered at the demand of Arab and Islamic states in order to invent a new “war crime” aimed at criminalizing Israeli settlements.

This weaponization of the ICC against the Jewish state is now on full display. Just in order to claim jurisdiction over Israel — which is not a party to the Rome Statute –the ICC had to invent two legal fantasies: (1) it had to pretend that the Palestine Liberation Organization is actually a “state,” and (2) it had to pretend that a treaty can bind actual states that never signed onto the treaty.

To justify these fictions, the ICC relied in large part on the meaningless, non-binding, and political recommendations of the same body that once declared “Zionism is a form of racism.” It did so all while ignoring actual international law that clearly articulates the criteria for statehood, of which the PLO undeniably falls short.

Monday’s actions by the Prosecutor threaten not only Israel. They amounts to a power grab, in which Prosecutor Karim Khan has decided his judgment supersedes that of democratic governments.

The ICC, according to its own rules, is meant to act only as a court of last resort; that is, the ICC is only supposed to get involved when a state is unable or unwilling to investigate allegations itself. This is a high bar for a prosecutor. Israel has one of the most robust and independent judicial systems in the world, including its highly respected Supreme Court. The IDF itself maintains arguably the most professional and independent system of legal advisors and reviewers, who regularly take on incidents for investigation and prosecution.

If Israel’s independent and professional legal system isn’t sufficient for Khan, then no legal system is. This would open all democracies engaged in self-defense to lawfare waged by bad actors and second guessing by a rogue prosecutor, including, potentially, the US.

The allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant are factually baseless. The first is “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the [Rome] Statute.”

As international law expert Eugene Kontorovich explained early in the war, “siege is a ‘legitimate’ and ordinary part of lawful war … An army need not help its enemy obtain provisions during a conflict. When military objectives and civilians are intermingled, siege aimed at the former also will affect the latter. As with other situations of collateral damage to civilians, international law permits a siege as long as it isn’t ‘for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population.’ There is no indication that Israel has any strategy of starving out civilians.”

Despite the legality of such a siege, beginning on October 18 — only 11 days after Hamas’ barbaric attack, as the full reality of how many people had been killed and how many taken hostage was still being absorbed — Israel agreed to allow aid into Gaza and has allowed sufficient aid in ever since. Israel also restarted supplying Gaza with water on October 15.

While there may have been isolated cases of individuals with underlying medical problems being malnourished, and certainly Hamas obstructs distribution of food aid, there is no wide-scale starvation occurring.

The Gaza Ministry of Health claims that since the start of the war, 32 individuals have died of malnutrition and dehydration, or .0015 percent of the population. Of course no one wants anyone, in Gaza or elsewhere, to die of starvation, but to put this in perspective, this does not come close to comparing with places in which actual famines have occurred, and rather is at about the same level as France.

A senior Israeli defense official told The Jerusalem Post, “most of the food that Israel has been sending into the Strip has ‘immediately been taken by Hamas terrorists, who then sell some of the supplies for ten times more than what it’s worth,’” and a former senior Israeli defense official told the Post, “there is no food shortage in Gaza; there are those who are hungry since Hamas has taken all of the food and they don’t have enough money to pay Hamas on the black market.” This tactic serves a dual purpose for Hamas: it enriches the terror group while providing the fodder exactly for ICC allegations like this one.

In particular, in light of last week’s discovery of 50 cross-border tunnels from Rafah into Egypt, which certainly could have been used to bring in food as easily as any other materials had that been necessary, blaming Israel for any difficulty in food distribution simply doesn’t hold up to the facts. If in fact the population was starving, why didn’t they bring in food through those cross-border tunnels?

The ICC Prosecutor has also made allegations of “Willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i); Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i); Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i); Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity.”

Multiple legal experts have attested to the fact that Israel uses all means possible to avoid harm to civilians. Just last week, John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies with the Modern War Institute at West Point, told CNN, “I can say with very strong confidence that Israel has done everything the US military has ever done in the history of urban combat and things that we’ve never done, implementing every civilian harm mitigation technique that has been developed in the last 30 years despite Hamas’ tactics.”

And Brigadier General (Ret) Mark Kimmitt, former Assistant Secretary of State for political-military affairs and deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, has detailed the “extensive procedures the IDF uses to enforce tough standards aimed at minimizing civilian deaths and protecting infrastructure.”

The remaining allegations, “Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h); Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k),” are too vague to be meaningful.

Hamas is still holding about 129 hostages, including a one-year old baby, and its unknown how many are dead and how many are living. Yet, the ICC prosecutor seeks to tie Israel’s hands to prevent it from taking the necessary actions to recover them.

On October 7, Israel was attacked with a barbarity not seen since medieval times. It is fighting this war, not by choice, but out of necessity for its survival. To have its defensive war characterized in this manner, as “extermination” or “murder” and used to justify international legal action against its leaders, is to twist morality on its head in the cruelest possible way.

In any war, there will be civilian casualties. But extrapolating from the existence of civilian casualties that Israel has “willfully” caused more suffering or death than necessary to achieve its lawful military aims, or that it has intentionally directed attacks against civilians, is to characterize any war that Israel fights as a genocide or a war crime and to effectively rob it of its legitimate right to self-defense.

Karen Bekker is the Assistant Director in the Media Response Team at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis. David Litman is a Research Analyst at CAMERA. A version of this article appeared on the CAMERA website.

The post ICC Prosecutor Wants to Rob Israel of Its Legitimate Right to Self Dense first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Italian Port Blocks Arms for Israel as Worker Protests Mount

Illustrative: Demonstrators participate in a pro-Palestinian protest in Piazza Duomo in Milan, Italy, on Nov. 23, 2024. Photo: Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

The Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna on Thursday refused entry to two trucks said to be carrying arms to Israel, as protests mount among Italian dockworkers and other labor groups against the offensive in Gaza.

The center-left mayor of Ravenna, Alessandro Barattoni, told reporters the port authority had accepted the request from him and the regional government to deny access to the lorries carrying explosives en route to the Israeli port of Haifa.

“The Italian state says it has blocked the sale of arms to Israel but it is unacceptable that, thank to bureaucratic loopholes, they can pass through Italy from other countries,” Barattoni said in a statement.

He did not provide details on where the containers had come from or provide evidence of their contents.

Similar action to block arms shipments to Israel has been taken by dockworkers in other European countries such as France, Sweden, and Greece.

Ravenna’s decision reflects growing mobilization in Italy against Israel‘s military campaign and in support of an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to the Palestinians.

A spokesperson from the Israeli embassy in Rome said they did not have sufficiently detailed information about the case and so declined to comment. Israel‘s government sometimes accuses Europea nations of bias against it and swallowing propaganda by the Hamas terrorist group whom it is fighting in Gaza.

On Friday Italy’s largest trade union body, the CGIL, will hold a national half-day strike and marches in Rome and other cities, while on Sept. 22 two other unions will halt work and try to block activity in the large ports of Genoa and Livorno.

“We won’t let a single pin through the port,” said Riccardo Rudino from the Calp dockers’ union in Genoa.

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

The CGIL said its protests were aimed at generating pressure on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government “to suspend all commercial and military cooperation agreements with Israel, lift the humanitarian embargo, and recognize the State of Palestine.”

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday Italy would support EU sanctions against violent Israeli settlers and Israeli ministers who have made “unacceptable” comments on Gaza and the West Bank, and was open to considering trade sanctions.

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Israeli Tanks, Infantry Advance in Gaza City Offensive as Enclave Hit by Telecoms Blackout

Smoke rises following Israeli strikes during a military operation, in Gaza City, Sept. 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ebrahim Hajjaj

Israeli tanks were advancing on Thursday in two Gaza City areas that are gateways to the city center, while internet and phone lines were cut off across the Gaza Strip, a sign that ground operations were likely to further escalate imminently.

Israeli forces control Gaza City’s eastern suburbs and in recent days have been pounding the Sheikh Radwan and Tel Al-Hawa areas, from where they would be positioned to advance on central and western areas where most of the population is sheltering.

In separate developments, Israel attacked Hezbollah military targets in southern Lebanon, while two Israelis were killed at Allenby Crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, in what the Israeli military called a “terror attack.”

INFANTRY, TANKS, ARTILLERY ADVANCING TOWARDS INNER CITY

Israeli army spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said Israeli forces had been operating in the periphery of Gaza City for several weeks but since the night of Monday to Tuesday large numbers of troops had begun moving towards the inner city.

He said a combination of infantry, tanks, and artillery was advancing, backed up by the air force, and that it was a gradual process that would increase as time went on.

“The strategy right now is to defeat Hamas and apply pressure on Hamas, which can lead to a deal or can lead to rescue missions [to free hostages],” Shoshani told Reuters on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza.

A total of 48 hostages captured during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, remain in Gaza and Israeli officials believe around 20 are still alive.

Hostage families have been imploring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the offensive on Gaza and instead negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas to free their loved ones, but Netanyahu says military victory will bring them home.

The armed wing of Hamas said on Thursday the hostages were distributed throughout the neighborhoods of Gaza City.

“The start of this criminal operation and its expansion means you will not receive any captive, alive or dead,” it said in a written statement.

MANY FLEEING AMID TELECOMS BLACKOUT, MANY MORE STAYING PUT

The Palestinian Telecommunications Company said in a statement that its services had been cut off “due to the ongoing aggression and the targeting of the main network routes.”

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled Gaza City since Israel announced on Aug. 10 it intended to take control, but a greater number are staying put, either in battered homes among the ruins or in makeshift tent encampments.

The military has been dropping leaflets urging residents to flee towards a designated “humanitarian zone” in the south of the territory, but aid agencies say conditions there are dire, with insufficient food, medicine, shelter, and basic hygiene.

The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that critical shortages of blood in Gaza hospitals could see key services grind to a halt within days.

FAMILIES WITH BELONGINGS EVACUATE TOWARDS THE SOUTH

Along the coastal road, an unbroken column of every type of vehicle from carts and beaten-up cars to vans designed to carry goods was moving south, heavily laden with mattresses, gas cylinders, and entire families perching on their belongings.

“We are heading to go sleep on the streets towards the beach, like this, barefoot, we don’t know where to go,” said Yasser Saleh, speaking as he stood on the edge of a rickety trailer being pulled by a car.

The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 attacks, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

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Syria’s Foreign Minister in Washington, a First in 25 Years

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani speaks during a press conference in Moscow, Russia, July 31, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov/Pool

Syria’s foreign minister arrived in Washington on Thursday, the first official visit at that level in more than 25 years as the US makes a pro-Damascus policy push, lifting sanctions and mediating between the new Islamist rulers and Israel.

Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani will meet US lawmakers to discuss the lifting of remaining US sanctions on his country, Senator Lindsey Graham was quoted as saying by Axios. Two sources familiar with the trip confirmed the visit to Reuters.

It comes after some senior US diplomats focused on Syria were abruptly let go from their posts amid Washington‘s pivot, as the US seeks to integrate its longtime Syrian Kurdish allies with the central administration of President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The United States has also been mediating between Israel and Syria. Sharaa, who is due to visit New York next week for the UN General Assembly, said negotiations to reach a security pact with Israel could yield results “in the coming days.”

The United States had placed crippling sanctions on Syria since 2011 after former President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran and Russia, cracked down protests against him that triggered an almost 14-year civil war.

After he was toppled by Sharaa’s forces in a quick sweep in December, Washington and Damascus have been working to warm up ties, with US President Donald Trump announcing that he would move to lift the sanctions after meeting Sharaa in May.

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