The ICC is an illegitimate body, not recognized by the United States or Israel, that baselessly pretends to supersede national sovereignty while pursuing perverse notions of justice. On Nov. 30, the court issued a morally repugnant arrest warrant for Netanyahu, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s defensive war against Hamas following its invasion of Israel and mass murders on Oct. 7, 2023.
The 139 signatory nations to the ICC agreed to execute its warrants. In late December, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Teofil Bartoszewski told the newspaper Rzeczpospolita that if Netanyahu goes to Poland in late January to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, Poland would indeed arrest him.
However, greatly to his credit, Polish President Andrzej Duda on Jan. 8 wrote Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for assurances that Netanyahu would be “unhindered” if he attended the Auschwitz event. The next day, the Polish government complied, adopting a resolution described as “a blanket guarantee of security to all senior Israeli officials to attend the Auschwitz memorial service.” It is not known whether Netanyahu plans to be there, as he has for several previous Auschwitz-liberation ceremonies, but now his safety is guaranteed if he does make the trip.
As Tusk noted, the Jan. 27 event is “part of paying tribute to the Jewish nation, millions of whose daughters and sons became victims of the Holocaust.” A million of those Jews were murdered at Auschwitz. It would be an outrage to arrest the elected leader of the nation to whose people Poland is paying its dignified and proper tribute.
Even apart from the particular significance of the event, the arrest warrant is obnoxious on several grounds. First, the ICC is illegitimate. It wants to arrogate power over citizens of nonsignatory nations, but it has no right, legal or moral, to do so. It also lacks adequate procedural safeguards. As this newspaper editorialized last November, it “is not an unbiased seeker of justice; it is a force for disorder employed by a decadent elite” consisting largely of “far-Left activists who believe that the U.S. is the greatest threat to world stability and prosperity.” It has a record of targeting Western nations or their allies. It refused to investigate dictatorships such as that of Syria’s now-deposed Bashar Assad, who ordered the deaths of more than 300,000 of his own civilians, or of China, which is perpetrating genocide against its Uyghur minority.
Even if the ICC were legitimate, its warrant for Netanyahu would be an outrage. Israel was the victim of barbaric terrorism, with a legal and moral right to defend itself and root out the terrorists. Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel has been obliterating Hamas while achieving among the lowest ratios of civilian casualties ever managed in the annals of modern urban warfare. Israel warns civilians before it strikes, provides corridors for safe passage, helps evacuate noncombatants, and even provides services such as polio vaccines in the process. It has directly provided astonishingly large amounts of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza and encouraged and enabled other nations and organizations to send more than a million tons more.
Even without aid, Gaza has enough food for its people, but Hamas steals both what is domestically produced and what is imported. If there is any starvation, Israel and Netanyahu are not to blame.
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Israel stands up for international human rights, and its non-Jewish citizens enjoy more than any nation in the region.
Israel’s leaders should be respected, not targeted. Netanyahu does not merit arrest. Poland’s leaders are wise to make this clear, even if belatedly. All other decent nations should follow suit.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
