US President Joe Biden said this Tuesday that his administration doesn’t recognize the International Criminal Court, another show of US limitless support for Tel Aviv after the court announced its decision to issue arrest warrant for Israeli officials.
During an interview with Time magazine this Tuesday night, US President Joe Biden said that his administration does not recognize the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is currently seeking to issue arrest warrants for Israeli top officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When asked whether Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, Biden responded that “it’s uncertain” and is being “investigated by the Israelis themselves,” adding that “The ICC is something that we don’t, we don’t recognize.”
The US and Israel are not among the 124 signatories of the ICC Rome Statute of 1998, which established genocide as one of four core international crimes. And now, Biden seems to be using this non-signatory state of Washington as a basis to question the very reason d’etre of the Court altogether, which in turn means closing eyes on Israel’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
US threatening approach against the ICC is not new!
In a statement issued by twelve Republican US senators, they have threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if the court moves forward with arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials.
Addressing the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, the statement said that “any potential arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and if carried out will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.”
“These arrest warrants would align the ICC with the largest state sponsor of terrorism and its proxy. To be clear, there is no moral equivalence between Hamas’s terrorism and Israel’s justified response,” the statement also said, asserting that “Target Israel and we will target you.”
Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives also called for ICC prosecutor to be put “back in his place,” adding that “new aggressive legislation” against the court is in the works.
Who is the liar? Biden or Bibi?!
When asked about ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal in the Gaza Strip, Biden said that “the Israelis desperately want a ceasefire in order to get the hostages home,” blaming Hamas for the delay and saying that the group “could end this tomorrow.”
Last week, Biden made a speech during which he presented a new proposal for a ceasefire and exchange deal, which includes a permanent cessation of hostilities and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas immediately welcomed the deal and said it would look at it positively. Israel, however, called the deal ‘not good enough’. On Monday, Netanyahu effectively disowned the initiative and said that no permanent ceasefire would be accepted.
Rather, and quite contrary to Biden’s worlds, the Israeli Prime Minister confirmed Israel’s intention to continue the war as soon as Israeli prisoners were returned, a violation of the terms of the new proposal. He also claimed that there were gaps between the proposal Israel agreed to and the proposal presented by Biden. Ironically, Biden said that the proposal was offered by Israel.
