Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum united to condemn the decision by a three-judge panel of the international criminal court to issue arrest warrants for the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu’s office described the warrants as “an antisemitic decision … equivalent to the modern Dreyfus trial”, referring to the 1894 trial of a French artillery captain of Jewish descent that has become one of the most prominent examples of antisemitism.
Netanyahu added: “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions and charges against it by the international criminal court, which is a biased and discriminatory political body.”
Under the Rome statute that established the ICC, the court was set up to be an independent body that stands apart from international politics.
The Israeli statement said: “There is nothing more just than the war that Israel has been waging in Gaza since the seventh of October 2023, after the terrorist organisation Hamas launched a murderous attack against it, and carried out the greatest massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“The decision was made by a corrupt chief prosecutor trying to save his own skin from the serious charges against him for sexual harassment, and by biased judges motivated by antisemitic hatred of Israel,” it continued, referring to claims made against the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, which Khan has denied.
Benny Gantz, a former member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, in a post on X described the ICC move as “moral blindness and [a] shameful stain of historic proportion that will never be forgotten”.
The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, said: “This is a dark day for justice. A dark day for humanity. Taken in bad faith, the outrageous decision at the ICC has turned universal justice into a universal laughing stock. It ignores the plight of the 101 Israeli hostages held in brutal captivity by Hamas in Gaza.”
ICC judges said reasonable grounds existed to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant had committed the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder and persecution.
Most outspoken in Israel was the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said Israel should annex the West Bank in response to the ICC’s issuance of the arrest warrants.
“The response to the arrest warrants: applying sovereignty over all areas of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Jewish settlement throughout the entire land,” he said. Describing the warrants as “an unprecedented disgrace”, Ben-Gvir said the ICC “once again demonstrates that it is antisemitic from beginning to end”.
Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said: “This is a black moment for the international criminal court, in which it lost all legitimacy for its existence and activity. In fact, this is an attack on Israel’s right to defend itself. This attack is directed against the most attacked and threatened country in the world, which is also the only country that other countries in the region openly call for and work to destroy.”
The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, described the warrants as a “reward for terrorism”. “Israel is defending itself against terrorist organisations that attacked, murdered and raped our citizens. These arrest warrants are a reward for terrorism,” he said.
The chair of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman, who has previously served as defence minister under Netanyahu, said the move provided “further proof of the double standards and hypocrisy of the international community and the UN institutions”.
He said: “The state of Israel will not apologise for protecting its citizens and is committed to continuing to fight terrorism without compromise.”
The warrants were issued on a day when Netanyahu was meeting the US special envoy Amos Hochstein in Jerusalem to discuss recent renewed efforts to secure a ceasefire with Hezbollah. Hochstein has been in Beirut this week to advance an agreement to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Describing the response by Israeli politicians to the ICC decision, Dahlia Scheindlin, a political scientist, told the Guardian: “Everything to do with international institutions tends to unite the opposition and coalition. There is a widespread conviction in Israel that international institutions are antisemitic and hypocritical.
“It is early, but you would expect a show of unity, even if Netanyahu is not popular because Israelis see it as an attack on the state. It has been a sword of Damocles hanging all these months. The court had to do it or lose credibility.”
