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SvennoJ on 07 February 2025
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Netanyahu thanks Trump for sanctions on ‘antisemetic’ ICC

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office has welcomed President Trump’s executive order imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its staff.

“Thank you, President Trump, for your bold ICC Executive Order. It will defend America and Israel from the anti-American and antisemetic [sic] corrupt court that has no jurisdiction or basis to engage in lawfare against us,” Netanyahu’s office said in posts on X.

“The ICC waged a ruthless campaign against Israel as a trial run for action against America. President Trump’s Executive Order protects the sovereignty of both countries and its brave soldiers. Thank you, President Trump,” he added.


Israeli foreign minister commends Trump’s move against ‘immoral’ ICC

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has praised Trump for his decision to authorise sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its employees.

“I strongly commend President Trump’s executive order to impose sanctions on the so-called ‘international criminal court’,” he wrote on X. “The ICC’s actions are immoral and have no legal basis.”

Saar insisted the court has no jurisdiction as Israel and the US are not members. This stance has been repeatedly refuted by legal experts, who say the State of Palestine is a member and the court, therefore, has a mandate to investigate war crimes committed there.


US under Trump becoming ‘increasingly complicit’ in Israel’s war crimes

By authorising sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its employees, US President Donald Trump is reminding the world that Israel is above the law, and that any case against it is also a case against the US, says Marc Owen Jones, professor in Middle East Studies.

“The US is complicit in Israel’s war crimes and it is becoming increasingly complicit under Trump,” Owen Jones, who lectures at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.

While former President Joe Biden had supported Israel while refraining from openly advocating in favour of committing war crimes, Trump’s approach is “gloves off”.

“Trump is explicitly advocating for ethnic cleansing in Gaza,” Owen Jones said. “In saying that the state of Gaza is so bad that people cannot possibly live there, he’s also acknowledging that it has been made uninhabitable, which is a war crime.”


Protesters gather outside the Anshe Emet synagogue in Chicago, United States, to demonstrate against a visit by Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defence minister who is wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes in Gaza, on February 6


US ‘proactively’ destroying global governance and law institutions: Hague Group

Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, acting chair of the Hague Group, a new organisation of nine nations from the Global South aiming to hold Israel accountable for its actions in Gaza, says US sanctions on the ICC are just the latest in a series of actions by the US government aimed at destroying global institutions working to uphold international law.

“The United States [is] taking a giant sledgehammer and attacking every single institution of international law,” Gandikota-Nellutla told Al Jazeera. “For the last 15 months, the United States has funded, with over $18bn, the genocide that we have seen livestreamed on our phones,” she said.

“It’s not a question of the United States now stepping back and abandoning international law — I wish it was just that. But it really is a matter of them actively, proactively stepping in to destroy institutions of global governance and law.”

What the newly established Hague Group is seeking to do, Gandikota-Nellutla added, is “salvage” these institutions and “save them from these attacks”.

Orban suggests Hungary might leave ICC after Trump’s move

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a staunch ally of Trump, says the sanctions imposed on the court by the US president are part of “the Trump-tornado”.

“It is time for Hungary to review what we’re doing in an international organization that is under US sanctions! New winds are blowing in international politics. We call it the Trump-tornado,” he said on X.