Benjamin Netanyahu has branded the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for war crimes against him and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant “antisemitic”.
He claimed the Hague court was “falsely” accusing him and Gallant “of deliberately targeting civilians, this when we do everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties”.
Along with the warrants for Mr Netanyahu and Gallant, the ICC also issued a warrant for Hamas commander Mohammed Deif. However Israel has said he was killed in July.
Judges argued that there were “reasonable grounds” that each of the three men bore “criminal responsibility” for crimes during the war in Gaza.
The ICC’s move has been met with scorn in the White House. US President Joe Biden dubbed the warrants for the two Israelis as “outrageous”.
“Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said in a statement, external. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
Both Israel and Hamas have dismissed the ICC’s allegations.
In a statement on Thursday, Mr Netanyahu said: “The antisemitic decision of the international court in The Hague is a modern Dreyfus trial, and it will end the same way.”
Mr Netanyahu claimed that the warrant was decided by “a corrupt chief prosecutor”.
The Dreyfus affair is an antisemitic scandal which took place in France in the 1890s. Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Jewish descent, was wrongfully convicted of treason.
“The court in The Hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation,” the Israeli PM said.
“This when we have supplied Gaza with 700,000 tons of food to feed the people of Gaza. We issue millions of text messages, phone calls, leaflets to the citizens of Gaza to get them out of harm’s way – while the Hamas terrorists do everything in their power to keep them in harm’s way, including shooting them, using them as human shields.”
