ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to address a joint session of Congress in Washington this month amid tensions with the U.S. over his country’s war plans in Gaza.
Adding to the prime minister’s troubles were the arrest warrants requested by the ICC against him and Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu slammed ICC’s decision following reports that he might face an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He argued that Israel is raging a war against Hamas, whom he labeled a terrorist organization that executed “the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” while noting that ICC has no jurisdiction over the Jewish state.
In a personal attack against ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan, the Israeli Prime Minister called him one of the “great antisemites in modern times” and compared him to judges in Nazi Germany who enabled the Holocaust.
“Mr. Khan takes his place among the great anti-Semites in modern times. He now stands alongside those infamous German judges who donned their robes and upheld laws that denied the Jewish people their most basic rights and enabled the Nazis to perpetrate the worst crimes in history,” Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister of Israel said.
With this, Netanyahu plans to pass through the Czech Republic and Hungary on the way to the United States and to hold meetings there, as both European nations criticized the ICC’s request for arrest warrants against him.
He is expected to meet U.S. President Joe Biden when he delivers his speech at a joint meeting of Congress in Washington on July 24.
His speech comes at a time of strained ties with the U.S. as both allies showed divided views on Israel’s war plans in Gaza. Moreover, it has become increasingly difficult for Israel to obtain weapons from the U.S. after the Democrats remain divided over Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas.
The U.S. and the UK strongly opposed the ICC’s request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. Last month, Britain was allowed to file a written argument that questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israel.
