Democrats betrayed Israel and US interests on the ICC
They effectively blocked sanctions on an antisemitic International Criminal Court because it impacted those who enable it. Then they blamed the GOP.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS
Jan 29, 2025
According to Senate Democrats, it wasn’t their fault. As far as they were concerned, the failure of Congress to pass sanctions this week against the International Criminal Court in The Hague for targeting Israel was the fault of the bill’s Republican sponsors. They say that if the GOP adapts the bill to be more “reasonable,” then they’ll be happy to vote for it. As far as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is concerned, the GOP bill was “poorly drafted and deeply problematic.”
The more “reasonable” bill Democrats want would include protections against the sanctions for American companies that do business with the court and for foreign countries that are, in theory, allied with the United States but members of the ICC and prepared to execute its warrants.
There is nothing reasonable about efforts to water down the ICC sanctions bill. Nor should anyone be deceived into thinking that Congress will have achieved anything on this issue if Republicans cave in and allow the version the Democrats want to pass.
Understanding the dance that the parties are doing on this issue requires reading between the lines and understanding the priorities of Republicans and Democrats on this issue. It’s equally important to realize that this seemingly arcane argument about how broad the sanctions against the ICC should be is really about how they can be rendered toothless and remain purely symbolic measures that do nothing at all.
The reason why Congress is debating sanctions on the ICC was its decision earlier this year to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on bogus charges of war crimes committed by the Jewish state during its current war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
An antisemitic court
The ICC, founded in 1922, is a body that is not part of the United Nations and to which neither the United States nor Israel belong. But it has asserted itself in the last year—largely under the leadership of its chief prosecutor Karim Khan, a British lawyer of Pakistani descent—as a critical weapon to be employed against Israel by an international movement determined to delegitimize it and assist the war being waged against it by an alliance of Islamists and anti-Zionist leftists.
Though it also indicted a deceased Hamas leader along with those against the Israelis, there has never been any question that the ICC had one priority.
Like so many other international groups, especially those who purport to be defending human rights, it has been focused primarily on attacking Israel. The ICC treats Israel and Hamas as moral equals. That means it treats the terrorist organization whose goal is Israel’s destruction and the genocide of its people—that launched the current war on Oct. 7, 2023, with an orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction—as no different from the victims of those crimes. That dispelled any doubts as to its illegitimacy as a forum of justice.
And any country among the more than 125 nations in the world affiliated with the ICC that promises to respect or execute ICC arrest warrants against Israelis is doing the same thing. Those who plan to do so—and dozens of nations have said they would arrest Netanyahu if they had the chance—give aid and comfort to what is effectively an antisemitic campaign of incitement against the one Jewish state on the planet.
The purpose of this exercise is to effectively render Israel’s efforts of self-defense illegal and make it a pariah state. That’s why there is broad support in Congress and the Trump administration in favor of sanctioning the ICC, its staff and its supporters in a manner that will turn it—and not Israel—into an international pariah. The only way to do that is with effective sanctions on the court.
By effective sanctions, I don’t mean largely symbolic measures that would make it hard for someone like Khan to do business in the United States. Rather, it means sanctions that would make it impossible for others to involve themselves with the court, have transactions with it, and, more importantly, respect its decisions and execute its warrants to do business with the United States.
The Iranian precedent
The precedent for this is the sanctions Congress passed against Iran under the first Trump administration, before being abandoned by former President Joe Biden as part of his futile and disgraceful efforts to appease Tehran.
There is no way to know for sure whether Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran would have succeeded in forcing the Islamist regime to abandon its nuclear program had Biden not revived the pro-Iranian policies of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. But by the time he left office in January 2021, Trump had made major inroads in bringing Iran’s economy to its knees.
The reason why those sanctions succeeded is because they were, like the Republicans’ plans for sanctioning the ICC, not limited in their scope. Washington gave the rest of the world a choice: Do business with Iran and purchase its oil, and enjoy good relations with the ayatollahs. The price for that would mean being cut off from the American economy and, more crucially, the U.S. financial system.
Unsurprisingly, even those European countries most eager to appease Iran were not going to risk that.
So when Schumer, the self-styled shomer (or “guardian”) of Israel in Congress, says the GOP’s ICC sanctions bill was “poorly drafted,” what he really means is that it would force the world to make the same choice about the ICC.
What worries Democrats about sanctioning the ICC is the prospect that American action could really cripple the court.
As a Washington Post article made clear, the issue on the left is their unwillingness to do anything about multilateral institutions, like the ICC or the United Nations, even if they become cesspools of antisemitism.
Democrats were apparently influenced by a delegation of European diplomats who lobbied against the sanctions. The European diplomats argued that sanctioning the court, regardless of its actions or intent, would “erode the international rule of law” and undermine the “principle of international justice and accountability.” In Europe, only Hungary went against the grain. Its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said his country would defy the ICC and welcome a visit from Netanyahu, as other nations either declared their obligation to execute such an outrageous arrest or attempted to evade the issue
But the truth is just the opposite. By not sanctioning the court in a way that would cripple its effectiveness and punish those individuals, companies and nations that work to uphold its discriminatory attack on Israel, the United States would be failing to defend the rule of law. Symbolic sanctions as opposed to tough ones that were enforced would allow Khan, along with the rest of his kangaroo court and its supporters, to go on making a travesty of international law and pervert the justice system to aid those who wish to isolate and destroy Israel.
Sadly, that’s exactly what Schumer and the Democrats were doing. The honorable and courageous exception to that party-line vote was Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa), the only member of the Democratic caucus to join with the Republicans on the issue.
Faith in multilateralism
That Euro appeal resonated with Democrats because most of them cling to the notion that multilateral institutions like the United Nations are progressive forces rather than doing more harm than good. Many of them see the web of international organizations as part of a valuable effort that will force all nations, including the United States, to do the will of this global consensus on a variety of issues, including global warming and trade What they should be doing is defending American interests and those of other democracies against Marxist and Islamists who wish to tear down Western civilization.
Like Jews everywhere, Israelis are once again the canary in the coal mine. Making it impossible for its leaders to travel is part of a strategy to treat the democratic Jewish state as the equivalent of apartheid-era South Africa. Isolation and delegitimization of its wars to defeat terror groups like Hamas could lead to Israel’s inevitable destruction. And if the ICC can do this to Israel, there’s little doubt that their next target would be America, which is the very reason why Washington has always refused to join the court.
Of course, most Senate Democrats don’t wish to identify themselves with such a cause. What they do want to do is to pass sanctions on the ICC that will be no more than slaps on the wrist, which will do nothing to deter it or punish those who support it. But allies and companies that are assisting the court in any way deserve no such consideration. As was the case with sanctions on Iran, the only way to make them abandon policies that damage the West and endanger Israel is for the United States to use its financial muscle to force them to do the right thing.
Congressional deceptions
If Republicans give in to Democratic blackmail, don’t be deceived by the votes of some Senate Democrats for a watered-down ICC sanctions bill. They will have already killed real sanctions, and another vote will merely give them cover for doing so in the time-honored tradition of Congress members pretending to do something about an issue while actually doing the opposite.
At a time of great change in Washington and with so many other important issues being debated, sanctioning the ICC may seem unimportant by comparison. But that’s not correct. By using the centrality of its economy and financial system, the United States has both the power and the opportunity to nip this antisemitic international campaign to destroy Israel in the bud. By failing to do so, Schumer and his fellow Senate Democrats are undermining the defense of the Jewish state, as well as American interests. And they should not be allowed to get away with that.
1 comment:
Schumer is an ambulatory lump of quasi-human pond scum.
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