The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem is appalled by the shameful decision by the three-judge panel of the International Criminal Court on Thursday (21 November) to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
“It is an unconscionable twisting of history and morality for the world community to take the most severe criminal prohibitions enacted in the wake of the Holocaust and now use them as a club against the Jewish state and people,” said ICEJ Senior Vice President David Parsons. “The ICC’s abysmal decision to issue these arrest warrants against senior Israeli leaders is a moral test for every nation of whether they will accept the transposing of good and evil. The consequences of this grave error are chilling for the entire world.”
The Christian Embassy noted that in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the international community was moved, with just cause and deep sympathy for Jewish suffering, to collectively ban the unprecedented acts of industrialized slaughter which Nazi Germany committed against the Jewish people during World War II. Global leaders even felt compelled to create distinct new categories of criminal culpability to cover the Nazi’s mass atrocities, such as the novel crimes of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. An added category outlawed “crimes against humanity”, defined as widespread or systematic inhumane attacks against civilians which shock the world’s conscience.
In addition, new global forums were established, such as the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, to ensure such depraved actions never happened again.
Yet in just a few short generations, the world community has chosen to use these very criminal injunctions as blunt instruments to bash the Jewish state – whose creation itself was the most necessary and moral of all the atoning responses to the Holocaust.
This pattern of moral inversion has been occurring for decades now, as Israel’s enemies have waged a devious lawfare campaign against Israel in often-corrupt international forums in a bid to deprive the Jewish state of its right to self-defense and ultimately its right to exist as a member of the community of nations. It is presently at work, for instance, in the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice. Even the Vatican appears to be tempted to wade into this ignoble mire.
And now, the ICC’s decision to issue these arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials is the latest example of this grotesque moral travesty. Israel was viciously attacked on October 7, 2023 by scores of Hamas terrorists from Gaza who massacred over 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages. Israel responded to this unprovoked assault by engaging in legitimate acts of self-defense and has been forced ever since to stave off relentless further attacks on seven fronts. Yet the ICC judges, at the urging of an untrustworthy chief prosecutor, have concocted a ludicrous case of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Israeli leaders.
It seems global leaders and forums granted Israel a brief moment of mercy and understanding for their painful losses on October 7, and then immediately went back to lashing Israel on the vile pretense they have picked up the very whip the Nazis used against them.
As Christians who firmly believe that both individuals and nations will one day give account for our actions before our Creator God, we fear many nations will be severely judged for their role in falsely accusing Israel of the very horrendous crimes once visited upon the Jewish people. Yet in the end, those nations who persist in this course will surely deserve the just judgment of God.
