US President Joe Biden called the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for top Israeli leaders “outrageous” in a statement on Thursday.
“Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said, responding to the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” the president added.
Earlier, the White House expressed its strong opposition to the ICC’s actions. A National Security Council spokesperson stated that the United States “fundamentally rejects” the arrest warrants. “We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision. The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter.”
The statement did not address the ICC’s also issuing a warrant for Mohammed Deif, the military chief of Hamas.
Mike Waltz, who will become the national security advisor under President-elect Donald Trump, voiced support for Israel, promising a “strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN” starting in January. “The ICC has no credibility, and these allegations have been refuted by the US government,” Waltz said on social media.
His comments reflected broader Republican anger, with some calling for the US Senate to sanction the ICC, which has 124 member states, theoretically obligated to arrest individuals named in warrants.
Neither the United States nor Israel is a member of the ICC and both have rejected its jurisdiction.
The Hague-based court announced Thursday that the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were issued “for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024.”
A warrant was also issued for Deif, whom Israel claims was killed in a Gaza airstrike in July, though Hamas has not confirmed his death.
