Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz denounced on Monday the “scandalous decision” of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). He asked the judges to issue arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense minister and several Hamas leaders: “a historic dishonor,” according to Israel Katz, for the court based in The Hague.
Demanding warrants against “the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense of the State of Israel alongside the abominable Nazi monsters of Hamas (…) will forever be remembered,” said the minister in a press release. He refutes that Israeli leaders are being prosecuted in the same way as “Hamas murderers and rapists” who “are committing crimes against humanity against our brothers and sisters”.
Many reactions on the left
Many left-wing figures welcomed the request from the ICC prosecutor. LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard believes that “France and the European Union must take note of this by declaring an embargo on arms deliveries and by deciding on sanctions against the Israeli government.” For environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau, “the arrest warrant” is the “only way to stop the massacre in Gaza”.
For its part, Palestinian Hamas “strongly” condemns this request to issue arrest warrants against its leaders. He denounces “the attempts of the ICC prosecutor to equate the victim with the executioner”.