Lhe moment of astonishment in Israel did not last. The decision of judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges and crimes against humanity was barely made public on Thursday, November 21, when Israeli political leaders from all sides united their voices, standing up against international jurisdiction and echoing the views of the Prime Minister. The latter immediately qualified the judges' decision as“anti-Semitic (…) comparable to a Dreyfus trial today which will end in the same way”.
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Benny Gantz, the general at the head of the National Unity Party who joined the Israeli war cabinet after the Hamas attacks of October 7, before resigning with a bang eight months later, and who is biding his time to succeed Benjamin Netanyahu, described the decision of the ICC judges as“moral blindness, a shameful stain of historical dimension which will never be forgotten”. Yaïr Golan, who took the leadership of the Democrats, a political group heir to the labor left, and is trying to unite the opposition in the face of the government coalition strongly influenced by the far right, also speaks of a decision “shameful” and believes that“Israel has the right and will always have the right to defend itself”taking up the elements of language within the government.
The leader of the opposition, Yaïr Lapid, declared that “arrest warrants constitute rewards offered to terrorists”. An official Israeli source used the same vocabulary on Thursday evening, evoking a “victory of terror over justice”a decision ” absurd “ Who “makes the enemies of Israel absolutely happy” and asserted that a “appeal procedure” was under study, thereby signifying a possible challenge to the jurisdiction of the Court.
“A key moment for our judicial system”
For Michael Sfard, a lawyer specializing in the defense of human rights, the issuance of these warrants is a “giant test” both for the ICC, which, “for the first time, indicts officials of such a powerful country, whose main ally is the United States, two months before Donald Trump arrives at the White House”but, also, for Israel. “These mandates paint our country in the darkest shades of crimes against humanity and war crimes. This is a decisive moment for the idea we have of our nation. Will we continue to close ranks with people who are accused of these crimes, or will we re-evaluate the way the war is being waged in Gaza? It is also a key moment for our judicial system, which has just suffered a sort of gigantic condemnation. »
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