Who Will Judge the Prosecutor?

Will the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, be “etrogized”? As Sukkot ends today, Jews put away their etrog, one of the holiday’s four species. The citrus, per tradition, is too precious to be touched. In current Hebrew vernacular it has become a verb, describing a politician whose contribution is too valuable to be pilloried by side issues. Has Mr. Khan hoped that as he went after Israelis no one would examine his own conduct? The timeline is key to Mr. Khan’s etrog theory. On May 20 the prosecutor told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he would seek international arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanayhu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The bombshell announcement reverberated around the world. Israelis, fighting for their lives on seven fronts, were puzzled about the timing. In the lede of his official request for arrest warrants, Mr. Khan contends that his allegations of crimes were made “on the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office.” The CNN interview and official writ, however, were made on the same day that Mr. Khan canceled a planned visit to Israel. So where did he collect “evidence” to justify using the court’s nuclear option against an elected leader of a country that isn’t even an ICC member? Were the arrest requests and the Israel visit no-show made in haste? We now have an additional piece of information that could shed light on that question. It was initially posted last week by an unidentified X user. An ICC whistleblower then let the public know that a friend of his was sexually harassed by Mr. Khan and that he had reported the allegation in writing to the ICC’s auditor, known as the Independent Oversight Mechanism. The IOM confirms receiving the written complaint, which reportedly details advances of sexual nature that Mr. Khan has made on several occasions toward a junior female employee. “There is no truth to suggestions of such misconduct,” Mr. Khan protested in a statement today, according to Reuters. “I have worked in diverse contexts for 30 years and there has never been such a complaint lodged against me by anyone.” The female employee started telling colleagues about the alleged sexual harassment in late April. Her friend, the whistleblower, received threats after informing the IOM of Mr. Khan’s misconduct, according to the Wall Street Journal. No investigation was launched. Yet, Mr. Khan then upped the ante with a bombshell. Sure enough, haunting Mr. Netanyahu draws more worldwide ink than an unidentified junior ICC employee’s tale.Mr. Khan sought neutrality by alleging Hamas crimes as well as Israeli ones. By now, though, the ICC judges no longer need to bother with anyone other than Messrs. Netanyahu and Gallant. The three cited Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, and Yahya Sinwar, have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces. In the real world, the IDF might be revered for exacting justice to war criminals. Not so in the ICC’s parallel universe.In that hall of legal mirrors, Israel, as Mr. Netanyahu once quipped, is always presumed guilty before it’s pronounced guilty. It is reasonable to assume that in such an environment, Mr. Khan believed that those who constantly seek to portray the Jewish state in the darkest colors, including as a war crimes perpetrator, would overlook his own alleged personal sins. At Hague, the heavy task of convicting Israel would trump such trivialities.Except now that the allegations are public, the ICC judges need to make a choice: Do they first take up allegations against leaders of Israel, or against the man who seeks to arrest and convict them? Congress needs to make some decisions too. Democrats are holding up legislation to sanction the wayward Hague court. Although America is not an ICC member, President Biden is “etrogizing” that court in a misplaced reverence of global institutions.

Who Will Judge the Prosecutor?

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