Will Biden Stand Up to the International Criminal Court?

President Biden’s denunciation of the International Criminal Court’s plan to indict Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes is a refreshing moment, insofar as it goes. Mr. Biden used the word “outrageous” to describe the arrest warrants. He denounced the plan to charge both Mr. Netanyhu and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Galant, as well as the leaders of Hamas. Said Mr. Biden: There is “no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.” The question we’re looking out for, though, is “what will President Biden do?” He’s spent much of the last seven months maneuvering against Mr. Netanyahu, trying to curtail Israel’s attack on Rafah and other fronts. What will he say in coming debates against President Trump, who when in office stood up to the ICC. It’s not just Jewish voters. There’s little doubt that if the Court succeeds against Israel it will come after America and its GIs.Is this what American voters want? The ICC’s strategy of pursuing the top Israeli leaders — including, among others, Mr. Netanyahu and General Galant — as well as the leaders of Hamas, including Yahya Sinwar, is a mockery. It would be like putting into the dock Hitler and his henchmen for the air war against London and putting into the same dock Churchill and Montgomery for the invasion of Normandy.On that very head we have an overnight wire from our Theodore Lapkin in Australia. He’s spent years thinking through these issues. During the battle of Normandy, he points out, more than 25,000 French men, women, and children were killed, mostly by British and American bombs. “Those deaths,” he writes, “were the unintentional by-product of a hard-fought campaign against resolute German troops.”The prosecutor at the Hague, Kharim Khan, is basically suggesting that all war is a crime. Mr. Khan speaks of crimes “committed on the territory of the state of Palestine.” Yet Israel, like America, Communist China, Russia, and India, et al, didn’t ratify the Rome Statute that established the ICC, and therefore is not under its jurisdiction. Yet Mr. Khan refers to the principle of “complementarity” as being at the “heart of the Rome Statute.” That principle bars overlapping jurisdictions (an abuse of power that, by the way, the Democrats are now using against Mr. Trump). At the Hague Mr. Khan is now suggesting that the principle requires the ICC “to defer to national authorities only when they sincerely engage in independent and impartial judicial processes that do not shield suspects from accountability and which are not a sham.” Good luck with that line, we say.The fact is that Mr. Netanyahu has probably been more pursued in his country’s own courts than any leader since Sinai. Mr. Khan is doing what Lavrentiy Beria boasted he could do. “Show me the man,” Beria is said to have said, “and I’ll show you the crime.” The International Criminal Court has long since disposed of the idea that it is a court due process. It is a political player on the international stage and has no standing to try Mr. Netanyahu.Which brings us back to Mr. Biden. He’s running for reelection. He is going to try to palm off on the American voters the idea that he is pro-Israel. We don’t gainsay that he started out in this war with some fine words and gestures on Israel. The breathtaking element of it, though, is the rapidity with which he has fallen away from the fight — and now seems bent on stymieing Israel at nearly every turn. How is that going to play in, among other places, Florida?It’s one thing, after all, to issue the occasional pro-Israel statement. It will be another, and far more important, test to see what Mr. Biden does. In the case of the ICC, Mr. Trump actually sought to prevent the ICC’s stooges from entering America. It denied a visa to and sanctioned Karim Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, among others. Mr. Biden ended that hard line, leaving Mr. Netanyahu politically exposed. Which Mr. Biden does one believe?

Will Biden Stand Up to the International Criminal Court?

More from the New York Sun

Israel and Lebanon Coordinate Aid Convoy to Christian Villages in Combat Zone

Emerging Claim That Targeting Civilian Infrastructure Is a War Crime Proves a Bridge Too Far

Stanford Calls Bluff on Students Using Jain Faith To Dodge Meal Plan

More from the New York Sun

Israel and Lebanon Coordinate Aid Convoy to Christian Villages in Combat Zone

Emerging Claim That Targeting Civilian Infrastructure Is a War Crime Proves a Bridge Too Far

Stanford Calls Bluff on Students Using Jain Faith To Dodge Meal Plan

South Florida GOP Congresswoman’s Immigration Reform Bill Sparks Backlash From Colleagues, Conservative Commentariat

Middle-Class Americans Prove the Biggest Winners From Trump’s Tax Cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill

In a Funeral for Economic Liberty, the Casket Cartel Seeks To Bury the Competition

The Double Tragedy of the Jewish Bund

Borrowing a Page From El Salvador’s Bukele, Ecuadoran President Welcomes American Troops To Assist With His Drug Gang Crackdown