Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has angrily condemned the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor for seeking arrest warrants for him alongside Hamas’s leaders over alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict.
Mr Netanyahu said he rejected with disgust that “democratic Israel” had been compared with what he called “mass murderers”.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments have been echoed by US President Joe Biden, who said there was no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
The chief ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The ICC is also seeking a warrant for Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, for war crimes.
Israel and the US, its key ally, are not members of the ICC, which was set up in 2002.
Mr Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, condemned the application to seek his arrest as “an absurd and false order”.
In a public statement in Hebrew, he asked “with what audacity” the ICC would “dare to compare” Hamas and Israel.
The comparison was a “distortion of reality”, Mr Netanyahu said.
He accused the prosecutor of “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging across the world”.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz called the move by Mr Khan an “unrestrained frontal assault” on the victims of the 7 October attacks and a “historical disgrace that will be remembered forever”.
But some of Israel’s Western allies avoided directly criticizing the ICC in their statements.
In a statement late on Monday, the French foreign ministry said it supported the court and what it called its “fight against impunity in all situations”.
Similarly, Germany’s foreign ministry said it “respects the independence and procedures” of the ICC.
However, Berlin did criticise the simultaneous publication of the charges against Israeli and Hamas leaders, saying the move “created the incorrect impression of equivalency”.
