Benjamin Netanyahu reacted angrily to the news that he was threatened with an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It is "a moral disgrace of historic proportions," he declared.
Israel is "waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that has carried out the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust."
In a bitter personal attack, Netanyahu said Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), was one of the "greatest anti-Semites of our time".
Khan, he added, is like the judges of Nazi Germany who deprived Jews of their basic rights and enabled the Holocaust.
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His decision to request the arrest of Israel's prime minister and defense minister is "mindlessly adding fuel to the fire of anti-Semitism raging around the world."
Netanyahu spoke in English in a video address released by his cabinet.
He always does this when he wants his message to reach a foreign audience that is important to him in America.
The outrage of the prime minister, which is followed by the entire Israeli political leadership, was caused by pages and pages of carefully worded legal text in a statement by Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who is also a member of the King's Council - the most prominent lawyers in Britain.
Word by word, sentence by sentence, the statement lays out a devastating series of accusations against the three most prominent leaders of Hamas, as well as the Israeli prime minister and defense minister.
The decision to apply international law and the laws of armed conflict to both sides, regardless of who they are, is the essence of Khan's statement in which he cites the justification for the request for an arrest warrant.
"No soldier, no commander, no civilian leader - no one - must act with impunity."
Law, he says, cannot be applied selectively.
If that happens, "we will create the conditions for its demolition".
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The decision to demand responsibility for the actions of both sides in accordance with the letter of international law caused great anger, and not only in Israel.
US President Joe Biden said it was "outrageous" to seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
There is "no tie-up - none - between Israel and Hamas."
Hamas demanded that the charges against its leaders be dropped, claiming that the ICC prosecutor had "equated the victims with the executioner".
He said the request for an arrest warrant for Israeli leaders is seven months late, since "the Israeli occupier has committed thousands of crimes."
Khan does not make direct comparisons between the two sides, except to make the claim that both have committed a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He also points out that this latest war took place in the context of "the international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine and the non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas."
The court treats Palestine as a state since it has observer status in the United Nations, which means it could sign the Rome Statute on the basis of which the ICC was created.
Netanyahu has stated that the Palestinians will never gain independence while he is in power.
Instead of seeing it as something shameful and drawing false parallels between, as Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, "these brutal terrorists and the democratically elected government of Israel," human rights groups have applauded the way ICC prosecutors are seeking to enforce the law. for both parties.
B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights organization, said the warrant request "highlights Israel's rapid descent into a moral abyss."
"The international community tells Israel that it cannot continue its policy of violence, murder and destruction without accountability," she added.
Human rights activists have been complaining for years that powerful Western countries, led by the US, turn a blind eye to Israel's violations of international law, even as they regularly condemn and sanction other states that are not in their camp.
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The steps taken by Khan and his team, they believe, were long overdue.
Khan says the three main leaders of Hamas have committed war crimes that include destruction, murder, hostage-taking, rape and torture.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Muhammad Deif, the commander of the Qassam Brigades, its military wing, and Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas' political bureau, were named.
As part of the investigation, Khan and his team spoke with victims and survivors of the October 7 attack.
He said Hamas had attacked basic human values, "love within the family, the deepest bonds between parent and child have been twisted to inflict untold pain through calculated cruelty and extreme recklessness."
Israel, Khan said, has the right to self-defense.
But "unscrupulous crimes" do not release "Israel from its obligation to comply with international humanitarian law".
His failure to do so justifies the issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant for crimes including starvation of civilians as a weapon of war, murder, destruction and deliberate attacks on civilians.
Since the start of Israel's response to Hamas attacks on October 7, US President Biden has repeatedly rebuked Israel, expressing concern that it is killing too many Palestinian civilians and destroying too much civilian infrastructure in Gaza.
But balancing carefully with a close ally whom he has always supported, Biden and his administration have not been unequivocally public about what they think.
Khan is crystal clear in his own interpretation.
Israel, he says, has resorted to criminal means to achieve its own war aims in Gaza - "namely, deliberately causing death, starvation, great suffering and grievous injury" to civilians.
The ICC Trial Chamber will now consider whether to issue arrest warrants.
States signatories to the ICC's Rome Statute will then be obliged to detain these people if they have the opportunity to do so.
The 124 signatory countries do not include Russia, China and the USA, nor Israel.
But the ICC has ruled that it has the legal authority to prosecute crimes committed in this war because the Palestinians are signatories.
If the arrest warrants are issued, it means Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, will not be able to visit close Western allies without risking arrest.
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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that "the actions of the ICC are not helping to achieve a cessation of fighting, to extract hostages and to deliver humanitarian aid."
But if the warrants are issued, the UK will have to carry out those arrests, unless it successfully establishes that Netanyahu has diplomatic immunity.
A very important exception for Netanyahu and Galant is the USA.
The White House believes the ICC has no jurisdiction in the conflict, a position that could divide Joe Biden's Democratic Party over the war.
The progressive forces have already welcomed the decision of the ICC prosecution.
Israel's staunch Democratic allies could support a Republican initiative to pass legislation that would impose sanctions on ICC officials or bar them from entering US territory.
While rumors about the preparation of indictments began circulating in Europe, America and the Middle East several weeks ago, a group of Republican senators issued a kind of threat to Kahn and his team that could only be heard on film.
"Take Israel to task, and we will...you have been warned."
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Even Joav Galant will not be able to travel freely.
Critics of Israel's actions often refer to the words he used when he announced that Israel would impose a siege on Gaza.
"I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, food, fuel, everything will be closed... We are fighting against human animals and we will act accordingly," Galant said two days after the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
Khan wrote in a statement that "Israel has deliberately and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of the means necessary for human survival."
Famine, he says, is present in parts of Gaza, and approaching in others.
Israel denies the famine exists, arguing that the food shortage is not caused by the siege - but by Hamas theft and UN incompetence.
If an arrest warrant is granted for Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas's political wing, he will have to seriously reconsider making regular trips to meet with senior Arab leaders.
It is very likely that he will spend more time at the base in Qatar, which, like Israel, is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC.
Two other indicted Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif, are believed to be hiding somewhere in Gaza.
The arrest warrant doesn't put much more pressure on them - Israel has been actively trying to kill them for the past seven months.
The arrest warrant would also put Netanyahu in the same category of indicted leaders as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the late Libyan colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi.
The warrant for Putin's arrest was issued for the illegal deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia.
Before he was killed by his own people, an arrest warrant was issued for Colonel Gaddafi for killing and persecuting unarmed civilians.
It is not flattering company for Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a country that prides itself on its democracy.
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