“It was the scenario Jerusalem feared,” said Yonit Levy, anchor of Israel’s Channel 12 main evening news broadcast, on Thursday night. Levy was referring to the announcement from Karim Khan, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) that he had secured arrest warrants for Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — as well as for Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’ armed wing. (The Israeli army said it killed Deif in July, but Hamas has not confirmed this claim). The response from veteran Israeli media outlets, which have for the most part been critical of Netanyahu, his far-right government, and its ongoing project of ending the judiciary’s independence, was remarkably uniform. Across the spectrum, from liberal to right-wing, correspondents and news presenters expressed a combination of outrage at the ICC’s announcement, disquiet at its implications and rejection of the charges listed in the warrants.
The arrest warrants specify that Netanyahu and Gallant are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The former refers to using starvation as a method of warfare, while the latter includes murder, persecution and intentional attacks against civilians.
Channel 13’s correspondent Moriah Asraf, wearing a pendant in the shape of Israel-Palestine (Israelis and Palestinians wear the same pendant but with different political implications), called the charges “scandalous” and “completely detached from reality,” adding, “I don’t know of any other state that allows so much humanitarian aid into enemy territory during war.” Kan 11, the public broadcaster, showed footage of trucks laden with supplies crossing into Gaza from Egypt, with the reporter narrating that an unending stream of humanitarian aid entered the territory each day.
Israeli liberals see the ICC’s arrest warrants as the poisoned fruit of Netanyahu’s ongoing plan to end the judiciary’s independence, making it subservient to the legislature. Baruch Kra, Channel 13’s legal correspondent, belongs to the liberal camp. During the Thursday night broadcast, he said that while he “would not argue” against the claim that the charges were antisemitic, he blamed Netanyahu — not for possibly committing the crimes of which he is accused, but for refusing to establish a transparent, professional commission of inquiry to investigate the charges, which Khan outlined months ago when he announced that he was seeking the warrants. The legal analysts on all the networks echoed Kra in asserting that if Israel had carried out a transparent investigation, it would have deterred the ICC from proceeding with the arrest warrants. The ICC, they explained, had stepped into the vacuum left by Netanyahu’s right-wing government when it embarked on its campaign to neuter the judiciary. These antidemocratic actions, they said, had made Israel vulnerable. In effect, the correspondents summarized the Israeli liberal position regarding Netanyahu’s government and its policies: that the military campaign in Gaza was justified, but undermining Israel’s judiciary and civil society were not.
Professor Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained to a Channel 13 correspondent that the ICC had chosen to make an example of Israel. Until now, he said, the ICC had issued arrest warrants only for rogue dictators in Africa and for Vladimir Putin. By choosing Israel, “a Western country,” the ICC sought to prove that it was “balanced,” said Sabel, adding that a trial could only take place if Netanyahu and Gallant were present in the courtroom, “which would never happen.”
Meanwhile, in the studio, each of the networks provided explainer graphics to show the impact of the arrest warrants. Correspondents stood in front of world maps that showed in red all the countries — at least 120 — that were now a no-go zone for Netanyahu and Gallant because they had announced that they recognized the authority of the ICC and would thus enforce the arrest warrants. South America was under a sea of red, as were Canada, Australia, Japan and most of Western Europe. The networks also showed a rogues’ gallery of dictators against whom the ICC had previously issued arrest warrants, such as Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and, of course, Putin. For all their criticism of Netanyahu’s far-right government, the news presenters were clearly telegraphing that their prime minister and their democratic state had nothing in common with these notorious dictators.
On Channel 12, Yonit Levi said that the timing of the arrest warrants, just over a year after the brutal Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, was “difficult to digest.” Reporters on the other networks made similar comments, implying strongly that issuing the warrants so close to the anniversary of that traumatic day showed not only insensitivity toward ordinary Israelis, but also obliviousness to the necessity of waging what the establishment media continues to report as a war of deterrence against Hamas in Gaza.
Would the issuing of the arrest warrants affect the prosecution of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon? Yes, answered the military and legal correspondents. The fear was that the warrants for Gallant and Netanyahu were the thin edge of the wedge; next, perhaps, the ICC would target senior combat and intelligence officers.
The correspondents also explained the consequences for ordinary Israelis. Countries that were signatories to the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the ICC, would hesitate to do business with Israel, they said, while academic institutions would be unlikely to engage in collaborative research projects with their Israeli counterparts.
All agreed that while the vigorous expressions of support from the Biden White House were “satisfactory,” as one Channel 13 correspondent put it (the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and does not recognize the ICC’s mandate), Netanyahu was counting on President-elect Donald Trump to go after the ICC on his behalf. Haaretz’s Amir Tibon explained, in an analysis published Nov. 21, that Trump and the Republican members of Congress could — and had already said they would — intimidate Khan and the court by placing travel bans and financial sanctions on the prosecutor, his staff and judges. They could, for example, ban them from traveling to the U.S. or from holding U.S. bank accounts. In other words, Netanyahu believes that Trump and the GOP can bully the ICC into rescinding the arrest warrants. On Sunday, Sen. John Thume, who will become Senate majority leader in January, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that his party would make sanctions against Khan and the ICC a “top priority.”
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