Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary on Thursday, marking his first visit to a country that is a party to the Rome Statute, and thus recognizes the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu last November.
Legally, Hungary would have been obliged to arrest Netanyahu and turn him over to the Hague, however, Hungary announced their withdrawal from the Rome Statute, becoming the first EU and Western Country to do so.
While realistically, nobody can expect Netanyahu to ever stand trial in the Hague, a nice consolation prize would be for the issuance of his arrest warrant to be the ultimate destruction of the ICC.
Western Interests
The ICC is a symbol of the post-Cold War “Liberal World Order” where the West would be the only harbingers of truth and justice and apply it or ignore it when it suited them. This charade held up for about 20 years from when the court was founded in 2002, until 2023 when an arrest warrant was issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin on shaky grounds, to put it mildly. The initial inaction by the court to investigate Israel for war crimes in Gaza, and then the Western reaction when warrants were issued, highlighted the hypocrisy and ultimate illegitimacy of the court.
When the Treaty of Rome was adopted in 1998, it was done so with a clause that the court would only go after people who were citizens of countries that ratified the Rome Statute in their own constitution, or the alleged crimes were committed on the territory of a state that was party to the statute.
Politicization of the Court
Russia, an original signatory to the Rome Statute, but never ratified, withdrew its signature in 2016 and informed the UN that they no longer intended to ratify the agreement and had no legal obligations under the court. Despite this, in March of 2023 the court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on charges of kidnapping children from Ukraine. Ukraine was also not a state party to the ICC at the time, only ratifying the treaty in 2024.
The charges stemmed solely on a U.S. government funded report made by Yale University that relied completely on the testimony from Ukrainian sources. No ICC investigators went to Russia to investigate these claims, which listed specific names of children. A year later, 161 children who were listed as having been kidnapped by Russia, were found to be living in Germany.
The U.S. and EU countries naturally at the time applauded the warrants and cited it as an example of international law working. The U.S. themselves not only withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute in 2002, they even have a law, “The Hague Invasion Act” which authorizes military force against the Hague if any American were to ever be brought to trial.
In fact, when former President Joe Biden ordered the Pentagon to share evidence of Russian “war crimes” with the Hague, the Pentagon expressed concerns that this could open up the U.S. to potential investigations.
Vladimir Putin would visit Mongolia, a state party to the ICC in September of 2024 to which the Western world decried how big of betrayal of justice this was, as Mongolia was obliged to arrest Putin and a complete undermining of the ICC's authority.
One of the most vocal critics of this 'betrayal' was Poland, who has recently given it's assurances they will not arrest Netanyahu in May should he visit for celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Europe.
Jurisdictional Overstepping
When ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu last year for the well documented crimes of Israel in Gaza, he would give an interview in which he claimed to have been contacted by a Western leader who told him the court is only for “Africans and thugs like Putin”.
The U.S. State Department at the time challenged that the ICC did not have legal jurisdiction, despite the fact that the State of Palestine is a state party to the ICC.
The U.S. did not challenge the ICC’s jurisdiction when they indicted Vladimir Putin, or last November when Karim Khan requested a warrant for the head of Myanmar's military government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. Myanmar is not a party to the ICC nor ever signed the Rome Treaty.
This was not the most recent case of the ICC overstepping, on March 7th, the ICC would issue a warrant for former President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, where he would be detained the following week. The Philippines withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute in 2019.
Rules For Thee But Not For Me
Karim Khan has been under fire for what can also be called dubious accusations that surfaced a month before Netanyahu’s warrant was issued last November. In February, the U.S. banned him from entering the U.S. and seized his assets due to the warrants against Netanyahu. It is unlikely the Trump Administration took this step because of the warrants Karim Khan requested against the Supreme Leader of Afghanistan and head of the Taliban, Hibatullah Akhundzada, just days after Trump’s inauguration.
One should ask themselves, what is the difference between Netanyahu and every other current and former head of state the ICC is seeking to prosecute in the last 2 years? It's that everyone else is seen as an enemy of the U.S.
The authority of the court has been trampled on twice now, in the case of Putin, seeks warrants on completely dubious grounds, nobody knows where the jurisdiction of the court actually lies now that leaders non party states and alleged crimes committed on the territory of non party states are being indicted and with the blatant Western hypocrisy has been exposed, it is time for the court to end.
While Hungary may have done it for the wrong reason, protecting Netanyahu, everyone should follow Hungary's example and leave the court.