Last week, Senate Democrats voted for a bill that would have slapped sanctions against the International Criminal Court for an outrageous warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Joav Gallant.
The ICC's actions demonstrated an willingness to act against non-members like Israel and the United States, putting American service members and other potential US targets at risk.
But the Democrats were just as crazy. It not only lived through the grotesque prosecution of Israeli leaders to protect the country from terrorist attackers, but also set a time bomb on President Trump.
The “Illegal Court Countermeasures” imposes direct sanctions on ICC personnel who have engaged in an effort to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute US individuals or entities or citizens or lawful residents of US allies. It would have been. It does not agree to the jurisdiction of the court.
In other words, the bill would have protected Americans and allies like Israel from targeting fraudulent courts.
The bill was passed with significant bipartisan support in the House, and Senate Democrats have previously said they supported it.
But at the last moment, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) produced the qui to justify a vote for it. He claimed that the bill's “lack of accuracy” could have been put into American tech companies supporting ICC in the investigation.
Schumer's argument was dishonest. The first Trump administration imposed almost the same sanctions as the people of the bill through executive orders, without being punished by US businesses.
However, it was enough to sink the ICC Act, and in the wake of October 7th, the court's Israeli hounds were maintained.
The ICC enjoys a $200 million balloon annual budget, but was convicted in total over its lifespan Six Individuals of mass atrocity crimes are likely designed to prosecute.
Although there was little success targeting warlords and mass murderers like Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, it turned its attention to Israel, the favorite punch bag of non-member nations and globalists.
And the lawsuit against Netanyahu came in 2020 after the ICC began an investigation into the US for war crimes among military members in Afghanistan.
Senate Democrats are far from stupid. Their party has already used ammo each, national prosecution and federal criminal charges to target Trump, and sees ICC warrants against Israeli officials as a path to future legal strategy.
Four years from now, when Trump becomes former president again, I hope the ICC will seek a warrant against him, his administration officials and perhaps Republican lawmakers for attempting to sanction it.
An ICC warrant for Israeli leaders indicates that prosecutors could be as creative as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a manufacturing fee.
In fact, ICC prosecutors have already threatened American lawmakers with punishments solely to threaten them to “retaliate” against courts with sanctions.
Of course, if Trump's indictment occurred, the democratic president's successor did nothing to stop him, publicly lamenting the ICC's overreach.
ICCs are not familiar with such operations. In the latest ploy to target Israel, the court invents the state of Palestine and exerts its jurisdiction, which involves the massive hunger phenomenon in Gaza despite thousands of aid trucks. He has been charged.
Senate Democrats also argued that the sanctions would only be the ICC's heel digging against Israel, but experience has shown otherwise.
When Trump approved ICC officials through an executive order in 2020, the prosecutor immediately abandoned an investigation into alleged torture by US troops stationed in Afghanistan.
Ironically, ICC officials thought the court could survive the sanctions Schumer blocked. What they really fear is a powerful measure of sanctioning not only employees, but the institution itself.
Republicans took over imposition of such measures as Democrats signaled their support for a more limited, bipartisan bill that passed the House.
Now that the façade of cooperation has disappeared, there is no reason Trump won't sanction the ICC again by executive order. And now he has witnessed a cozy relationship between the court and the Democrats, so he knows that he won't stop at half-measurement.
Eliel Azerado is a senior fellow at the Middle East Center at George Mason, a law professor and international law, and George Mason's Scalia Law School.
