TEHRAN - House Republicans are preparing legislation to sanction International Criminal Court officials as a "precaution" against potential arrest warrants against Israeli officials for the war in the Gaza Strip, according to Axios.

The ICC in The Hague is a permanent global court that has the power to prosecute individuals and leaders for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Israeli leaders are begging allies to put pressure on the ICC to avoid issuing an arrest.  In a televised news conference on May 1, Benjamin Netanyahu, the criminal-in-chief, outrageously asked “leaders of the (so-called) free world” to use “all the means in their disposal” to halt any ICC actions.

Israel is accused of committing numerous instances of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza.

Pro-Israel members of Congress in both parties have warned repeatedly that the ICC risks consequences from the U.S. if it moves forward with the warrants.

Of course, it was predictable that the U.S., as an accomplice in Israel’s war in Gaza, would react against any possible action by the ICC against Israeli leaders.  Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who led the prosecution of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), has warned that the ICC could come under political pressure to reconsider its decision-making.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul confirmed the legislation is in the works and told Axios he and other GOP lawmakers have been in contact with ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan.

"We want to emphasize to him that going down this road of arrest warrants is a really bad idea and it's going to blow up the relationship," McCaul said.

McCaul said the bill would be a House companion to Republican Sen. Tom Cotton's legislation, introduced last February, to sanction ICC officials involved in probes of U.S. allies, such as Israel.

Cotton, a notorious person for his naivety and hawkishness, led a dozen Senate Republicans in a letter to Karim Khan on May 6 warning that arrest warrants "will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution."

Among those signing the letter are other hawkish senators, including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

Astonishingly, they claimed in the letter that “such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis”.

Like Netanyahu, House Speaker Mike Johnson is shuddering over possible arrest warrants, claiming, “It is disgraceful that the International Criminal Court is reportedly planning to issue baseless and illegitimate arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials.”

The Biden administration also claims that the ICC does not have jurisdiction to investigate Israel. But on March 18, 2023, when the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin - whose country is not also a party to the Rome Statute - President Biden said it “makes a very strong point” and that Putin “clearly committed war crimes”.

Though Israel isn't a member of the ICC, the ICC has ruled that since 2015 it does in fact have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza after the Palestinians ratified the Rome Statute as the State of Palestine.

Moreover, the charges against Putin are in no way comparable to what Netanyahu has done in Gaza.

In his ruling against Putin, Prosecutor Karim Khan said children "can't be treated as spoils of war" as Russia has transferred almost 20,000 Ukrainian children to areas under its control. But Israel has far slaughtered at least 10,000 children. Add to this number those children who have been maimed for life.

Given such bitter realities, such reprehensible remarks by hawkish Congress members and warnings against the ICC and its chief are abhorrent and disgraceful.

Such shameful support for the Israeli butchers depicts a dreadful world. The threats against the ICC inherently show that these Congresspersons are racist, bigoted, heartless, and as bloodthirsty as Netanyahu and his lieutenants. 

Being aware that so far about 35,000 people, mostly children and women, have been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands have been intentionally starved, 84 percent of health facilities have been destroyed or damaged, 62 percent of houses destroyed or damaged and then threatening the ICC for possible action against the Israeli leaders sends shockwaves across the globe and undermine the basic foundations of human principles and morality.

Though it is highly unlikely that Netanyahu and his lieutenants would be arrested even if the ICC indicts them of war crimes, the Christian Zionists in the U.S. Congress cannot even tolerate the Israeli prime minister being designated a war criminal.

Shamefully speaker Johnson calls the ICC’s preliminary analysis of war crimes in Gaza “baseless and illegitimate”. What other crimes should happen in Gaza that are deemed war crimes in the views of such Congress members, including Johnson?

There are many instances to indict Israeli leaders of war crimes and genocide. In a televised interview with Al Jazeera on Dec. 23, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former ICC chief prosecutor, said Israel’s siege of Gaza is a “genocide”.

Volker Türk, the UN's most senior human rights official, also told the BBC in late March there was a "plausible" case that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war and if the intent was proven, that would amount to a “war crime”.

It was for this negligence that Asef Bayat, the professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, two months into the Gaza war, expressed his dismay over remarks by German philosopher Jürgen who defended Israel’s extremely disproportionate use of force against Gazans in response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

In his open letter to Habermas dated December 8, 2023, Bayat recalled the words of the 13th-century Persian poet Saadi Shirazi that says:

Human beings are members of a whole,

In creation of one essence and soul.

If one member is afflicted with pain,

Other members uneasy will remain.

If you’ve no sympathy for human pain,

The name of human you cannot retain!

The point is that hawkish Congress members and other co-thinkers consider Palestinians as inferior or subhuman. A colonial-era mentality still exists among certain political decision-makers in the United States and certain other Western countries.

They consider the collective punishment of 2.3 million Gazans, forced evacuation, indiscriminate bombardment of residential buildings as well as UN-run facilities, schools, churches, and mosques,… deadly attacks on hospitals and medical staff, targeting ambulances and aid convoys and the cutting of water, food, and medicine, and famine in northern Gaza as nothing important to deserve attention.

Such a degree of destruction in the Gaza Strip that the world has not seen since the Second World War and the rise in intimidation and settler violence in the West Bank are primarily intended to depopulate Gaza and the West Bank from the Palestinians. In a document that was leaked after Israel launched war on Gaza more than seven months ago, the Israeli Intelligence Ministry had called on the army to evacuate the civilian population to Egypt’s Sinai. And it is not without reason that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said last month, "I fear that after finishing off Gaza, Israel would head to the West Bank and deport its people to Jordan.”

Now, hawkish Congress members and some other Zionist Christians are facilitating the path of this evil plan by standing against justice for Palestinians.