Hungary, unlike South Africa, had good reason to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Israeli government said Thursday, noting that South Africa had tried to leave the ICC before deciding to pose as its champion to target Israel.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had said earlier that Hungary will be withdrawing from the ICC, which has targeted Israel.
Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant have been hit with arrest warrants by the ICC, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC and therefore is not subject to its jurisdiction.
Critics of the ICC, including the United States, have said that the ICC warrants are motivated by prejudice and are not legitimate. Hungary declared last year that it would not honor the arrest warrants if Netanyahu visited Hungary.
Netanyahu thanked Orbán for his support, and praised the Hungarian leader as a statesman who had grappled with the moral and physical challenge to Europe and the free world from Islamic extremism and the Iranian regime.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer told journalists that Hungary had taken “a clear and moral stance … on the principles of justice and sovereignty” in choosing to leave the ICC, which he said had lost all credibility.
In response to a question from Breitbart News, Mencer said that “Hungary has shown unwavering support for Israel, at a time when others have cowered.” Orbán had shown “moral clarity” in upholding Israel’s right to self-defense, he added.
Orbán had shown “what true leadership looks like,” and that he understood that Israel was not just defending itself, but also the West and Judeo-Christian values. “Strength, and not appeasement, is what will defeat radicalism.”
He said that Hungary’s gesture differed from that of South Africa, which attempted to withdraw from the ICC after it refused to arrest Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir on a visit to South Africa in 2015, despite an ICC arrest warrant.
(Ironically, South Africa has now championed the ICC against South Africa and the United States, with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently publishing an op-ed attacking Trump for re-applying sanctions to the ICC).
In the South African case, Mencer pointed out, Sudan was carrying out an actual genocide of hundreds of thousands of Africans in Darfur, not fighting a war of self-defense against terrorists who had attacked it without provocation.
“Israel has condemned South Africa’s support for Hamas, and it politically motivated actions at the ICC, which have ignored Israel’s right to self-defense against a terrorist organization that targets civilians,” Mencer told journalists.
He also noted “South Africa’s growing alliance with Iran” and other powers that “destabilize the region and global security.” The contrast between Hungary’s leadership and South Africa’s conduct, he said, “couldn’t be clearer.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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