But Israel did receive public backing from its chief ally, the U.S., after months of mounting tensions between the two countries.
Biden faced criticism from some human rights advocates over his swift condemnation of the move to seek arrest warrants, which he described as “outrageous” and suggested implied a false “equivalence” between Israel and Hamas.
Speaking at a Rose Garden appearance celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month later in the day, he said that Israel “wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection” and that “what’s happening is not genocide.”
The U.S. was not alone in rejecting the ICC chief prosecutor’s move, with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying it was “not helpful to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or humanitarian aid in.”
Germany said it had some concerns, particularly regarding the decision to issue a “simultaneous application” for arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas, which its foreign ministry said gave “the false impression of equivalence,” German newspaper Deutsche Welle reported. But ultimately, the U.S. ally said it respected the independence of the court.
‘Cannot have it both ways’
Human rights advocates criticized Biden’s suggestion that the ICC’s announcement equated Israel with Hamas, while some also accused the U.S. of double standards, given Washington’s emphatic support for the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes in the war in Ukraine.
“Biden’s response was deeply disappointing,” Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, told NBC News in a phone interview on Tuesday. “There was nothing ‘outrageous’,” he said, about Khan’s decision to apply for arrest warrants “at all.”
Rejecting Biden’s suggestion that the ICC chief prosecutor had implied “an equivalence between Israel and Hamas,” he said Khan “did no such thing. He simply charged both sides for their separate crimes. And to use Biden’s term, it would have been ‘outrageous’ had he ignored one side’s crime.”
“These charges are not about Israel’s right to defend itself, which no one questions. They’re about how Israel has chosen to defend itself and no cause, no matter how just, can be used as an excuse to commit war crimes,” Roth said.
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