U.S. House votes to sanction international court over warrants for Netanyahu and other Israeli officials

WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to impose sanctions against the International Criminal Court for its move to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials for war crimes in the nation’s war against Hamas.

The vote was 247-155, with nearly every Republican and a few dozen Democrats voting for it. Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, voted present.

The sanctions bill is unlikely to get a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate, however. Though President Joe Biden called the ICC’s actions “outrageous,” his administration said in a statement Monday it “strongly opposes” the bill to sanction the court.

Biden’s administration remains “deeply concerned about the ICC Prosecutor’s heedless rush to apply for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials,” the administration said, but it also opposes sanctioning “the ICC, its personnel, its judges, or those who assist its work. There are more effective ways to defend Israel, preserve U.S. positions on the ICC, and promote international justice and accountability, and the Administration stands ready to work with the Congress on those options.”

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said in a statement last month that the court would issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other Israeli and Hamas leaders, charging leaders on both sides of the conflict with crimes against humanity and war crimes. A panel of three judges will take up the issue and ultimately decide whether to issue the warrants.

Israel has faced growing criticism of its handling of the war against Hamas, begun after the Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis. At least 35,000 people in Gaza have been killed since, many of them women and children. Biden said recently its “uncertain” whether Israeli forces had committed war crimes, but acknowledged that “innocent people” in Gaza had been killed. He also said there’s “every reason” to believe Netanyahu is prolonging the war for political gain.

Despite Biden’s criticism of the ICC, other allies of the U.S. and Israel, including France and Belgium, have defended the court’s independence. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the move toward warrants was “not helpful” as allies seek a way to end the war and assist with humanitarian aid in the region.

Congressional Republicans, in particular, bristled at the ICC’s move, leading to Tuesday’s vote in the House on the sanctions legislation from Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. Some Democrats have joined in those criticisms of the court as well, with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., leading a letter of two dozen members from both parties calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to impose sanctions against the ICC.

“The charges against Israeli leaders are baseless,” 24 members wrote in that letter. “They reflect the ICC’s well-documented historical bias against Israel. The evidence is clear: Hamas terrorists are responsible for wreaking havoc and sowing destruction. … This tragic conflict could end tomorrow if Hamas would put down their weapons, free the hostages, and allow more humanitarian aid into the region. Instead of working toward peaceful, just resolution, the ICC is playing politics.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he, too, opposes the ICC’s decision but said he could not support the “partisan” House bill that is “dead on arrival in the United States Senate.” Still, Jeffries said he believes there is room for bipartisan legislation on the issue.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called the ICC’s action “outrageous” and “unconscionable” in a press conference Tuesday morning before the vote.

“The ICC has to be punished for this action,” he said. “We cannot allow this to stand. If the ICC was allowed to do this and go after the leaders of countries whose actions they disagree with why would they not come after America?”

Netanyahu is expected to personally address both chambers of Congress in the coming weeks. He recently accepted an invitation from the top four leaders in Congress — Johnson, Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — to speak to a joint session of Congress. A date has not been set for that speech.

Netanyahu has also called the ICC’s decision “outrageous,” suggesting that the court was creating a “false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas” akin to putting President George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden on the same moral level after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The arrest warrants, Netanyahu said, are “a moral outrage of historic proportions” that will “cast an everlasting mark of shame on the international court.”