Karim Khan dared to hold Israel to account – and that’s why he was brought down
Karim Khan attends a United Nations Security Council meeting in July 2023
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye on 27 July 2026,
There was a revealing post in the welter of reaction that followed the all too predictable dismissal of the Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday. It was made by Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, who warned New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani had just called the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal who should be arrested the next time he arrives on US soil, although Mamdani admitted he did not have the powers to do so. Danon repeated the claim – that now appears to be established as fact – that Khan used the warrants against Netanyahu and his former defence minister to cover up his alleged sexual misdemeanours.
As Middle East Eye investigation made clear, Khan launched the meticulously prepared warrants six weeks before he was even aware of the allegations.
But truth and due process were irrelevant in the 18-month campaign to remove Khan. This included a media campaign in the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, The Guardian and latterly CNN; private warnings by David Cameron, then foreign secretary, who told him Britain would defund the ICC and withdraw from the Rome Statute if the warrants were issued; Republican senators who told him: “Target Israel and we will target you”, and being named publicly as a suspect before he had even had the chance to defend himself by the president of the Assembly of State Parties (ASP), Finland’s Paivi Kaukoranta.
Danon threatened Mamdani with the same fate as Khan. “@NYCMayor Zohran Mamdani, take note: using Israel as a political weapon will not shield you from accountability,” Danon posted.
A new precedent
In the past, Israel preferred to operate behind the scenes. When it attempted to pressurise Khan’s predecessor Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, it did so discreetly.
The former prosecutor described in an interview with Al Jazeera a meeting with the then Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, in a New York hotel during a UN General Assembly meeting. “What was clear was that they did not want the investigations into the situation in Palestine to go on,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Asked whether Cohen had told her Israel could “take care” of her and warned that proceeding could compromise her family’s security, Bensouda replied: “He did. He did.”
But this campaign to remove Khan set a new precedent. Israel claimed ownership from the start, and made no attempt to conceal from Khan himself or the outside world that it was behind these allegations.