JJP View on the ICC Arrest Warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Former Defence Minister

JJP recognises the appropriateness of the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in relation to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. 

A staggering number of Gazans has been killed (nearly 47,000 by the time the ceasefire was agreed on 15 January 2024), the majority women and children; the remaining population is being starved by restriction of both commercial and humanitarian food supplies; the entire healthcare system has been destroyed and hundreds of healthcare workers killed; every university has been eliminated; water and sewage infrastructure and all agricultural structures and equipment have been destroyed.  These constitute innumerable war crimes and crimes against humanity.  It is right that those who gave the orders that resulted in this total devastation should be accountable for what was then carried out by the Israeli army.

JJP calls on the UK government to publicly state that it supports the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity and that it will enforce the warrants should the individuals concerned enter British jurisdiction.

JJP deplores the hostile reaction of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to the ICC’s decision and its failure to stand for Jewish values of justice and truthfulness.  The BoD’s  statement, issued on 21 November, ignores the massive evidence of Israeli war crimes (see here for the latest edition of an Israeli historian’s ongoing compilation), repeats the Israeli canard that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, for which no evidence has been provided, when the Israeli army’s actual use of Palestinians as human shields is well-attested here) and calls for a ‘sustainable peace’ without mentioning the occupation of Palestinian lands and the Israeli refusal to concede to Palestinian rights of self-determination.

JJP hopes that the accountability signalled by the ICC arrest warrants can shock Israel into a radical policy rethink and a new path to a better future for all who live from the river to the sea.