Biden Doesn't Recognize ICC, Unless He's Helping It Prosecute Putin

White House is reportedly working with Israel "to head off” possible arrest warrants for Netanyahu over starvation campaign in Gaza.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is only recognized by the U.S. when it’s politically expedient.

The Biden administration has been working to help Israel avoid reported looming arrest warrants from the judicial body against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials over the genocide in Gaza, The Times of Israel reported.

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But the White House’s position to protect Netanyahu & Co. from potential war crimes charges for intentionally starving Gazans is the opposite reaction it had when the court — which is not recognized by Russia, Israel, or the U.S. — announced in March 2023 an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over his actions in Ukraine.

Biden turned into Judge Judy.

He called the charges “justified.”.

They were so “justified” that he reportedly ordered staffers to help the ICC in its investigation.

Putin “clearly committed war crimes,” Biden said.

The order was not immediately embraced by the Pentagon because it was concerned about the possibility of the court prosecuting American troops stationed overseas. But the sharing was eventually approved.

Foreign Affairs reported that in August 2023, “with Biden’s support, Congress passed an appropriations bill authorizing the government to share U.S. intelligence on the war in Ukraine with ICC prosecutors.”

The magazine wrote:

By supporting the ICC’s investigations against Russia for its acts in Ukraine, the White House and Congress have said the quiet part out loud: the United States believes the ICC does, indeed, have jurisdiction over acts committed by nonmember-state forces—just not over U.S. forces and the forces of its select allies such as Israel. If the United States held Russia to the standard to which it holds itself, it would have to reject the ICC’s claim of jurisdiction over Russians in Ukraine, and the Russian military would enjoy impunity for its serious crimes. But the United States has made an exception for its rival. This is a huge problem because it makes the United States’ double standard explicit.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote in The Guardian that “It would be profoundly unprincipled for Washington to accept territorial jurisdiction for Russian war crimes in Ukraine but not for Israeli war crimes in Gaza.”

Roth noted that the ICC is likely targeting Netanyahu and other top Israelis over the starvation strategy employed by Israel.

Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said “Washington fully supported, if not stimulated, the issuance of ICC warrants against the Russian leadership," according to Reuters.

But “the American political system does not recognize the legitimacy of this structure in relation to itself and its satellites."