The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court on Thursday for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will reverberate through that country, but it also raises questions for the United States.
If the international court believes that Israel may have committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip and engaged in a policy of deliberate starvation of civilians, then whose weapons were used? Which country protected Israel in the United Nations and blocked more robust efforts to channel food to starving Palestinians? The answer, of course, is the United States.
President Joe Biden in May denounced the ICC prosecutor’s request for warrants and said that “there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.” But there is a moral equivalence between an American child and an Israeli child and a Palestinian child. They all deserve to be protected. We should not operate as if there is a hierarchy in the value of children’s lives, with some invaluable and others expendable.
Aid workers I’ve interviewed overwhelmingly agree that Israel has used starvation as a tool of war. The impulse of Americans who are skeptical of the warrants will be to respond by noting the brutality of the Oct. 7 atrocities by Hamas that preceded Israel’s assault on Gaza. Fair enough: The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for a Hamas leader for crimes against humanity.
The point is that war crimes by one side do not justify additional war crimes by the other. We should unite in condemning the savagery of attacks by Hamas, but that savagery does not excuse Israel’s use of U.S. weapons to level entire neighborhoods in Gaza.
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Biden has spoken a good deal about the challenge Russia creates for the “rules-based international order,” and it’s because of Russian brutality in Ukraine that an arrest warrant was issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin. But if we decry Putin’s violations of international law in Ukraine, how can we simultaneously supply weapons that an international tribunal suggests are used for breaches of humanitarian law in Gaza?
Israel is now more isolated than ever, and it will be more difficult for Netanyahu to travel. Americans should also reflect on how we have become more isolated, as reflected in the U.N. resolution this week calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. Our allies supported it, but the United States vetoed it.
When our weapons are implicated in war crimes, maybe it’s past time for a policy rethink.
Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times columnist.