Democrats are coming out divided against the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday following a prosecutor\u2019s decision to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas\u2019 top leaders, with one lawmaker describing it as \u2018retribution against Israel for the original sin of existing as a Jewish State.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rep. Richie Torres, D-N.Y., made the pointed remark as ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said his office has \u2018reasonable grounds\u2019 to believe Netanyahu, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, its top political leader Ismail Haniyeh and its military commander Mohammed Dief have committed \u2018war crimes and crimes against humanity\u2019 since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Israel is not a member of the ICC and therefore the ICC has no jurisdiction. The decision to seek arrest warrants is not law but politics,\u2019 Torres said in a statement. \u2018It is not justice but rather retribution against Israel for the original sin of existing as a Jewish State and the subsequent sin of defending itself amid the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Today\u2019s decision in effect makes it criminal for a state like Israel to defend itself against an enemy shrewd enough to embed itself in a civilian population, as Hamas has done to an extent never seen before in the history of warfare,\u2019 he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018But for October 7th and Hamas\u2019 unprecedented militarization of its own civilian population and infrastructure, there would be no war in Gaza and no humanitarian crisis among Gazans,\u2019 Torres also said. \u2018Hamas is the cause of everything tragic that has ensued and Hamas alone should be the target of criminal prosecution.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fellow New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who previously has said Israel is carrying out a \u2018genocide\u2019 in Gaza and has been implementing a \u2018forced famine,\u2019 said on Monday that \u2018I think my role as much as possible broadly is \u2026 that we cease U.S. funding for human rights abuses, war crimes and violations abroad.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018And what we see happening in Gaza, in the West Bank and throughout Palestine has been a broad \u2013 and as we\u2019ve seen even from this morning that with the ICC\u2019s designation as well of both Sinwar and Netanyahu \u2013 that\u00a0this is happening, and it\u2019s occurring this should not happen with U.S. resources,\u2019 she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fox News\u2019 Tyler Olson contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Democrats are coming out divided against the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday following a prosecutor\u2019s decision to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas\u2019 top leaders, with one lawmaker describing it as \u2018retribution against Israel for the original sin of existing as a Jewish State.\u2019\u00a0 Rep. Richie Torres, D-N.Y., made <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}