Reporter Presses Blinken On How Biden Criticizing ICC Is Different From Trump Attacking His Criminal Case
A reporter pressed Secretary of State Antony Blinken on whether President Joe Biden’s “attempts to discredit” the International Criminal Court are any different from Donald Trump’s disparagement of the Manhattan Criminal Courts.
The Post’s John Hudson made the comparison at a NATO meeting Friday in Prague.
Hudson asked, “Former President Trump’s trial was defined by his efforts to castigate and delegitimize a court of law. Does that give you any pause about how the Biden administration responded to another court of law, the International Criminal Court, as well as the International Court of Justice, with regards to Gaza?”
Trump’s trial was defined by his efforts to castigate and delegitimize a court of law. How does that compare to the Biden administration’s attempts to discredit and impugn another court of law, the ICC (and ICJ)? Blinken responds: pic.twitter.com/18lnorxQOD
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) May 31, 2024
Blinken replied, “I’m not going to comment on the first part of your question because, as I’ve long said, I don’t do politics, I do policy.”
He continued:
With regard to policy and the ICC, look, we’ve been very clear about this: the decision that the prosecutor made was, in our judgment, profoundly wrongheaded. And, in creating the equation between Hamas and Israel — Hamas’ leaders and Israel’s democratically elected leaders — as we’ve said, as I’ve said, it’s, quite frankly, shameful.
Earlier this month, the ICC issued arrest warrants for top Israeli officials and the leaders of Hamas. Both President Biden and Blinken released statements criticizing the move by the ICC’s chief prosecutor, alleging the warrants drew and equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
Biden called the move “outrageous,” adding, “And let me be clear: there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats against its security.”
The ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan called those complaints “nonsense.”
“I am not saying that Israel with its democracy and its Supreme Court is akin to Hamas, of course not. I couldn’t be clearer, Israel has every right to protect its population and to get the hostages back. But nobody has a license to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. The means define us,” Khan told The Times.
He also disputed claims that Israel had no choice but to prosecute the war as it has, pointing to England’s response to the IRA as an example: “There were attempts to kill Margaret Thatcher, Airey Neave was blown up, Lord Mountbatten was blown up, there was the Enniskillen attack, we had kneecappings… But the British didn’t decide to say, ‘Well, on the Falls Road [the heart of Catholic Belfast] there undoubtedly may be some IRA members and Republican sympathizers, so therefore let’s drop a 2,000 pound bomb on the Falls Road.’ You can’t do that.”
