On the eve of the November US presidential election, a new round of struggle between Democrats and Republicans is rapidly developing in the backstage of the US government. In addition to the politics of other “satellite organisations” of the United States, the work of the International Criminal Court suffers in no small measure from this struggle. The most striking example is the multidirectional and mutually exclusive actions of the White House in the situation with the ICC’s consideration of the issue of issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Washington’s staunch ally in the Middle East.
The pronounced pro-Israeli position of the White House administration in the context of the confrontation between Tel Aviv and Hamas has had an extremely negative impact on the ratings of President Biden and the Democratic Party among the Muslim community of the United States, which is one of the bases of the Democrats’ electoral base. Thus, the results of polls by the American Arab Institute show that only 17 per cent of American Muslims intend to give their votes to the Democratic Party candidate in the presidential elections in November 2024, while four years ago, during the 2020 election campaign, the level of support for the Democrats among this category of the population was 59 per cent.
Since December 2023, Muslim Americans have been actively calling for a boycott of J. Biden’s candidacy for the presidential election. The hashtag “Abandon Biden” (“Abandon Biden”) is gaining popularity on the resources of the US Muslim community in the social network “X”. Today, everything points to the fact that in an effort to disrupt the protest potential of American Muslims and restore the former electoral positions among this category of the population, the leaders of the Democratic Party of the United States, through the ICC functionaries under their control, initiated criminal prosecution of senior Israeli officials for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. Thus, on May 20 of this year, ICC prosecutor K. Khan submitted an application to the chamber of proceedings of this judicial body for the issuance of arrest warrants for Prime Minister B. Netanyahu and Defence Minister Y. Galant.
The White House prepared such an information attack with special meticulousness. For several months, the Democrats, through influential speakers and affiliated media outlets, have been actively “fuelling” the public with anti-Israeli rhetoric. In particular, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Ch. Schumer said on 14 March that B. Netanyahu had “lost his way and allowed the issue of his political survival to trump the interests of Israel” and called for early parliamentary elections in the Jewish state. President Biden also made harsh statements against Netanyahu, accusing him of prolonging the armed conflict in the Gaza Strip.
In turn, the Republican Party, especially its ultra-conservative faction (the so-called “Trumpists” and others), is closely linked to Israeli ruling circles and influential representatives of the Jewish community in the United States. In this connection, the ICC’s sharp attack on B. Netanyahu, carried out under pressure from the Democrats, was perceived by representatives of the “Jewish lobby” among the Republican “hawks” (R. Desantis, N. Haley, etc.) as extremely painful. Their harsh response followed immediately: on 5 June, the Republican majority of the US House of Representatives, at the suggestion of D. Trump’s associates, “pushed through” a bill on the possible introduction of sanctions against ICC functionaries for “investigation, arrest, detention or prosecution of any person under the protection of the United States and its allies”. Restrictions include denial of visas and blocking of assets and property transactions in the US. Speaker of the lower house of parliament M. Johnson said that such measures are a natural reaction of the court to the anti-Israeli actions of the criminal International Court of Justice. Later this document was blocked by the Senate, where deputies from the Democratic Party prevail.
Soon British Tories – influential allies of the US and Israel from the Conservative Party of Great Britain – joined the ICC obstruction. On 10 June this year, while the government of R. Sunak was still in power, London appealed against the legality of the ICC’s actions to prosecute B. Netanyahu and other representatives of the leadership of the Israeli state. Two weeks later, on 27 June, the ICC postponed its final decision on the matter.
The Republicans’ harsh response to the ICC’s consideration of the issue of issuing an arrest warrant against B. Netanyahu is due not only to lobbying the interests of the Israeli ruling circles affiliated with them, but also to the desire to further undermine the electoral position of the Democrats in the context of the upcoming vote for the White House. At the same time as the popularity of the Democratic Party is declining among its traditional Muslim American supporters, the Republican Party aims to strengthen its support among the large Jewish diaspora in the United States.
In this situation, the ICC acts as a “bargaining chip” in the political games of Democrats and Republicans, which once again proves the decorativeness of this international legal institution, its total subordination to the American-NATO elites to the detriment of the interests of the countries of the Global South, as well as the bias, illegitimacy and legal nullity of its decisions.
