
Actor George Clooney is worried that his wife Amal Alamuddin Clooney could face sanctions over her contributions to the decision by International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan to seek arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Clooney voiced his concerns in a phone call with Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti last month, the Washington Post reported. The Oscar-winning actor was angered by US President Joe Biden's reference to the warrants as "outrageous" given his Lebanon-born wife's work to bring them about.
Amal Clooney announced on the Clooney Foundation for Justice website that she was one of the experts who was tasked with the ICC to investigate whether Israel was committing war crimes in its war against the Hamas terrorist organization.
“We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and extermination," she wrote.
Amal, daughter of a Lebanese Druze father and Sunni Moslem mother, has been a noted critic of Israel for at least a decade and was sought by the UN Human Rights Council to participate in an investigation against the Jewish State in 2014, though she declined to participate at the time.
Just prior to her marriage to George Clooney in 2014, Amal stated, “I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed."
This week, the US House of Representatives passed the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, a bill that would impose sanctions on the ICC officials who were involved in the campaign to seek arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. The Senate has not yet voted on the bill, which the White House has stated it opposes.