Mark Rubio, the US Secretary of State has begun the sacred duty of dismantling the International Criminal Court. To make it succumb, Rubio must keep sneers from the lips of sour sceptics.
The directive is equally valid for the United Nations and the craven diverse bodies, not forgetting The Hague, orbiting their sun. They were meant to make atrocities costly for monsters who commit or enable genocide among other heinous crimes.
“Meant to" is the operative term. In reality global bodies have played the shameless part of atrocity-enablers and abetters. A preeminent figure of this perfidy is the UN Secretary-General himself - António Guterres.
The Spaniard’s hard-set revulsion for Jewish lives is free for the use of terror groups that have a use for it. Musing that “Oct 7 did not happen in a vacuum" Guterres as good as told Hamas to adopt this theme for talking points.
As enabler of terrorism, British barrister and disgraced ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan isn’t far north of him. Recall the way he stalled warrants of arrest for the masterminds behind Hamas: Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar, and Ismail Haniyeh. He delayed them until the mass murderers were safely deceased.
The warrants Khan issued for Israel’s ‘warlords’ conveyed their own point: Netanyahu and his war cabinet were no better than the perpetrators of Oct 7.
The ICC prosecutor is an ugly character.
For one thing, Khan is typical of the Israel-hating international lawyer who professes to act for the greatest good of humanity yet who covers for the greatest evil. It is a fact recorded and verified that Khan is not a mere sex predator but for good measure a devious and cowardly schemer offloading his predicament and guilt on Israeli leaders.
"The ICC is a kangaroo court that has no jurisdiction over Americans or Israelis," began Israel’s government reaction.
"Its bogus arrest warrant against Prime Minister Netanyahu was issued by a disgraced former ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan, a few days before allegations of sexual misconduct against him became public. It was a clear attempt by Khan to divert public attention and seek protection from scrutiny."
Impulsive swings between humanitarianism and putting himself at the beck and call of barbarity is all in the day’s work of a sex fiend. Dismissed for praying on a staffer Khan’s exploits discredit the ICC more than it formerly was. He had the strongest motive to deny while his victim had no motive to invent.
Hence it came as no surprise that the ICC’s member states have overwhelmingly voted to remove the baddy. It makes Khan the only chief prosecutor to be dismissed. The fracas won’t be favourable to the recovery of the embattled court.
And the winners will be? Though his removal does not invalidate the arrest warrants, Benjamin Netanyahu in particular and the Likud party in general can breathe sighs of relief. Khan getting marching orders can only boost their standing going into elections.
Naturally the ICC’s Japanese President glorifies her court as a bastion of the international rule of law. Bastion forsooth! Consider the ruling her court made - its territorial jurisdiction extends to ‘Palestine’ by reason of it being a state party to the Rome Statute.
Observe the offending falsehood, that there’s a state named ‘Palestine’. Relegating international law to a fun amateur league puts the ICC in sync with its enabling partner, the International Court of Justice.
All of this defies common sense. Why would the ICC gamble with its already shaken credibility? Any self-respecting law professor could poke gaping holes in the ‘state of Palestine’. There must be - indeed there are - embedded drivers permitting such legal junk to pass muster.
No one better than Shany Mor has uncovered the motives. In a most perceptive article titled,
A special Dictionary for Israel, Mor lays bare the insanity’s three drivers
“Thunderous intonations about international law" he says, have three rhetorical functions.
One function “deflects any suspicion of bias against Israel. Those emotional outbursts at Israel’s crass conduct in Gaza aren’t due to a special animus. They are no more than 'neutral applications of international law'."
The second and third functions go real deep.
“For violators of international law our dominant image of 'war criminals' and 'international tribunals; is, of course, the Nazis. Attaching the terminology to Israel’s every military action over the course of decades, speaks to the fantasy of hauling the Jews before some tribunal where their guilt can finally be established."
A third driver is more pathological.
“There is a near-theological devotion to the postulate that Israel is uniquely evil, standing in the way of global brotherhood, and that good people everywhere would see that clearly if networks of powerful people weren’t using their money and influence to distort the truth and silence critique. The only way to make this pathology sound like a reasoned political program is to resort to international law. The argument is: there are laws and Israel is violating them, therefore my consuming hatred of Israel is just an application of these higher principles. It is necessary to stick to this conceit, otherwise the obsessive pathology starts looking like, well, an obsessive pathology."
The UN is the ideal proving house. Forgive the contradiction in terms but in September of 2025 a “UN-backed independent commission" produced the result anticipated: Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. The report brooked no second thought.
“Israeli authorities deliberately inflicted conditions of life on the Palestinians in Gaza calculated to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza, which is an underlying act of genocide."
It came after a two year gap - the case of Israeli genocide was brought by South Africa in late 2023. In a separate investigation on Gaza, the ICC began investigating crimes against humanity in March 2021 - well before October 7.
Why the delay? Why, if genocide and starvation were genuine, did the UN, the ICC and ICJ take all that leisurely time? After so many years of killing and starving there can’t be too many people left alive in the Gaza strip. And, come to think of it, what made Israel so tardy in committing genocide?
Without fake law fake charges inevitably flop. How bogus can law be? After all, these are venerated international courts at The Hague.
Consider the landmark 2004 ‘Advisory Opinion’ on the wall Israel constructed.
“The territorial boundaries of the Mandate for Palestine were laid down by various instruments." Thus the ICJ begins. Keep the eyes peeled - in graduated steps Occupied Palestine is conjured up from the former British Mandate for Palestine that Britain administered from 1923 to 1948. Step by false step the hackneyed fake, ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ takes on the identity of the Mandate, as “laid down by various instruments".
Evidently Rubio is gunning for an institution of remarkable cunning. Already he picked the weaponry. To reinforce the campaign for dismantling the ICC, he threatened not just stubborn member countries with prickly penalties, but non-state organisations continuing to work with the court.
A rush of withdrawals by member countries will surely follow Rubio’s threat of sanctions and travel bans. Venezuela by cancelling ICC membership, lost no time taking evasive action.
What seems to be driving Washington is more than Rubio’s gut objection to the ICC posturing like a, “world tribunal with near-unlimited reach to override the courts and constitutions of the US and sovereign states and prosecute and arrest our citizens."
Trump is busily realigning allies and enemies. Taking out the meddling court would give the project a shot in the arm.
Steve Apfel is an authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. His blog, ‘Balaam’s curse,’ is followed in 15 countries on 5 continents