The strategic threat coming from the International Criminal Court (ICC) is being underestimated. The focus is naturally on the arrest warrants the ICC has issued against the leaders of the Jewish state and on its setting the groundwork for the mass arrests of Israeli Jews. Yet, even more alarming is some European countries’ immediate commitment to collaborate with the ICC.
This is part of a European challenge to the world order led by the United States.
For 2,000 years, Europe dominated the world. Then, in the 20th century, power shifted abruptly from Europe to the United States. Mainstream Europe has yet to accept this.
Europe today is dependent on America’s military, economic, and political might. Currently, through the ICC, Europe is attempting to create a reciprocal American dependency.
The European commitment to arrest the leaders of Israel, based on ludicrous charges – recycling the age-old “Jews deliberately starve Europeans” slander – is a proxy assault on the US. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said so explicitly. “This is a trial run to see: ‘Can we go after a head of state from a nation that’s not a member [of the ICC]?’ If [the ICC] can go after them and [the ICC] can get it done with regard to Israel, they will apply that to the United States at some point,” he cautioned.
An 'Iron Dome' against the ICC assault
US President Donald Trump has a range of options with which to counter the threat coming from The Hague. He can impose tougher sanctions on the ICC; press its member states to follow Hungary’s lead and withdraw; sanction countries that have committed to collaborate with the ICC’s assault on the Jewish state; or take measures to shut down the ICC.
However, those and other alternatives could take time to implement and do not offer adequate protection since lawfare attacks can come not just from the ICC, but also from individual European countries, if, for example, one of their citizens were killed in a strike in Iraq, Yemen, or Gaza.
President Trump could choose to pursue an alternative course of action that would yield immediate results. He could secure an enforceable pledge from European countries never to collaborate with the ICC or with any lawfare efforts targeting the US or the Jewish state. This could be done immediately, at the level of heads of state, with phone calls to French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders. It could be followed up with the placement of long-term enforcement mechanisms. Paradoxically, the European Union (EU) could be beneficial in installing such mechanisms, given its vast experience in enforcing rules and standards on member states.
In addition to threatening to arrest Israeli Jews en masse, the ICC’s actions lead to demoralization and are an attempt to shake Jewish self-confidence, which has been restored after 2,000 years of European oppression.
Moreover, as discussed in my book The Assault on Judaism, the West has prevented the people of Gaza from fleeing a war zone as part of the Western assault on Judaism. After all, how could the ICC accuse the Jewish state of “deliberate starvation of Palestinians,” if those Palestinians had already fled and were enjoying a normal peaceful life elsewhere?
In this regard, the combination of Trump’s Gaza relocation plan and European countries’ pledges not to collaborate with the ICC on issues relating to the US and Israel would result in restoration of the basic human rights of Palestinians to flee a war zone – a right cruelly robbed from them by the former US administration and by European governments.
The Right Honorable Joan Ryan, a former Labor member of the UK parliament who spoke at the recent Palm Beach Countering Antisemitism Summit, pushed back against the propsed non-collaboration pledge. While she disagreed with the measures the ICC has taken against Israel, stating that “accountability based on democratic values matters,” she said. “Israel and the IDF work based on these values; we need to ensure the ICC and ICJ do the same, she warned against weakening the ICC through such a pledge.”
The ICC has an important role to play, she posited, since war crimes are perpetrated around the world: “I don’t want to throw away the baby with the bathwater,” she cautioned.,
Yet, the non-collaboration pledge would address Ryan’s concern: It would force the ICC to redirect its efforts from obsessive targeting of the Jewish state to prosecuting real war crimes around the world. After all, the ICC has no autonomous arrest powers: It needs the collaboration of its member states.
Europe, let’s talk
President Trump’s imposition of a 20% tariff on Europe last week carried an apparent message: “Let’s talk about everything.” The ICC threat must be part of this all-encompassing US-Europe dialogue. European countries seeking relief from the additional tariff pressure are being presented with a golden opportunity to guarantee a long-term non-collaboration pledge.
Concurrently, this is an opportunity to get Europe to end its century-old incitement of Palestinians against Israel. As discussed in last week’s column, European funding of such programs and organizations should go from billions of euros per year to zero.
This would not only remove a hurdle to peace, it would also allow European countries to refocus their efforts and capital on addressing their own issues.
Those issues are rapidly becoming a threat to global stability, so much so that Vice President JD Vance dedicated his recent Munich Security Conference speech to the threat emerging from within Europe.
Rather than challenge the US-led world order, Europe has the opportunity to change course and finally embrace it for its own good. It can do so by pledging never to collaborate with the ICC’s action against the US or Israel.
The writer is the author of a new book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat Is Coming from the West. He is also the author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com) and chairman of the Judaism 3.0 think tank. See his articles at EuropeAndJerusalem.com.--