On Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decried the proposed charges from the International Criminal Court (ICC) levied at him and others in the Israeli government.
Aside from calling them false, he likened the charges to issuing an arrest warrant for Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill alongside Adolf Hitler during World War II.
“I think these charges are exactly as President Biden called them,” Netanyahu said. “They’re outrageous. They’re beyond outrageous. This is a rogue prosecutor that has put false charges and created false symmetries that are both dangerous and false. And the first false symmetry is he equates the democratically elected leaders of Israel with the terrorist tyrants of Hamas. That’s like saying that, well, I’m issuing the arrest warrants for FDR and Churchill, but also for Hitler, or I’m issuing arrest warrants for George Bush, George W. Bush, but also for bin Laden. That’s absurd.”
“Secondly, the charges are completely false,” he continued. “Let’s take this charge of starvation. We have put in 500,000 tons of trucks of food and medicine for this population. We have taken 20,000 trucks. We have paved roads to put those trucks in. We have opened border crossings that Hamas closed down. I have had airdrops that have facilitated sea route supplies. I mean, the whole thing is absurd. You should know this. I mean, the prices of food in Gaza has dropped by 80%. The markets don’t lie. They talk about 23, I think, or 30 cases of malnutrition in a population of 2 million.”
“OK, the United States in 2022 had 20,000 deaths of malnutrition,” Netanyahu added. “That’s three times more than in Gaza. This is completely false. It’s the kind of slander that has been leveled the Jewish people for ages, and it’s renewed now against the Jewish state. It was false then. It’s false now. But one thing, this prosecutor, this rogue prosecutor, didn’t even bother to come here. He said he’d come here and check the facts. He didn’t check the facts. He just went out and demonized the Jewish state, and he’s taking the ICC down the route of the General Assembly that passes infinite resolutions, flat-Earth resolutions against Israel, or the Human Rights Council that used to have a reputation that is completely blown because half their resolutions are against Israel not against Iran, not against North Korea, not against Syria. It’s the same thing. It’s outrageous and false and dangerous because it endangers every democracy.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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