The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing over 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in matters of public policy, today extended its commendation and gratitude to Secretary of State Antony Blinken for his commitment to work with Congress to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its officials. This came in response to the announcement by the ICC Prosecutor that he would seek arrest warrants against Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.
To Sen. James Risch, in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Mr. Blinken said that “there’s no question we have to look at the appropriate steps to take to deal with, again, what is a profoundly wrong-headed decision” by the ICC. And to Sen. Lindsay Graham during a hearing of a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing, Mr. Blinken said he would “welcome” working with Republicans on what Graham said would be a “bipartisan effort to sanction the ICC.”
“We stand with Secretary Blinken in his pursuit of a just and balanced approach to international law,” said Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, President of the Coalition for Jewish Values. “The ICC’s abhorrent equivalence between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, and Jewish leaders working to end the explicit threat of another Holocaust, can only be seen as antisemitic bigotry. It negates trust in international legal institutions and undermine efforts to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.”
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The CJV is encouraged by the bipartisan support for sanctioning the ICC, and urges the Administration and Congress to act swiftly and jointly to implement sanctions that will hold the ICC accountable for its actions.