The International Criminal Court may do what looks impossible at the moment: keep the Israeli unity government together. This morning, the ICC's chief prosecutor investigating the war has issued requests for five arrest warrants, two of which target Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant. Karim Khan also requested arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, currently lounging in Doha.

If it seems perverse that the ICC would target the victim nation of an invasion by a terror network with the worst organized atrocities in decades -- then you're just paying attention. But it gets worse than that, as Khan's demand actually validates Hamas' human-shield strategy:

The International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, said Monday that he had requested arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Oct. 7 attack and the war in Gaza.

In a statement, Mr. Khan said he was applying for arrest warrants for Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. He also said he was requesting warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and for Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant....

With regard to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, the prosecutor said he believed the Israeli leaders bore criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a weapon of war and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.”

This is an absurd charge, but one gaining credence among the anti-Semitic ruling elite in the West. Hamas actually targeted civilians in its October 7 atrocities; Gazans gunned down hundreds of young men and women at a music festival, raped and kidnapped some of them, and then went on a orgy of blood and mayhem in the kibbutzes. Hamas led that operation, proudly proclaiming it as their model of warfare with the intent to annihilate Israel and kill the Jews living there. Having started the war, Hamas then dug itself into its reinforced positions in civilian areas, launching rocket attacks and conducting military and terror operations from those positions, leaving Israel the choice of fighting the war or surrendering to its own destruction. Israel has no choice but to end the war that the Gazans and their government began on October 7.

Hamas committed the war crime of using its civilian population as shields, and Hamas is responsible for the civilian deaths that result. Nor is this new; Hamas has spent the last 18 years firing missiles from residential neighborhoods so as to prevent Israel from attacking those positions. Nor does the civilian casualty rate justify a conclusion that Israel is being irresponsible in its attacks. Even using Hamas numbers, the current ratio of death in urban combat is around 2:1, an almost absurdly low number in warfare of this nature. That demonstrates the care taken by the IDF to minimize "collateral damage," even at increased risk to its own forces. 

To claim that Israel is responsible for these deaths rather than the terror network committing the actual war crime of staging military/terror operations in civilian areas is a grotesque moral inversion. This just validates terrorism and Hamas' human-shield strategies, making it impossible to ever fight and defeat terror networks that hold any ground, even when they commit atrocities and start wars. It's also a standard that has never been applied in any war, terrorist or otherwise, against an aggressor that refuses to come out of its cities but insists on continued war.

There's another aspect to the ICC's moral perversion as well. The ICC waited over seven months after October 7 to take any action against Hamas leadership despite the obvious evidence of atrocities and Hamas' efforts to promote its "Al-Aqsa Flood" strategy in the days and weeks since. The ICC, the United Nations, and every other multilateral organization stuck their heads in the sand for months, but almost immediately began accusing Israel of violating norms by fighting back in a war they didn't start. Now Khan and the ICC want to paper over that with meaningless warrant requests for three Hamas leaders in parallel to their targeting of Israel's war leadership to cover up their anti-Semitic impulses and their knee-bending to genocidal terror groups.

This will likely backfire on the ICC and the UN, at least in Israel. The announcement has interrupted (for the moment, anyway) the dissolution of the unity government, which appeared to be picking up steam the last few days. Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's chief political rival who just issued an ultimatum to the PM two days ago, defended Netanyahu and Gallant while calling the ICC's request "a crime of historic proportions":

“The State of Israel is waging one of the just wars fought in modern history following a reprehensible massacre perpetrated by terrorist Hamas on the 7th of October,” Gantz says in a statement.

“While Israel fights with one of the strictest moral codes in history, while complying with international law and boasting a robust independent judiciary – drawing parallels between the leaders of a democratic country determined to defend itself from despicable terror to leaders of a bloodthirsty terror organization is a deep distortion of justice and blatant moral bankruptcy,” Gantz says.

“The prosecutor’s position to apply for arrest warrants is in itself a crime of historic proportions to be remembered for generations,” Gantz says.

What's interesting about this is the absence of Gantz' name among the arrest warrants. Since the formation of the unity government in late October, the decisions on military operations have been made by three men, not two: Netanyahu, Gallant, and Gantz. That was the price paid by Netanyahu for the formation of the unity government. Any decisions after that point -- comprising almost all of Israel's offensive operations in Gaza -- would be the responsibility of all three men, not just two of them. Gantz' absence among the warrants makes it very clear that Khan and the ICC are attempting to interfere in Israel's internal politics.

Will Gantz and his allies let them get away with it? We'll see, but at least Gantz' party leader Yair Lapid also blasted the ICC for its moral equivalence of Israel and Hamas in this war:

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid dismisses the decision of International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan to seek arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas terror leaders, declaring that Israel will “not accept a comparison to Hamas.”

“It is not possible to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Sinwar and Deif. There is no such comparison, we cannot accept it and it is unforgivable,” he says, calling the decision “a terrible political failure.”

Lapid had just called for Gantz to leave the unity government when Khan announced his warrant requests. Is that off the table now? Lapid may want to hear from Joe Biden first:

“I expect the American administration to condemn the arrest warrants. I believe they will stand behind us,” Lapid says.

Will they? Or will they use the ICC warrants as a way to pressure Netanyahu and Gallant into holding snap elections? Perhaps, but if that's the White House response, then Lapid and Gantz may find it more palatable to rally around the unity government and see the Rafah operation all the way to the end first.