WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the ICC:
“Since the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Israel, her allies, and Jewish people around the world have faced pernicious efforts to equate a sovereign nation’s self-defense with barbaric acts of terrorism.
“We’ve seen it in the specious media tropes about ‘cycles of violence’, in university statements bemoaning Israel’s self-defense actions, and in our own elected leaders’ attempts to browbeat Israel’s coalition government for seeking to restore its people’s security.
“But today, the most noxious attempt at moral equivalence comes from unelected international bureaucrats brandishing a contrived and perverted authority.
“In the same breath, the self-aggrandizing prosecutor of the International Criminal Court applied for arrest warrants for both Hamas’ chief terrorist and Israel’s duly elected Prime Minister.
“It’s a damning development, but not for the supposed subjects of the application.
“The ICC has succeeded only in discrediting itself even further as a rogue kangaroo court utterly untethered to morality or justice.
“For those of us who have long rejected this international farce of a court and its efforts to gobble up jurisdiction, this fact was hardly news.
“I’ve refused to acknowledge any ICC authority to conduct politicized investigations of American servicemembers, as it has tried illegitimately to do for years.
“And weeks ago, several of our colleagues and I warned the institution specifically against lighting any last shred of its credibility on fire in an attempt to equate Hamas’ calculated cruelty with Israel’s right to self-defense.
“Putting its arrogance on full display, the judicial junta in The Hague responded by claiming that holding it accountable for this power grab would violate international law.
“Unfortunately, there are still plenty here in the Senate and in the Administration who need reality to be spelled out more clearly.
“This isn’t about Prime Minister Netanyahu. It isn’t about so-called international law.
“In fact, the leader of Israel’s opposition condemned the ICC’s decision as ‘a complete moral failure.’
“But too many Senate Democrats require frequent reminders of how Israel’s national unity government works, and what the Israeli people expect of it.
“Even as glaring evidence exposed the moral rot and terrorist complicity of another international organization, UNRWA, the Biden Administration was reluctant to ignore its loud base of campus radicals and end U.S. funding.
“Well, today’s news lays down another gauntlet. It’s time for the President and other Western leaders to finally pick it up…
“Support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist savages like Sinwar…
“Reject the fiction that unaccountable bureaucrats in The Hague have any power over a sovereign nation that isn’t a signatory to its authority…
“Commit to imposing significant costs on the Court and its agents if it pursues shameful and baseless charges against Israel…
“And choose once and for all between actual justice and the rule of the loud campus mob.”
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