Nations around the world reacted to the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, but one nation stood out in its reaction.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban invited Netanyahu to Hungary on Nov. 22, saying the arrest warrant would “not be observed.”
Orban, in comments on state radio, accused the ICC of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”
The ICC, the world’s top war crimes court, based in The Hague, issued the warrant for Netanyahu on the previous day, along with one for former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
One member of terrorist group Hamas, its military chief Mohammed Deif, was also charged.
They are accused of crimes against humanity in the conduct of the 13-month war in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, in which about 1,200 were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage.
Israel, however, said Deif, also known as Ibrahim al-Masri, was killed in an airstrike on July 13. Hamas publicly denies that, but according to the Israel Defense Forces, the group has privately acknowledged it.
The ICC, though, has no means of enforcing the warrants itself and must rely on member states to do it.
Orban, a close Netanyahu ally, called the arrest warrant “outrageously impudent” and “cynical.”
“We will defy this decision, and it will have no consequences for him,” Orban said.
The warrants allege that Netanyahu and Gallant used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid and intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. They have denied the charges.
The prime ministers of Slovenia and Ireland said they would comply and arrest Netanyahu if he were to visit their countries.
Slovenia was the most recent EU nation to recognize Palestine as an independent state, which it did in June.
France and Germany gave more measured responses.
“France takes note of this decision. True to its long-standing commitment to supporting international justice, it reiterates its attachment to the independent work of the court, in accordance with the Rome Statute,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said on Nov. 22.
On Nov. 21, Lemoine declined to say whether France would arrest Netanyahu should he come to France, saying it was legally complicated.
Berlin said it would carefully examine the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant but wouldn’t take further steps until a visit to Germany was planned.
Netanyahu was last there in March 2023.
“I find it hard to imagine that we would make arrests on this basis,” German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said.
He mentioned Germany’s “historical responsibility” toward Israel, a state founded in the wake of the Holocaust.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, that Germany respected the ICC’s work and adhered to the law at the national, European, and international levels.
The United States “fundamentally rejects” the ICC’s decision, a National Security Council spokesman said on Nov. 21.
“We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” the spokesman said.
Israeli officials, including Netanyahu’s political rivals such as opposition leader Yair Lapid and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, condemned the action.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, “The decision chose the side of terrorism and evil over democracy and freedom and turned the international justice system itself into a human shield for Hamas’s crimes against humanity.”
Hamas, without addressing Deif’s indictment, lauded the arrest warrants against the Israeli officials and urged that such warrants be expanded “to all criminal occupation leaders.”
“The anti-Semitic decision of the international court in The Hague is a modern Dreyfus trial, and it will end the same way,” the prime minister said.
He alluded to French Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s conviction in 1894 on trumped-up charges of spying for Germany; he was later exonerated.
Dreyfus served five years in France’s tropical Devil’s Island prison off the coast of French Guiana, some of it in chains.
Netanyahu said the ICC is “repeating the outrageous offense” by falsely accusing him and Gallant “of deliberately targeting civilians” when they do everything in their power to avoid civilian casualties.
“[Israel issues] millions of text messages, phone calls, leaflets to the citizens of Gaza to get them out of harm’s way—while the Hamas terrorists do everything in their power to keep them in harm’s way, including shooting them, using them as human shields,” he said.
Israel has supplied 700,000 tons of food to Gaza, he said, supplies “routinely looted” by Hamas.
Israel, in recent weeks, facilitated polio vaccinations for 97 percent of Gaza’s population, he said.
“This doesn’t prevent the court of accusing us of genocide,” Netanyahu said.
“No biased anti-Israel decision in The Hague will prevent the State of Israel from defending its citizens.”
Netanyahu and Orban have been close for decades.
Netanyahu thanked Orban when Hungary opened a trade office with “diplomatic status” in Jerusalem in 2019 after U.S. President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy there.
