The United States has effectively warned the United Nations, investigate Israel’s crimes and you’ll face the same punishment as the ICC. In a 31 March 2025 letter addressed to the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James E. Risch issued a stern warning to the UN to stop focusing on Israel or face retaliation.
The lawmakers warned that any attempt by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to establish an international investigative mechanism (IIM) based on the resolutions of Agenda Item 2, which condemned Israel’s war crimes in the occupied Palestinian Territory, would be subject to the same consequences as the International Criminal Court when it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.
This is not the first time the US has weaponised sanctions to shield its allies from accountability. On 6 February, US President Donald Trump adopted an Executive Order imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), authorising asset freezes and entry bans on ICC officials. The sanctions also extended to other non-US persons providing support to the court’s work. In a 10 February statement, UN experts condemned these sanctions stating that the US was empowering “war criminals by seeking to punish the ICC, denying justice and reparation to thousands of victims around the world, including women and children.”
The Lancet medical journal estimates that between October 2023 and July 2024, Israel k*lled more than 186,000 Palestinians. Another Lancet report estimates that the official death toll of 37,877 over that period, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, may have been under-counted by as much as 41 per cent.
Since World War 2, Israel has been the single largest recipient country of US aid, and since 7 October 2023, the US has provided a further $12.5 billion in direct military aid to Israel, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It is widely accepted by experts and activists that Israel’s decades-long onslaught on Palestinians would not be possible – at least at such scale – without US funding and support. This begs the question, is the US government making threats against the ICC and the UN simply to protect Israel, a genocidal ally, or to protect itself as an equal partner and enabler?
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Sources
https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/34/38
https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02678-3/fulltext