"Without commenting on ongoing cases, he called on European authorities to activate a mechanism that could limit the impact of US restrictions."
-------------------
ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
> Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of such a defence relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
Im sorry the latter part of the 20th century was all about trying to avoid the whole might makes right mindset and in international politics it still should be. Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right? The fact that people have just swallowed the might make right narrative just shows what kind of a dire situation we are in when it comes to international politics and how far standards have fallen since 2001.
Europe isn't a superpower but it's a giant entity with 450 million people and 15% of the world's gdp. It has the means to oppose the US and retaliate against its sanctions, if it doesn't it's because of the cowardice of its politicians and the weakness of its institutions.
>When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power.
It was a superpower, until Trump got back in office. He's been taking an axe to US soft power, and our institutions in general. We're on the edge of losing Global reserve currency status. That's what's driving the re-monetization of Silver and Gold.
Where ICC could win against someone in the US is if the opposition comes to power in the US and does nothing to protect that person. "Oh gosh, bounty hunters grabbed them and smuggled them out of the country? What a shame."
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
One of the things that made America a superpower is "soft power". Continuing to piss off their allies will eventually blow back if the US ever needs something from the UN.
Or worse they may need that French aircraft carrier if war breaks out with China.
Yes but the thing about power is the more you use it the more the other party learns to live without it. US has such a giant leverage over Europe because Europe believed US would never actually use its power against it. Imagine US sanctioning Chinese officials - they would shrug at best because China has its own everything because they always knew US would bully them.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
The only way we would ever answer to the ICC is if anyone could force us, by military threat. That's the only way people are put in front of that court.
Correction: it was created to advance own geopolitical goals and harrass unfriendly regimes using human rights abuse as an excuse. So in that sense nothing has fundamentally changed.
Not only judges in the ICC, the USA also used sanctions against a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice that is responsible for Bolsonaro's attempted coup case.
It's even more egregious it used the Magnitsky Act for that...
HN moderation will protect outlandish hyperbolic comments like this, won't it?
If it needed to be said, Francesca Albanese is not conducting warfare. She's doing her job as a UN Special Reporter on Israel's occupation of Palestine. You are shooting the messenger.
So many commenters here assume US global hegemony that, in reality, expired after the 1980s. Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The US is acting to impose sanctions on individuals with no direct ties to it by using its legal authority over American entities. The reason the US wants to do this is because the ICC is seeking to impose its legal authority over individuals whose state has not joined the ICC with novel legal theories and using its legal authority over ICC states. If the ICC had remained in areas where its legal authority is clear and not disputed, its judges and prosecutors wouldn't be facing this issue.
Can you be more specific? Which individuals and why (not)?
Note that eg if you're from (picking two random countries) Nepal and commit a crime in Italy, then Italy still has jurisdiction. Italian police can arrest you. [1]
Also, there's certain crimes that any country is allowed to arrest you for, for instance piracy on the high seas.
The only way the theory of international law holds any water is if countries are held to it regardless of the treaties they've signed. Any country that hasn't signed with the ICC is clearly a country run by criminals.
There should be no way the government can 'debank' someone in the first place. Monetary relations with other people have always been untouched by the state until very recently, even for revolutionaries. A private transaction is not anyone's business apart from the counterparties.
Assuming that someone should not be allowed to freely earn, spend, invest and participate in the economy without a proved felony is a dystopian concept.
Either have a proper fair public trial and put criminals in prison for serious violations or don't discriminate against anyone's stuff at all if you don't have any proofs. Otherwise it's massively used to give advantages to citizens of several nations to do business and earn while discriminating against others because of 'high risks' without any public court hearing, based on nationality, citizenship or organizational relations.
Unfortunately this seems to be exactly the slope the West is going down after dismissing all the crazy talk of conspiracy theorists who warned of this very thing.
I haven’t seen anything about it here, but another example that is worse because it’s an attack on a private person, is the EU recently sanctioning the former Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud, living in Belgium which he now cannot leave, for seemingly, essentially reminding the people of Europe and EU politicians’ of the things they said.
The US is now literally sanctioning UN experts and ICC people if they push too hard on accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes, e.g. Francesca Albanese over her Gaza reports and support for ICC cases. In Germany (and elsewhere) it often doesn’t need formal sanctions: people get disinvited, smeared, or quietly pushed out of jobs if they’re too vocal on Palestine – think Ai Weiwei, Greta Thunberg, Masha Gessen, Ilan Pappé, Ghassan Hage and others running into cancellations, funding cuts, and public delegitimisation instead of explicit legal punishment.
Using a human-rights sanctions framework against judges of a court literally created to prosecute human-rights violations is the snake eating its own tail. Sanctions used to be targeted at people trying to blow up the rule of law, now they are being used at people trying to apply it in ways that are politically inconvenient to a superpower and its allies.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
The more wild US gets with its sanction powers the more it draws other countries to move usa away from the center of the financial system.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
It is understandable that you would have this impression, given that the US leader has total legal immunity, directly controls the judiciary, Congress, tariffs and formerly independent financial agencies, openly threatens journalists and news media companies, appoints untalented lackies and openly enriches himself and his family and associates, openly uses federal legal entities to pursue opponents, deploys the military within the country against its own citizens, and has made federal arrest without warrant a common daily event.
It you live in a country where your government does not exhibit such characteristics, it's easy to mistake the above as an indication of something suspiciously unlike democracy.
From TFA: "In concrete terms, the rule of law is equality for all individuals, globally, before justice."
The rule of law has now become — for those who enjoy American expressions — a type of fan fiction.
I think Trump has successfully destroyed all of that and replaced it with (rhetoric about) threats of hard power.
The Trump administration is the equivalent of a lazy/absent parent. The kids have no respect for them whatsoever, but they're sick with them for time being and aware that belt hurts when it's deployed.
I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
In international institutions Israel is weak. It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN compared to any other country.
>It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN
How is this anything but DARVO? Israel receives criticism in the UN for reasons that are easily verified and quite understandable - namely its deliriously racist, brutally violent, textbook illegal, and long-lived occupation of Palestine and attempts to annex its territory.
Blaming Muslim countries writ large for the UN complaining about Israel's blatant and continuous violation of the UN Charter and various other international laws is shockingly racist.
Why is the US doing this just to cover the crimes of one small country? It seems like they’re really going above and beyond.
Surely couldn’t have that much blackmail on him. You’d need something so shocking that it’d ruin him and his entire family forever. Where just mentioning the name would cause disgust for generations. Surely there’s nothing like that in the archives.
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The banking cartel will outlaw any real alternative. Bitcoin, Brics crypto system, whatever. And they will confiscate gold like back in the 30s. If they don't their magic money faucet will end. And they started wars for much smaller threats to their dominance.
First, a French judge has no power in the US. Second, Bitcoin is utter shit: it is not sustainable and mainly used to prop up criminals. Third, if money can be hidden and taxation becomes very difficult or impossible, society will collapse, and the "elite" loses its position. Bitcoin is not an alternative.
Cryptocurrencies work fine. If the debanked were to use them, they would find 90% of their restrictions lifted immediately and without permission from anyone.
No, society will not collapse; it will stabilize. There are many forms of taxation, e.g. property, tarrifs, etc. that are unaffected.
Unpopular opinion, but the US and a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC and in their eyes it does not exist; hence the US has no obligation to support them in any way.
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
The long term consequence is that the US is proving that the rest of the world how dangerous it is to rely on US financial institutions. I very much doubt destroying the trustworthiness of its financial institutions in order to protect war criominals is beneficial for the US in the long run.
After WW2, the US did a lot of bad things but it did not change its status in the world. Nothing will change now or in the foreseeable future. And the “problem” is pretty simple: there is no one able to take its place.
I don’t think the ICC was plotting to undermine US or Israel sovereignty. The dispute is about jurisdiction. The ICC has a pretty expansive theory that says it can go after nationals of non-member states if the alleged conduct happened on the territory of a member state. That theory has been around for years and mostly lived in briefs and conferences. What changed in 2025 is that the ICC started acting on it and advancing real cases that implicated non-members. At that point it stopped being academic and started looking like a real-world precedent with consequences for allies and potentially US personnel. That’s the slippery slope. The administration had already tried protests and non-recognition and concluded it was not changing behavior. The August sanctions were framed as a last-resort escalation to draw a hard line against what they saw as ongoing overreach, not as a response to some new hostile intent.
Why does it have jurisdiction? Israel has not ratified the Rome Treaty, and have stated they will not do so. Without that the ICC does not have legal jurisdiction over their actions.
While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Let’s grant the worse case scenario argument against Israel’s actions. Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC; they have not signed on to the treaty to be governed by it, and hence the ICC does not have the authority to look into either of ther actions.
No, you missed the point. They have been indicated to "as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". Physical destruction can occur without being a war crime and those war crimes can occur without any destruction. So it didn't add any useful information infact it was actively misleading because some people might think they were indicated for destruction.
There’s a fundamental flaw in the concept of “international justice”.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
There's no such flaw in most cases brought to the ICC
The ICC is an international court but it administers trials (mostly) local to the members' jurisdiction so this point is moot. A warrant from the ICC doesn't ask the member states to go to war and hunt the target, it asks them to arrest them if the target is within their jurisdiction
The fact that the ICC warrant was unlikely to lead to Hamas' leaders arrest in the short term is not particularly meaningful
The "mostly" qualifier is because IIRC there are some provisions for truly extraterritorial prosecutions in the Rome treaty but I don't know that they've ever been actually used
If the country itself has a justice system that can prosecute the individual, the ICC has no jurisdiction.
In the case of Israel the ICC used a loophole to work around this, since the Israeli courts are actually able to prosecute Netanyahu (and are currently doing so on other matters).
I think this comment shows how far removed is the modern person living in a sheltered, matcha-sipping western environment from actual human historical reality. Do you seriously suggest that during an active war one side would bring the other to trial rather than just destroy them?
FWIW it's kind of refreshing to see a judicial official on the receiving end of this treatment. I know he's not one of the judges who permitted the debanking of protesters in Canada, but 1:1 of like-kind is probably all we can ask for.
Those who so flippantly censor and ostracise dissidents deserve a periodic taste of their own concoctions.
Generally when you say these kinds of things, it's polite to not let your audience guess at what and who you mean. Could you please give us some links?
The only lesson they will learn is that they need to control sanctions themselves and likely to use them more. Nothing good about this unless you want to see a weaker US and lilely a more federal EU.
https://archive.is/DFHM6
"Without commenting on ongoing cases, he called on European authorities to activate a mechanism that could limit the impact of US restrictions."
-------------------
ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
> Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of such a defence relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
Im sorry the latter part of the 20th century was all about trying to avoid the whole might makes right mindset and in international politics it still should be. Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right? The fact that people have just swallowed the might make right narrative just shows what kind of a dire situation we are in when it comes to international politics and how far standards have fallen since 2001.
Europe isn't a superpower but it's a giant entity with 450 million people and 15% of the world's gdp. It has the means to oppose the US and retaliate against its sanctions, if it doesn't it's because of the cowardice of its politicians and the weakness of its institutions.
3 replies →
>When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power.
It was a superpower, until Trump got back in office. He's been taking an axe to US soft power, and our institutions in general. We're on the edge of losing Global reserve currency status. That's what's driving the re-monetization of Silver and Gold.
Meet the "Hague Invasion Act":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
4 replies →
Where ICC could win against someone in the US is if the opposition comes to power in the US and does nothing to protect that person. "Oh gosh, bounty hunters grabbed them and smuggled them out of the country? What a shame."
>Might makes right in international politics.
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
6 replies →
One of the things that made America a superpower is "soft power". Continuing to piss off their allies will eventually blow back if the US ever needs something from the UN.
Or worse they may need that French aircraft carrier if war breaks out with China.
USAs superpower is their inability to see their own hypocrisy.
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Yes but the thing about power is the more you use it the more the other party learns to live without it. US has such a giant leverage over Europe because Europe believed US would never actually use its power against it. Imagine US sanctioning Chinese officials - they would shrug at best because China has its own everything because they always knew US would bully them.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
The only way we would ever answer to the ICC is if anyone could force us, by military threat. That's the only way people are put in front of that court.
[flagged]
"What is the purpose of the American sanctions mechanism?
Initially, it was created to address human rights violations[...]"
Yet here we are: it's being used to harass judges who address human rights violations.
Correction: it was created to advance own geopolitical goals and harrass unfriendly regimes using human rights abuse as an excuse. So in that sense nothing has fundamentally changed.
"Always has been" ;)
Not only judges in the ICC, the USA also used sanctions against a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice that is responsible for Bolsonaro's attempted coup case.
It's even more egregious it used the Magnitsky Act for that...
The U.S. has also sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
[flagged]
You're gonna look back on comments like this in about five years and realise that you're an idiot
2 replies →
>Francesca Albanese is conducting warfare
HN moderation will protect outlandish hyperbolic comments like this, won't it?
If it needed to be said, Francesca Albanese is not conducting warfare. She's doing her job as a UN Special Reporter on Israel's occupation of Palestine. You are shooting the messenger.
So many commenters here assume US global hegemony that, in reality, expired after the 1980s. Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively.
Fantastic news. The more of this, the sooner Europe wakes up and starts accelerating sovereignty. Please keep it coming!
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The US is acting to impose sanctions on individuals with no direct ties to it by using its legal authority over American entities. The reason the US wants to do this is because the ICC is seeking to impose its legal authority over individuals whose state has not joined the ICC with novel legal theories and using its legal authority over ICC states. If the ICC had remained in areas where its legal authority is clear and not disputed, its judges and prosecutors wouldn't be facing this issue.
Can you be more specific? Which individuals and why (not)?
Note that eg if you're from (picking two random countries) Nepal and commit a crime in Italy, then Italy still has jurisdiction. Italian police can arrest you. [1]
Also, there's certain crimes that any country is allowed to arrest you for, for instance piracy on the high seas.
[1] Also explicitly taken into account in the Rome statue 12(2)(a) https://legal.un.org/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm
So explain why the US used the same mechanisms against a Brazilian judge responsible for Bolsonaro's coup attempt case.
Was Brazil's justice trying to impose its legal authority outside of its jurisdictions? Nope. Was it hurting humans rights? Nope.
It's simply to bully, and meddle with entities that go against the interests of the current administration.
I don't buy your justification why this case is not the same, at all.
The only way the theory of international law holds any water is if countries are held to it regardless of the treaties they've signed. Any country that hasn't signed with the ICC is clearly a country run by criminals.
There should be no way the government can 'debank' someone in the first place. Monetary relations with other people have always been untouched by the state until very recently, even for revolutionaries. A private transaction is not anyone's business apart from the counterparties.
Assuming that someone should not be allowed to freely earn, spend, invest and participate in the economy without a proved felony is a dystopian concept.
Either have a proper fair public trial and put criminals in prison for serious violations or don't discriminate against anyone's stuff at all if you don't have any proofs. Otherwise it's massively used to give advantages to citizens of several nations to do business and earn while discriminating against others because of 'high risks' without any public court hearing, based on nationality, citizenship or organizational relations.
Unfortunately this seems to be exactly the slope the West is going down after dismissing all the crazy talk of conspiracy theorists who warned of this very thing.
I haven’t seen anything about it here, but another example that is worse because it’s an attack on a private person, is the EU recently sanctioning the former Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud, living in Belgium which he now cannot leave, for seemingly, essentially reminding the people of Europe and EU politicians’ of the things they said.
The ICC was never meant to be used against the West.
The US is now literally sanctioning UN experts and ICC people if they push too hard on accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes, e.g. Francesca Albanese over her Gaza reports and support for ICC cases. In Germany (and elsewhere) it often doesn’t need formal sanctions: people get disinvited, smeared, or quietly pushed out of jobs if they’re too vocal on Palestine – think Ai Weiwei, Greta Thunberg, Masha Gessen, Ilan Pappé, Ghassan Hage and others running into cancellations, funding cuts, and public delegitimisation instead of explicit legal punishment.
Time to protect EU citizens from US human rights abuses. Require EU banks to ignore foreign sanctions and call the US bluff.
Yeah, the EU should just call the bluff. The US is not going to do anything other than shake their fist angrily.
Using a human-rights sanctions framework against judges of a court literally created to prosecute human-rights violations is the snake eating its own tail. Sanctions used to be targeted at people trying to blow up the rule of law, now they are being used at people trying to apply it in ways that are politically inconvenient to a superpower and its allies.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
The more wild US gets with its sanction powers the more it draws other countries to move usa away from the center of the financial system.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
> this makes america look like gangsters
It is understandable that you would have this impression, given that the US leader has total legal immunity, directly controls the judiciary, Congress, tariffs and formerly independent financial agencies, openly threatens journalists and news media companies, appoints untalented lackies and openly enriches himself and his family and associates, openly uses federal legal entities to pursue opponents, deploys the military within the country against its own citizens, and has made federal arrest without warrant a common daily event.
It you live in a country where your government does not exhibit such characteristics, it's easy to mistake the above as an indication of something suspiciously unlike democracy.
From TFA: "In concrete terms, the rule of law is equality for all individuals, globally, before justice."
The rule of law has now become — for those who enjoy American expressions — a type of fan fiction.
The US has any soft power left?
I think Trump has successfully destroyed all of that and replaced it with (rhetoric about) threats of hard power.
The Trump administration is the equivalent of a lazy/absent parent. The kids have no respect for them whatsoever, but they're sick with them for time being and aware that belt hurts when it's deployed.
It still has quite a bit. It took decades to build it up, and Trump has not yet managed to destroy all of it in one year, but maybe four years ...
1 reply →
I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
> I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials
Yet another attempt at explaining how the US is really acting in its own self-interest even if the actual beneficiary is Israel.
So let me state it once again clearly: the beneficiary of this move is Israel. The political capital expended is American. The US works for Israel.
In international institutions Israel is weak. It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN compared to any other country.
It's receiving criticism in the UN because of the horrible crimes it's committing
>It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN
How is this anything but DARVO? Israel receives criticism in the UN for reasons that are easily verified and quite understandable - namely its deliriously racist, brutally violent, textbook illegal, and long-lived occupation of Palestine and attempts to annex its territory.
Blaming Muslim countries writ large for the UN complaining about Israel's blatant and continuous violation of the UN Charter and various other international laws is shockingly racist.
[dead]
Why is the US doing this just to cover the crimes of one small country? It seems like they’re really going above and beyond.
Surely couldn’t have that much blackmail on him. You’d need something so shocking that it’d ruin him and his entire family forever. Where just mentioning the name would cause disgust for generations. Surely there’s nothing like that in the archives.
Brunel ran "modeling" agencies. Who else decided that was a good business to get into? The whole thing is not even close to the worst part of it yet.
[dead]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46432107
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The banking cartel will outlaw any real alternative. Bitcoin, Brics crypto system, whatever. And they will confiscate gold like back in the 30s. If they don't their magic money faucet will end. And they started wars for much smaller threats to their dominance.
First, a French judge has no power in the US. Second, Bitcoin is utter shit: it is not sustainable and mainly used to prop up criminals. Third, if money can be hidden and taxation becomes very difficult or impossible, society will collapse, and the "elite" loses its position. Bitcoin is not an alternative.
Cryptocurrencies work fine. If the debanked were to use them, they would find 90% of their restrictions lifted immediately and without permission from anyone.
No, society will not collapse; it will stabilize. There are many forms of taxation, e.g. property, tarrifs, etc. that are unaffected.
Cash is more anonymous and less trackable than Bitcoin and the society didn't collapse.
6 replies →
Unpopular opinion, but the US and a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC and in their eyes it does not exist; hence the US has no obligation to support them in any way.
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
The long term consequence is that the US is proving that the rest of the world how dangerous it is to rely on US financial institutions. I very much doubt destroying the trustworthiness of its financial institutions in order to protect war criominals is beneficial for the US in the long run.
After WW2, the US did a lot of bad things but it did not change its status in the world. Nothing will change now or in the foreseeable future. And the “problem” is pretty simple: there is no one able to take its place.
Israel committed crimes against humanity in Palestine over which ICC does have jurisdiction. Whether US supports the ICC or not is irrelevant.
I had to dig this up because this was from August. Not sure why it is coming up now.
[1] https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/08/imposing-further-sanc...
I don’t think the ICC was plotting to undermine US or Israel sovereignty. The dispute is about jurisdiction. The ICC has a pretty expansive theory that says it can go after nationals of non-member states if the alleged conduct happened on the territory of a member state. That theory has been around for years and mostly lived in briefs and conferences. What changed in 2025 is that the ICC started acting on it and advancing real cases that implicated non-members. At that point it stopped being academic and started looking like a real-world precedent with consequences for allies and potentially US personnel. That’s the slippery slope. The administration had already tried protests and non-recognition and concluded it was not changing behavior. The August sanctions were framed as a last-resort escalation to draw a hard line against what they saw as ongoing overreach, not as a response to some new hostile intent.
Why does it have jurisdiction? Israel has not ratified the Rome Treaty, and have stated they will not do so. Without that the ICC does not have legal jurisdiction over their actions.
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The ICC didn’t ‘pick on Israel’…
While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Let’s grant the worse case scenario argument against Israel’s actions. Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC; they have not signed on to the treaty to be governed by it, and hence the ICC does not have the authority to look into either of ther actions.
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ICC also charged the responsible Hamas officials at the same time.
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> Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme
So is any atrocity allowable if you have enough civilian human shields?
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Nitpick:
> Both men are indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the destruction of the Gaza Strip.
Role in destruction isn't a war crime they are being indicted for and as such irrelevant in this context.
The destruction of Gaza is obviously the context in which the war crimes and crimes against humanity occur(red).
No, you missed the point. They have been indicated to "as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". Physical destruction can occur without being a war crime and those war crimes can occur without any destruction. So it didn't add any useful information infact it was actively misleading because some people might think they were indicated for destruction.
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There’s a fundamental flaw in the concept of “international justice”.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
There's no such flaw in most cases brought to the ICC
The ICC is an international court but it administers trials (mostly) local to the members' jurisdiction so this point is moot. A warrant from the ICC doesn't ask the member states to go to war and hunt the target, it asks them to arrest them if the target is within their jurisdiction
The fact that the ICC warrant was unlikely to lead to Hamas' leaders arrest in the short term is not particularly meaningful
The "mostly" qualifier is because IIRC there are some provisions for truly extraterritorial prosecutions in the Rome treaty but I don't know that they've ever been actually used
“Justice” without enforcement is meaningless.
They have a warrant out for Putin, has that made any impact on the war in Ukraine?
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This only applies if the individuals are a) protected by their country of residence and b) never leave it.
Neither of those are certain and even for people that a) applies to, b) can be a big hassle.
Just ask Netanyahu.
If the country itself has a justice system that can prosecute the individual, the ICC has no jurisdiction.
In the case of Israel the ICC used a loophole to work around this, since the Israeli courts are actually able to prosecute Netanyahu (and are currently doing so on other matters).
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> So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
...without trial. And assuming guilty and sentenced to death.
Trial by which court?
This is standard rules of war. Soldiers don’t have to convene a court before shooting at enemy combatants.
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Indeed, conflating execution without trial with ‘justice’ is utterly bizarre.
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I think this comment shows how far removed is the modern person living in a sheltered, matcha-sipping western environment from actual human historical reality. Do you seriously suggest that during an active war one side would bring the other to trial rather than just destroy them?
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7 Oct was justice by this standard of yours.
FWIW it's kind of refreshing to see a judicial official on the receiving end of this treatment. I know he's not one of the judges who permitted the debanking of protesters in Canada, but 1:1 of like-kind is probably all we can ask for.
Those who so flippantly censor and ostracise dissidents deserve a periodic taste of their own concoctions.
Good so. Many European activists have been sanctioned and debanked by the EU without the judicial process.
It's good to see an European politician (ICC judge is a political role) to test own medicine.
Generally when you say these kinds of things, it's polite to not let your audience guess at what and who you mean. Could you please give us some links?
The only lesson they will learn is that they need to control sanctions themselves and likely to use them more. Nothing good about this unless you want to see a weaker US and lilely a more federal EU.
Do you have a source?