The ICC’s top prosecutor accused Israel of “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that there were only a few dozen officially confirmed deaths from starvation among Palestinian civilians in Gaza over the course of the ongoing Israeli war with Hamas, dismissing the International Criminal Court’s accusations as blatant lies.
The ICC’s top prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested the warrants for both Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, claiming that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that the top officials, among other things, were guilty of “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime” and “extermination and/or murder… in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity.”
The prosecutor also accused Israel of “other attacks on civilians, including those queuing for food” as well as “obstruction of aid delivery by humanitarian agencies” – a charge vehemently denied by Netanyahu in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday.
“Let’s take this charge of starvation: We’ve put in 500,000 tons of… food and medicine for this population. We’ve taken 20,000 trucks. We’ve paved roads to put those trucks in. We’ve opened border crossings that Hamas closed down. I’ve had airdrops, sea route supplies,” Netanyahu argued. “I mean the whole thing is absurd. You should know this, I mean, the prices of food in Gaza have dropped by 80 percent. The markets don’t lie.”
There’s talk about 23, I think, or 30 cases of malnutrition in a population of 2 million… Okay, the United States in 2022 had 20,000 deaths of malnutrition. That’s three times more than in Gaza.
The Israeli PM went on to accuse the ICC of anti-Semitism, claiming that this kind of “slander has been leveled at the Jewish people for ages, and it’s renewed now against the Jewish state.”
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