Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

“Target Israel and we will target you”: U.S. Senators Play Schoolyard Bully Against the ICC
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
08 May 2024
🖨️ Print Article
Karim Khan
Karim Khan KC, ICC Prosecutor (Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images)

The ICC recently revealed that U.S. Republican Senators sent a threatening letter to the ICC in response to Israel's concern that an arrest warrant may be issued against it. This pressure campaign on the ICC is but one piece of the United States' attempt to shield Israel from accountability for its crimes.

Despite the fact that the United States is not a member nation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), that organization has been under its sway from its inception. The ICC has only prosecuted Africans and a few Serbians who were accused of war crimes during the NATO-engineered breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The ICC has never issued an arrest warrant for Israel’s many documented war crimes.

After Israeli officials publicly expressed concern that the ICC might issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and other high-ranking Israeli officials, U.S. pressure began in earnest. Recently a letter to the ICC signed by twelve republican senators was made public. In the letter they expressed contempt for international law and openly stated their intention to punish the ICC if it acted against Israeli officials.

“Target Israel and we will target you” and “You have been warned,” are words that should create outrage around the world. Not only is the U.S. not an ICC member state, but during the George W. Bush administration congress passed what is known as the Hague Invasion Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens or even citizens of allied nations from being prosecuted and declares a right to invade the Hague and free any such person should they fall under the control of the ICC.

The letter says that ICC officials and their families will be sanctioned and barred from entering the U.S. if arrest warrants are issued for any Israeli officials. It is unlikely that the ICC will change course and suddenly prosecute Israelis but the letter is quite instructive. It exposes how the U.S. conducts itself around the world, as a bully which uses its power to control and to dominate.

Letter to ICCLetter to ICC signature page

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.

ICC
Israel
Genocide
Republicans

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Jill Clark-Gollub
Why the SanctionsKill Campaign Supports BDS
10 September 2025
The SanctionsKill campaign exposes how US economic warfare kills civilians across the Global South.
Sarah B.
Gaza to Donbass: How Israel and Ukraine Built a Fascist, Transnational War Machine
10 September 2025
From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, an axis of ethno-supremacy is rising, fueled by U.S. backing. Same guns. Same flags. Same ideology.
Mohamad Elmasry
Israel's attack on Qatar should be a wake-up call for the Arab world
10 September 2025
The strike on Doha shows that Arab regimes' silence and passivity in the face of Israeli violence will only invite further aggression.
x
Palestine Chronicle Staff
Responding to Mohamed Salah: Who Killed the ‘Palestinian Pelé’?
20 August 2025
Al-Obeid, 41, was killed on Wednesday, August 6, 2025, in an Israeli attack on civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in the southern Gaz
Mohammed El-Kurd
Guilty by Affiliation
13 August 2025
The Israeli murder of heroic Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif was bookended by accusations that he was part of Hamas.
Youssef Fares
Survivors of Aid Massacres: Israel Is Eroding Gaza’s Social Fabric
13 August 2025
As the world condemns indiscriminate bombing, Israel continues to commit genocide by social erosion.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Zionist Shakedown
06 August 2025
Israel is a genocidaire apartheid state silencing critics around the world through threats, intimidation, lawfare, and accusations of antisemit
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
There is no starvation
06 August 2025
Firstly, the world’s most moral snipers would never target Practice on razor wire-trapped, hungry hunters and
Black Alliance For Peace
BAP Condemns the Zionist Brutalization and Detainment of Chris Smalls, Emblematic of the White Supremacy at the Core of Zionism
06 August 2025
The arrest and assault of Chris Smalls is about more than the repression of any effort to subvert the genocidal blockade on Gaza; it exposes Is
Khaled Barakat
Saudi Arabia and France are Leading a ‘Political Genocide’
06 August 2025
The New York Declaration doesn't merely betray Palestine.

More Stories


  • Book: The Rebirth of the African Phoenix
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Rebirth of the African Phoenix: A View from Babylon
    09 May 2025
    Roger McKenzie is the international editor of the UK-based Morning Star, the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world. He joins us from Oxford to discuss his new book, “The…
  • ww2
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Bruce Dixon: US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan Hostility Toward Russia
    09 May 2025
    The late Bruce Dixon was a co-founder and managing editor of Black Agenda Report. In 2018, he provided this commentary entitled, "US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan…
  • Nakba
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Meaning of Nakba Day
    09 May 2025
    Nadiah Alyafai is a member of the US Palestinian Community Network chapter in Chicago and she joins us to discuss why the public must be aware of the Nakba and the continuity of Palestinian…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr
    07 May 2025
    Black people who are among the rich and famous garner praise and love, and so do those who are in distress. But concerns for the masses of people and their struggles are often missing.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LETTER: Thank you, Mr. Howe, Ama Ata Aidoo, 1967
    07 May 2025
    Ama Ata Aidoo lands a knock-out blow to white neocolonial anti-African revisionism.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us