The United Kingdom has always prided itself as a global beacon of justice – championing the rule of law, upholding human rights and shaping international legal norms.
Yet, the Starmer government has been inexplicably silent following allegations of sex assault against International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor and British barrister Karim Khan.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, just two and a half weeks after Khan learned of the sex assault allegations against him - on May 20, 2024 - he announced his intention to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over the war in Gaza, in addition to Hamas leaders. The WSJ article raised the question as to whether Khan had issued the warrants to protect himself from the sex assault claims.
Although Khan has now stepped down – albeit temporarily – as an investigation by the United Nations into his alleged sexual misconduct continues, that is woefully inadequate and, in my view, should be seen as a blatant last ditch ploy to save the case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, which the UK and the West should not fall for.
The entire proceedings against Israel are irreparably tainted to the core given the actions alleged to have been committed by Khan, and the UK must lead by example in demanding his immediate resignation and the dismissal of what should be viewed as the politically motivated and legally baseless warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
Last May, when Khan announced his intent to seek these warrants, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rightly called it a “deeply unhelpful development”, stressing there is “no moral equivalence between a democratic state exercising its lawful right to self-defence and the terrorist group Hamas”. Britain, then led by Sunak’s Conservative Party, was the first state to formally appeal the warrants, in a principled decision, bound in a commitment to uphold the principles of international law.
But on entering office, the Starmer government immediately reversed this decision, with Foreign Secretary David Lammy vowing “100 per cent” co-operation with the ICC. The Foreign Office has since been pitifully opaque, in saying they would defer the matter to the UK courts, claiming any decision on whether to arrest Netanyahu, if he were to visit UK, would be a matter for the judiciary.
To be clear: this is not about shielding Israel from scrutiny. As a liberal democracy, Israel is not above the law. On the contrary, it has complied with the laws of armed conflict against a jihadist enemy to a level few, if any, modern militaries – including Britain’s – have matched. Israel also has a very capable, robust and independent judiciary that has been unafraid to investigate the IDF’s own actions, including in the course of this war. But the law must not be wielded as a political cudgel, especially by a prosecutor whose own credibility is so seriously questioned.
The grave allegations against Khan create irreparable harm to the very foundations of the ICC, established in 2002 as a “court of last resort” to end impunity for the perpetrators of the most heinous of crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - not the Orwellian circumstances of arresting Israeli leaders for responding to the pogrom of October 7.
Moreover, Khan’s actions represent not only an assault on Israel’s inalienable right to self-defence against the jihadists of Hamas, but a national security threat to the UK and every democracy fighting terror, by exposing them to spurious and unfounded charges based purely on political considerations, instead of adherence to the rule of law.
Now, the ICC’s own Appeals Chamber took the unprecedented step of reopening the question of jurisdiction regarding “Palestine”, admitting serious flaws in the original rationale that allowed the case to proceed. In addition to Israel not even being a signatory to the Rome Statute, which governs the functioning of the ICC, it is patently clear that “Palestine” fails to meet the most basic of criteria for statehood under international law that is necessary to bring proceedings, or can even legally defer criminal jurisdiction to the ICC under the Oslo Accords.
The UK, a founding architect of the post-WWII legal order, should be alarmed that, rather than upholding the principles of justice, the Court has unleashed a great injustice, morphing into a tool of lawfare – used to politically delegitimise Israel while offering impunity to true violators of international law, like Hamas and their Iranian and Qatari sponsors.
The UK cannot afford to stay on the sidelines, as the very legal order it fought to create and maintain, is being so mercilessly torn apart. If the UK truly believes in the rule of law, due process, and justice for victims of sexual violence, it cannot look the other way. To do so would be a gross abdication of moral – and legal – responsibility.
This is about more than Israel. It is about defending the integrity of the international legal system itself. To salvage it, the UK must demand Karim Khan’s resignation and reject these deeply flawed, politicised warrants.
Arsen Ostrovsky is a human rights attorney and CEO of The International Legal Forum, an Israel-based NGO, which was one of the groups who made an appeal to the ICC against the arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant
