Below is the full transcript of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in response to ICC arrest warrants — Thursday, November 21st.
The antisemitic decision of the international court in The Hague is a modern Dreyfus trial, and it will end the same way.
One hundred thirty years ago, the French-Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason by a biased French court. In response to these false accusations, the great French writer Émile Zola wrote his monumental essay “J’accuse.” He accused the French court of antisemitic lies against an innocent officer, who his letter exonerated of all guilt.
Now, an international court in the Hague, also headed by a French judge, is repeating this outrageous offense.
It is falsely accusing me, the democratically elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel, and Israel’s former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, of deliberately targeting civilians. This when we do everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties. We issue millions of text messages, phone calls, and leaflets to the civilians of Gaza to get them out of harm’s way. While Hamas does everything in their power to keep them in harm’s way—including shooting them [and] using them as human shields.
The court in the Hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation, this when we have supplied Gaza with 700,000 tons of food to feed the people of Gaza. That’s 3,200 calories for every man, woman, and child in Gaza. And these supplies are routinely looted by Hamas terrorists, who deprive their people of much-needed food. Just in the last few weeks, Israel facilitates the vaccination of 97% of the people of Gaza against Polio. Yet, this doesn’t prevent the court from accusing us of genocide.
What in God’s name are they talking about in the Hague?
The truth is simple. No war is more just than the war that Israel has been waging in Gaza after Hamas attacked us—unprovoked—launching the worst massacre against the Jewish People since the holocaust.
The decision to issue an arrest warrant against me, the democratically elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel, and our former Defense Minister was made by a rogue prosecutor, who is trying to extradite himself from sexual harassment charges, and by biased judges, who are motivated by anti-semitic sentiments against the one and only Jewish State.
These Judges did nothing. They did nothing about the real war crimes committed against the millions who have been murdered or uprooted by the dictatorship in Iran, Syria, and Yemen. Instead, they falsely accused the one democracy in the Middle East, Israel, thereby imperiling the right of all democracies to defend themselves against murderous terrorists and tyrants.
Nor did the court do anything against the Hamas terrorists who raped our women, beheaded our men, burned babies alive in front of their parents, and kidnapped hundreds of men, women, and children to the underground dungeons of Gaza.
They are still holding 101 hostages, citizens of many lands, including the United States. Come to think of it, the court did issue one arrest warrant against Hamas. Now, hear this. They issued an arrest warrant against the corpse of Hamas arch-terrorist Mohammed Deif. His corpse. What an absurdity.
No biased antisemitic decision in the Hague will prevent the State of Israel from defending its citizens. And I want to thank our many friends around the world, especially those in the United States, who have condemned this outrage and who have said that this decision will have severe consequences for the ICC and those who cooperate with its decision.
Israel does not—Israel will not—recognize the validity of this decision. We will continue to do everything we must do to defend our citizens and defend our state against Iran’s axis of terror—Iran and its terrorist proxies, which include Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others.
Our enemies are your enemies, and our victory will be your victory—the victory of civilization over barbarism and tyrannical rule.
