IN 1998, at the time of the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, the head of Israel's delegation, Judge Eli Nathan, expressed both hope and fear for its future. As a Holocaust survivor and lifelong humanitarian, he hoped that the court would truly fulfill its role in ending impunity for the most serious crimes. But, having witnessed a troubling politicization of the court's statute throughout the drafting negotiations, including the deliberate crafting of crimes intended to target Israel, he feared that the court's goals would be perverted for political ends. Even as he explained that Israel could regrettably not accede to such a politicized statute, Nathan expressed the hope that good sense would prevail and the court would 'serve the lofty objectives for the attainment of which it is being established.'

Some quarter of a century later, it seems clear that it is Judge Nathan's fears and not his hopes that have been realized. Far from ending impunity for serious crimes, the announcement by the court's prosecutor that he is pursuing arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister and defense minister alongside the leaders of Hamas is a perverse gift to the terrorist organization. It creates an obscene equivalence between the murderers and rapists of October 7 and the victims defending themselves from Hamas, which has sworn to commit such massacres 'again and again.' Indeed, the prosecutor has gone beyond equivalence, directing the charge of intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population at Israel but not at Hamas, which, beyond the massacres of October 7, has continued to fire thousands of missiles at Israel since.