One passage from the submission alleges that “by continuously and unconditionally providing political support and military support to Israel while being fully aware of the specific crimes committed by Netanyahu, Gallant, and their subordinates, President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin contributed intentionally to the commission of those crimes while at least knowing the intention of the group to commit the Israeli crimes, if not aiming of furthering such criminal activity”.
The request, submitted by the Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) last month but made public by the group on Monday, urges the ICC to investigate Biden, as well as former secretary of state Antony Blinken and former defense secretary Lloyd Austin, for their “accessorial roles in aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza”.
According to a press release, the group’s submission to the ICC lays out what it describes as a “a pattern of deliberate and purposeful decisions by these officials to provide military, political, and public support to facilitate Israeli crimes in Gaza”, including “at least $17.9bn of weapons transfers, intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, diplomatic protection, and official endorsement of Israeli crimes, despite knowledge of how such support had and would substantially enable grave abuses”.
Dawn’s executive director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement that “not only did Biden, Blinken and Secretary Austin ignore and justify the overwhelming evidence of Israel’s grotesque and deliberate crimes, overruling their own staff recommendations to halt weapons transfers to Israel, they doubled down by providing Israel with unconditional military and political support to ensure it could carry out its atrocities”.
Last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, who was recently confirmed by Hamas to have been killed, for alleged war crimes relating to the Gaza war.
