A previously unreported internal memo issued by Israel’s most prominent sponsor of progressive causes is urging groups it funds to stop cooperating with the International Criminal Court — owing to President Trump’s order of sanctions on court officials and those who cooperate with the court.
Before the Gaza war, some groups sponsored by the New Israel Fund enthusiastically offered assistance to the ICC prosecutor, Karim Kahn, in his pursuit of top Israeli officials. Yet an executive order by Mr. Trump is having a chilling effect on progressive Israelis who had once been prepared — or even eager — to cooperate with the ICC.
A March 6 memo, a Hebrew-language email seen by The New York Sun, is calling on NIF-sponsored groups to sign a new contract. The new contract refers to Mr. Trump’s threat of sanctions against anyone cooperating with the Hague-based court’s “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting America and Israel.
“Following the issuance of the U.S. presidential order regarding the ICC in The Hague, and after legal consultation, we are asking you to sign a new agreement that includes clauses related to this order,” the NIF chief operating officer, Mickey Gitzin, writes. The new NIF contract with those it supports cites executive order 14203 of February 6.
Mr. Trump was reacting to three ICC judges who agreed with Mr. Kahn last November, ordering global arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his erstwhile defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Mr. Trump’s executive order imposes sanctions on ICC officials and those who cooperate with the court who are American, as well as any “citizen or lawful resident of an ally of the United States that has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.”
Both America and Israel — as well as such world powers as Communist China, Russia, and India — have declined to join the Rome Statute that established the ICC. The Hague-based court nevertheless claims jurisdiction over alleged Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza, which is considered to be a member of the court. The ICC also has an open probe against Americans who are suspected of having committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
Even before the October 7, 2023, massacre that launched the Gaza war, several NIF-sponsored nongovernment organizations were ready to assist Mr. Kahn in prosecutions against Israeli officials. A headline on the website of B’Tselem — an Israeli NGO that accuses the country of being an apartheid state — from December 28, 2022, reads, “Ten Israeli human rights organizations to ICC Prosecutor: ‘We are all committed to assisting your office in advancing the ongoing investigation of the Situation in Palestine.’”
The position of the 10 groups, according to the site, is that “crimes, indeed, have been and are being committed; that the Court has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute; and, we are all committed to assisting your office in advancing the ongoing investigation of the Situation in Palestine.”
According to available data, these groups received $2.5 million in combined grants from the NIF in 2023. Following Mr. Trump’s sanction threat, the NIF is now asking them to sign an agreement ensuring that no future grant is “used to assist the International Criminal Court in violation of Executive Order #14203.”
The NIF “works to promote democracy and equality in Israel,” its spokesman tells the Sun. “We have always and will continue to act in accordance with the law and in accordance with our values. We are committed to operating with full transparency while adhering to the highest professional and ethical standards.”
The spokesman was unable to provide information on how many of the NGOs it sponsors have already signed the new agreement. “We will continue to support organizations that work to promote human rights, democracy, and oppose populism at home and abroad in every way possible,” he said.
Meanwhile the B’Tselem web page that announced its willingness, along with nine other NGOs, to cooperate with the ICC is no longer accessible, perhaps in reaction to the NIF request. The original webpage, though, was preserved by B’Tselem opponents.
As if to mark, if only coincidentally, the stakes involved, a former president of the Phillippines, Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested on Wednesday at the Manila airport and whisked by a night flight to the Hague to stand trial for his extra-judicial campaign against drug addicts in his country. The arrest, acceded to by the current Philippines president, Ferdinand “Bonbon” Marcos Jr., suggests that the country is using the Hague-based court as a tool in Manila’s domestic political warfare.
In any event, officials at Manila are apparently unaware of Mr. Trump’s executive order against the ICC and those who cooperate with it. The Philippines became an ICC member in 2011, but later Mr. Duterte withdrew from the Rome Statute. The country officially became a non-member of the court in 2019. Nevertheless, “the ICC retains jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed in the Philippines while the country was a State Party,” the Hague-based court claimed in a statement on Wednesday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
