Is this the end of international law and law of war as we know it?

Published: 9:00pm, 16 Jul 2025 || Alex Lo, South China Morning Post

Through sanctions and intimidation, the United States and Israel are chipping away at their foundations and attacking their representatives

Tony Soprano would have been proud. Sitting as an observer, a legal adviser of the US State Department threatened the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) oversight body that “all options are on the table” against the court.

“To be clear, we expect all ICC actions against the United States and our ally Israel – that is, all investigations and all arrest warrants – to be terminated,” Reed Rubinstein told the Assembly of State Parties in New York last week. “We will use all appropriate and effective instruments to block ICC overreach ... Our additional sanctions of June 5 should underscore our resolve.”

He was referring to Washington’s latest sanctions against four ICC judges who issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The sanctions followed those against ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan. Last week, the Trump administration also sanctioned UN monitor on Palestinian rights Francesca Albanese.

Other than pure gangsterism, it’s not clear what Rubinstein and his Washington bosses think they could legitimately achieve, as neither the US nor Israel recognise the court’s authority.

Writing on LinkedIn in 2024, Rubinstein even claimed that the Biden administration had a “massive programme to overthrow the Israeli government in the middle of a multi-front war”.

At a US Senate hearing in March, Rubinstein explained further: “During the Obama administration, the State Department was running money to fund an anti-government operation inside of Israel. Many of the same who were involved in the Obama administration State Department came back under president Biden, and it appears … the same playbook was being run.”

Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen said these were “conspiracy theories”. However, on the ICC, Rubinstein was not completely without legal basis, at least based on US law passed by George W. Bush during his “war on terror”.

Human Rights Watch once labelled the American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002, the “Hague Invasion Act”, which authorises the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a US-allied country being held by the court, located in The Hague.

Of course, it’s unlikely court authorities will ever get their hands on Netanyahu and Gallant. But it must still be galling that it has the temerity to go after them.

This week, online news magazine Middle East Eye (MEE) named a defence lawyer for the ICC who warned Khan in May to withdraw arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant or else he and the court would be destroyed.

“They will destroy you and they will destroy the court,” the lawyer reportedly told Khan. The lawyer told MEE: “I do not deny that I told Mr Khan that he should be looking for a way to extricate himself from his errors. I am not authorised to make any proposals on behalf of the Israeli government nor did I.”

Khan and his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, have long been harassed and surveilled by Israel and the US. Trump in his first term sanctioned Bensouda for trying to investigate alleged war crimes committed by US troops in Afghanistan.

In a joint investigation published by Britain’s The Guardian and Israel’s +972 Magazine in May last year, it was revealed that Israel’s intelligence services carried out an almost decade-long campaign against the ICC that included hacking, smearing and intimidation, often with Khan and Bensouda as targets.

Applying intense pressure tactics against international law figures is nothing new. After the 2008-2009 Gaza war, the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report, was released.

It blamed both sides for committing war crimes, but added that Israel had engaged in “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself”.

Soon afterwards, against his three co-authors, Richard Goldstone reversed his position. Citing Israel’s own investigations, he said its army did not target civilians. With Khan, the US and Israel are hoping for Goldstone part deux.