Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court which last week called for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes, has compared Hamas to the IRA.
In an interview with the Sunday Times on Sunday, the Edinburgh-born lawyer defended his decision to seek the prosecution of Israeli alongside Hamas leaders over the conflict ignited by the October 7 attack.
He told the newspaper that when he had been asked what Israel should do in its efforts to free the hostages, he had offered the example of the IRA.
“There were attempts to kill Margaret Thatcher, Airey Neave was blown up, Lord Mountbatten was blown up, there was the Enniskillen attack, we had kneecappings,” he said.
“But the British didn’t decide to say, ‘Well, on the Falls Road [the heart of Catholic Belfast] there undoubtedly may be some IRA members and Republican sympathisers, so therefore let’s drop a 2,000lb bomb on the Falls Road.’ You can’t do that.”
Karim, who has visited Israel several times since October 7, made clear that he was “not saying that Israel with its democracy and its supreme court is akin to Hamas of course not… Israel has every right to protect its population and to get the hostages back. But nobody has a licence to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity.”
He said that he did not understand, given his warnings to comply with international law over the past months, why anyone was surprised at last week’s announcement.
The move to arraign the Israeli leaders was condemned as “outrageous” by US President Joe Biden and criticised as “deeply unhelpful” by British Premier Rishi Sunak.
The paper said that he had carried in his pocket a blue “Bring Them Home” wrist band for the hostages and a silver dog tag for Kfir Bibas, the nine-month-old baby kidnapped on October 7 whom Hamas has claimed was subsequently killed in an Israeli airstrike.
“Kfir was just nine months old,” he was quoted as saying. “But there’s no monopoly on suffering. There are Palestinian babies dying and we cannot have double standards.”
According to the newspaper, Khan said, “Those profound words ‘Never Again’ are too often becoming ritual incantations and we are reaching a point where people round the world are not buying it.”
The prosecutor said he had called in a number of legal experts to advise on his decision, including the nonagenarian Holocaust survivor Theodor Meron. More than 50 years ago, then as a legal counsel to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Meron argued that creating settlements in the West Bank would contravene international law.
