WASHINGTON: Amal Clooney helped the International Criminal Court weigh evidence that led to the decision to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders, the human rights lawyer said Monday.
The high-profile British-Lebanese barrister posted a statement on the website of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she founded with her husband, American actor George Clooney.
Both she and the foundation had previously been criticized on social media for not speaking out over the civilian death toll in Gaza.
Clooney said she was asked by prosecutor Karim Khan to join an expert panel to “evaluate evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza.”
The statement came the same day Khan said he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as top Hamas leaders.
“Despite our diverse personal backgrounds, our legal findings are unanimous,” Clooney said, adding there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh engaged in “hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence.”
With Netanyahu and Gallant, meanwhile, there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the two have engaged in “starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination.”
Khan thanked Clooney in his statement announcing the decision to seek the arrest warrants.
Clooney and other members of the panel also wrote an opinion piece in the Financial Times on Monday supporting ICC prosecutions for war crimes in the conflict.
As Hamas, Israel and top ally the United States all denounced the move, the experts wrote that they “unanimously agree that the prosecutor’s work was rigorous, fair and grounded in the law and the facts.”
Clooney, in her statement, said that “my approach is not to provide a running commentary of my work but to let the work speak for itself.”
“I served on this panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives,” she added.
“The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict.”
Amal Clooney helped ICC weigh Gaza war crimes evidence
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Amal Clooney helped ICC weigh Gaza war crimes evidence
- Clooney said she was asked by prosecutor Karim Khan to join an expert panel
Israeli FM urges Jews to move to Israel a week after Sydney attack
- “Today I call on Jews in England, Jews in France, Jews in Australia, Jews in Canada, Jews in Belgium: come to the Land of Israel! Come home!” Saar said
JERUSALEM: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called on Sunday for Jews in Western countries to move to Israel to escape rising antisemitism, one week after 15 were shot dead at a Jewish event in Sydney.
“Jews have the right to live in safety everywhere. But we see and fully understand what is happening, and we have a certain historical experience. Today, Jews are being hunted across the world,” Saar said at a public candle lighting marking the last day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“Today I call on Jews in England, Jews in France, Jews in Australia, Jews in Canada, Jews in Belgium: come to the Land of Israel! Come home!” Saar said at the ceremony, held with leaders of Jewish communities and organizations worldwide.
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders have repeatedly denounced a surge in antisemitism in Western countries and accused their governments of failing to curb it.
Australian authorities have said the December 14 attack on a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach was inspired by the ideology of the Islamic State jihadist group.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Western governments to better protect their Jewish citizens.
“I demand that Western governments do what is necessary to fight antisemitism and provide the required safety and security for Jewish communities worldwide,” Netanyahu said in a video address.
In October, Saar accused British authorities of failing to take action to curb a “toxic wave of antisemitism” following an attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, in which two people were killed and four wounded.
According to Israel’s 1950 “Law of Return,” any Jewish person in the world is entitled to settle in Israel (a process known in Hebrew as aliyah, or “ascent“) and acquire Israeli citizenship. The law also applies to individuals who have at least one Jewish grandparent.zz
