Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested that Canada would abide by any rulings of the International Criminal Court in The Hague if and when comes to carrying out a pair of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the country’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
Warrants issued Thursday accused the politicians of war crimes and crimes against humanity for Israel’s military actions in Gaza, following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.
Trudeau didn’t answer the question directly when asked by reporters what would happen if the Israeli politicians should be travelling in this country.
“It’s really important that everyone abide by international law,” Trudeau said, while on a stop in Sharon, Ont., noting that Canada was one of the founders of both the ICC, in 2002, and of its sister body, the International Court of Justice, in 1945. “We will stand by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts.”
The ICC prosecutes criminal cases against individuals, while the ICJ is responsible for legal disputes involving countries or governments.
Member states who ratified the creation of the courts are legally obliged to implement any rulings, including arresting fugitives or those wanted for war crimes.
Trudeau didn’t directly applaud or criticize the ICC’s decision to move forward with warrants against the Jewish state’s wartime leaders, as well as against a senior Hamas commander, Mohammed Deif.
Instead, the prime minster urged continued efforts to “solve this terrible situation”, and repeated Canada’s current position on the Middle East crisis: ensuring humanitarian aid be allowed into Gaza to “people who are facing famine and disease”; Hamas releasing the Israeli hostages and laying down its arms, and a ceasefire. Trudeau condemned the terrorist organization for continuing to operate.
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Deif, a commander of the Hamas military forces who carried out the Oct. 7 , 2023 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis. His full name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
In August, Israel confirmed it had killed Deif during an IDF airstrike in July, but the ICC is proceeding with the arrest warrant because it feels it doesn’t have enough information on Deif’s fate. The warrants originally also named two other senior Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh. Both were killed in recent months.
Some observers point out this is the first time a sitting leader of a democratically elected Western ally has been accused of war crimes by a global court of justice.
Trudeau’s vow to permit Netanyahu and Gallant to be picked up by law enforcement should they set foot in Canada is largely symbolic, as Netanyahu has not been in this country since 2012.
Before the Trudeau-led Liberals were first elected in 2015, Netanyahu made two state visits as Israeli leader. Both times, in 2010 and 2012, he visited with Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, a staunch ally. A previous visit where Netanyahu was scheduled to deliver a speech at Concordia University in Montreal in 2002 sparked a riot on campus—and the Israeli politician stayed in his hotel room for his own safety.
Relations between Trudeau and Netanyahu turned prickly last year after Trudeau urged Israel to act with restraint in Gaza. Trudeau is the only G07 leader who has not yet visited Israel to show solidarity, after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. (Top leaders of Italy, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. have all made trips.)
Trudeau’s statement on what Canada would do about the ICC arrest warrants came in sharp contrast to the reaction from the U.S. President, Joe Biden, who called the ICC’s arrest warrants for the Israelis “outrageous.”
In a statement from the White House on Thursday, Biden slammed the ICC for equating the alleged behaviour of the two politicians from the democratic Jewish country with the actions of the Hamas terrorist organization.
“Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
The United States is not a member state of the ICC. Neither is Israel, India, China or Russia. A White House National Security spokesman criticized the International Criminal Court for being in a “rush to seek arrest warrants” before Israel is able to carry out its own national inquiry into possible illegal actions during the war in Gaza.
The reaction from Jewish Canada
Jewish leaders in Canada harshly condemned Trudeau’s stance. CIJA, the Centre for Israel and Public Affairs, called it a “perversion of international law.”
“We are ashamed that Canada would align itself with such a politicized decision,” CIJA said in a statement shared on social media.
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center called the ICC’s move “a sad day for justice.”
Michael Levitt, who heads the Toronto-based human rights group, described the UN court decision as “egregiously biased” and “an affront to international law that targets the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, which just happens to be the world’s only Jewish state.”
Levitt added that issuing the warrants “emboldens all terrorists” including the “Iranian-backed, genocidal terror group” Hamas whose Oct. 7 atrocities on Israelis triggered the current war.
Toronto-based Abraham Global Peace Initiative described the ICC’s decision as “reckless and politically motivated”. CEO Avi Benlolo said the warrants are more proof of “the ICC’s troubling trend of weaponization against Israel, prepared by the Palestinian Authority and its allies since 2015.”
According to Benlolo, it just goes to show that the UN, the ICC and other affiliated groups including UNRWA should be held accountable for targeting only Israel, while conflicts rage across the globe.
“Justice must apply universally, not selectively,” said Benlolo. “Israel is struggling to defend itself against a coalition of terror organizations, and these unjust rulings only fuel further destabilization.”
B’nai Brith Canada called on the Canadian government to reject the ICC’s politicization of international law and to stand firmly with Israel, our democratic ally, in its efforts to establish a lasting peace in the region.
“The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) recent arrest warrant targeting the leader of the world’s only Jewish state, while it defends itself against unrelenting terrorism, will only embolden the terror groups who continue to destabilize the region and those in Canada who utilize the Court’s decisions to justify their antisemitic conduct,” B’nai Brith said in a statement. “In issuing the warrants, the ICC has failed to acknowledge the moral complexities of the conflict.”
Liberals criticized on both sides
The federal Conservatives attacked the ICC’s move, denouncing the “outrageous” arrest warrants for the former Israeli defence minister and the prime minister of Israel, said its foreign affairs critic Michael Chong.
“The ICC is drawing a false equivalency between a liberal democracy and a terrorist group that attacked that democracy last year,” Chong said in a statement. “Conservatives stand for Israel’s right to defend itself.”
New Democrats had previously supported the ICC’s intention to prosecute. The NDP foreign affairs critic, Heather McPherson, said that Canada must support the arrest warrants for Deif, Netanyahu and Gallant.
However, in the House of Commons, she attacked Trudeau for giving a muddy answer on whether he would actually enforce the warrants, should the situation arise.
“Unlike other leaders today, the prime minister has not been clear and Canadians deserve an answer,” the NDP MP from Edmonton said. “Will Canada enforce ICC arrest warrants and ensure that the victims of horrendous war crimes in Gaza see the justice they deserve?”
Netanyahu fired Gallant on Nov. 5 over the former defence chief’s support for mandatory military service for Haredi Israelis, something which key religious members of Netanyahu’s coalition government oppose.
Timeline of arrest warrants
The ICC’s issuing of th warrants are the culmination of a long process that didn’t start with Oct. 7. The court first opened its investigation into “The Situation in the State of Palestine”, as the case is officially called, in March 2021.
At that time, the outgoing prosecutor’s office outlined plans to examine possible war crimes dating back to 2014 taking place in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
After a limited 10-day skirmish between Israel and Hamas, in May 2021, British-trained lawyer Karim Khan was elected to the prosecutor’s job. He is credited with kick-starting what had been a slow-moving court bureaucracy, including swiftly issuing arrest warrants for Russian president Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.
While there were strong hints Israel’s leaders would be next on his list, Khan travelled to Israel after Oct. 7, at the behest of the families of the Hamas victims and hostages. He later acknowledged being visibly moved by his visits to the burned-out southern kibbutzim and villages where Hamas tortured, raped and murdered residents during a day-long killing spree. He also met with Palestinian leaders, and visited the Rafah crossing.
Shortly after that visit, in November 2023, the governments of South Africa and four other ICC members asked Khan [PDF] to formally charge Israeli leaders with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starving Palestinians, denying them vital medical equipment, and statements made by some right-wing Israeli politicians and military officials urging the committing of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Under ICC rules, the court is supposed to be the last resort, only if a country cannot or will not conduct its own internal investigation of serious war crimes charges. This is known as the “principle of complementarity”.
Khan, the ICC prosecutor, was supposed to visit Israel and Gaza again in May on a formal fact-finding investigation, but the trip was abruptly cancelled. That same day, Khan announced he was applying for permission to draw up arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others.
Irwin Cotler is disappointed
Canadian international human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler had been advising Israel’s leaders how to deal with the ICC team. Cotler also helped broker the itinerary for Kahn’s high-stakes spring visit, until the prosecutor himself abruptly called the trip off.
Cotler told The CJN Daily podcast in an interview Thursday that the ICC’s going forward with warrants was both “ill advised” and “disappointing”.
A longtime supporter of the ICC—and its role in the international rule of law—Cotler helped his Montreal-based human rights watchdog group, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, file a legal appeal with the ICC in February, on behalf of the families of the Oct 7. victims, asking the court to prosecute Hamas.
Cotler maintains that Israel, like any other democracy or state, needs to be held accountable for any violations of humanitarian law or human rights, but he chastised the ICC for violating its own founding principles by picking on Israel, while other bad actors are allowed the benefit of the ICC’s legal process protection.
“The special prosecutor, Karim Khan, went to Venezuela, met with the president, Nicolas Maduro, the head of that dictatorship, and decided not to issue arrest warrants against Maduro,” Cotler said, referring to an April 2024 deal reached that would allow Maduro to stave off war crimes charges after promising to allow a home-grown national inquiry.
“They don’t have an independent judiciary,” Cotler scoffed.
“But here, where Israel was prepared to cooperate with Karim Khan, where he was invited to come to Israel, and when he was supposed to go, and then he cancelled his trip at the last moment, and then issued the arrest warrants which led to the decision now. So that has been really an undermining of the ICC. And in fact, that I find very disappointing to say the least.“
Israel does not belong to the ICC, and does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over activities in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
The IDF has been investigating dozens of cases of alleged wrongdoing by its soldiers stemming from the war to date. Netanyahu has long resisted creating a probe into possible war crimes or looking into his own responsibility, however, and he maintains that any state inquiry won’t be created until after the war has ended.
Cotler said he told the Israelis that they needed to set one up sooner, which he felt technically could have possibly stopped the clock on the ICC arrest warrants.
“I recommended then, under the framework of the ICC statute, that Israel should undertake its own independent investigations to necessarily thereby preclude any initiatives being taken by the ICC,” he said. “They did begin some investigations and everything occurred, as I mentioned. I think the Israeli leadership should make it clear at this point that those investigations are ongoing and maybe establish an independent process for that purpose.”
Justin Trudeau’s declaration on the arrest warrants comes as some of the over 120 ICC member countries, especially those in the European Union, quickly announced they would enforce them.
Whether these countries would actually make good on that promise, is unclear.
Cotler pointed out the hypocrisy of both the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the leaders of some ICC member countries, such as South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico, who recently attended a three-day economic summit hosted by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
“As you know, there have been [ICC] arrest warrants against Putin, and yet he was able to host a meeting of the BRICs and a number of countries associated with that,” Cotler said. “I would have thought that with regard to a democracy like Israel, that the international democracy community would be protective of the Israeli leadership in order to be protective of the ICC and its mandate. So we’ll have to see how this unfolds.”
Cotler is under RCMP protection in his Montreal home after being warned he was the target of a failed assassination attempt last month scheduled to be carried out by a pair of killers hired by the Iranian regime, he confirmed. A full podcast interview with Cotler on his ordeal—along with his comments on the ICC situation, and the state of antisemitism in Canada—can be heard Monday on The CJN Daily.
- PODCAST: For more with Irwin Cotler listen and subscribe to The CJN Daily podcast with Ellin Bessner
