Note from LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac: The situation in Israel has become dire for the millions of Palestinians and a much smaller number of still remaining Christians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
President Trump and the United States and other Western nations have still not taken significant actions, as past U.S. presidents have done, to hold the racist-supremacist religious Zionists to account for their genocidal campaign. The ICC has been the last hope for the innocent, mostly women and especially large number of children, whose lives are facing imminent extermination.
An enormous volume of shocking evidence was presented to the ICC hearings and the world that justified the charges and judgments against Israel and its leaders and Hamas leaders for their crimes related to the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion.
This has become an international catastrophe. The enormous power of the Zionist lobby has undermined and practically erased the establishment and force of all international law. The current Israeli government is one of total lawlessness, including even violating Israeli laws and agreements that it has signed.
The Zionist extremists have developed a powerful international propaganda and political influence network that has falsely convinced most North Americans that the violent conflict between Israelis and indigenous Palestinians began on Oct. 7, 2023.
The truth, as LifeSite has discovered from thorough investigations, and evidence from numerous Jewish, Christian and Palestinian sources, began when Zionist terrorists invaded Palestine in 1947. From that time onwards, they expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands and murdered thousands who resisted or tried to come back.
They later instituted an apartheid system in which only Jews experienced full democratic rights and Palestinians were subjected to frequent, unannounced Israeli incursions into their homes and neighborhoods, and periodic, violent “mowing of the grass” IDF operations into Gaza to ensure Palestinians were kept aware that they were subject to Israeli authority.
We pray and hope the Pope Leo XIV might make a large difference in helping to bring about a just peace in this region that has experienced much suffering and is now threatening to explode into a far larger and more devastating Middle East conflict with enormous loss of life.
(LifeSiteNews) — Reports Wednesday show how sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the Trump administration have halted the work of the investigation of the Israeli leadership for war crimes.
Karim Khan, the ICC judge seeking to prosecute Israeli leaders for crimes against humanity, has seen his email disabled and his UK bank accounts frozen.
U.S. Sanctions hit ICC Chief Prosecutor: Email Blocked, Bank Accounts Frozen, 900 Staff Banned from U.S. Entry
International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan was placed under U.S. sanctions by the Trump administration in February 2025, as part of an effort to… pic.twitter.com/s3KfmNaKmC
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 18, 2025
PBS News reported on May 15 that “Trump’s sanctions on ICC’s chief prosecutor have halted tribunal’s work” – nullifying the attempted prosecution and trial of Benjamin Netanyahu and his former army chief.
The sanctions were placed on the court by Trump by executive order in February this year, to counter what was termed an illegitimate attempt to assert jurisdiction over the U.S. – and its ally Israel.
“The ICC has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel.”
Trump’s order added the court “has further abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.”
ICC warrants for Israeli, Hamas leaders
Karim Khan, together with other ICC judges, applied for arrest warrants from the ICC against Israeli and Hamas leaders on May 20, 2024. The warrants were issued in November 2024.
Speaking of Israeli PM Netanyahu and Gallant, Khan’s statement said:
“… there are reasonable grounds to believe that each has committed the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, as a direct perpetrator, acting jointly with others.”
The warrants also covered the allegation of deliberately targeting civilians in war.
“The Chamber also found reasonable grounds to believe that they are each responsible for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against civilians as a superior.”
Warrants had also been issued against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh – but withdrawn following reports of their deaths. A warrant for the arrest of the commander in chief of Hamas is still in force.
Sanctions push renewed under Biden
This move against ICC began in the U.S. Congress under President Joe Biden in 2024, when a bill was passed to sanction the ICC for requesting arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
In November 2024, the incoming Senate majority leader John Thune urged senators to pass the same measures – vowing to make sanctioning the ICC “a top priority in the next Congress”:
If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis. If Majority Leader Schumer does…
— Leader John Thune (@LeaderJohnThune) November 17, 2024
Gallant announced a “complete siege” on the “human animals” of Gaza, cutting off water, food and medical supplies. Both he and Netanyahu are accused of various war crimes, including the deliberate starvation of civilians.
First round of sanctions in 2019
The Trump administration first imposed travel restrictions and other sanctions against ICC employees in 2019. In June 2020, Trump issued an executive order placing sanctions on the court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and one of her top officials for her investigation of alleged war crimes by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The sanctions were lifted by Joe Biden in February 2021.
The current prosecutor Karim Khan – targeted by this year’s sanctions – took over the case from Bensouda, reportedly “accelerating” its hearing after the October 7 attacks. Trump had pardoned U.S. soldiers accused of war crimes in Afghanistan in 2019, and both his current and previous administrations have refused to recognize the court’s jurisdiction since its founding.
Two courts of UN justice?
The ICC is separate from the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) – but was established in 2002 following the UN-led “Rome Statute” of 1998.
The founding statement of the court says it exists to “[t]ake over when national criminal justice institutions are unwilling or unable to act,” realizing a 50-year ambition create a court which can “prosecute and punish persons responsible for crimes such as genocide.”
The UN convened tribunals to try cases of genocide from Rwanda in 1998 – four years prior to the establishment of the ICC. The U.S., along with Israel, China, Russia, Iran, Qatar, and Libya, did not sign the Rome Statute and have never been members of the ICC.
Trumpian withdrawal?
The Trump administration is withdrawing its cooperation from international institutions – which its policymakers describe as “ideological bureaucracies” which undermine national sovereignty.
In January, Trump ordered the U.S. to leave the World Health Organization and began to draw down the U.S. commitment to NATO. Trump simply refuses to recognize the European Union – preferring direct diplomacy with its member nation states.
U.S. ‘will abandon’ Israel if no end to war
The news of the impact of the February round of sanctions comes in the same week of reports warning the U.S. will “abandon” Israel if its leader Netanyahu does not stop the war in Gaza.
“Trump’s people are letting Israel know, ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war” – a source told the Washington Post on May 19.
This shocking correction of formerly unconditional support for Israel comes alongside warnings of sanctions on the Zionist state – from its other former allies.
“Britain, Canada and France,” said the Washington Post, “condemned Israel’s decision to expand military operations in Gaza and threatened ‘concrete actions’ if it did not cease its offensive and lift restrictions on aid, which Israel halted on March 2.”
Israel insists it will permit only “minimal” aid into Gaza following international outrage at its months-long shutdown of humanitarian aid to over two million people.
Israeli leadership admits to war crimes
A video released yesterday showed the extremist Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich saying that “citizens in Gaza will get a pita [bread] and a plate of food, and that’s it.”
Smotrich said Israel was only allowing the relief to produce a few “pictures” of people “waiting for a bowl of soup” – “so the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes.”
In the same speech he expanded on Netanyahu’s statement yesterday that Israel intends to “take over all of Gaza”:
“We are annihilating everything that remains in the Strip,” said Smotrich, proudly announcing, “We are dismantling Gaza, leaving it in ruins with unprecedented destruction, and the world still hasn’t stopped us.”
In an open confession of war crimes, Smotrich said “we should also not let water into the Gaza Strip,” adding that the purpose of the war was the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
🚨Smotrich: Gaza Aid Is Just Enough to Avoid ‘War Crimes’ Charges While We ‘Annihilate’ the Strip
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich gave a speech Monday defending Israel’s strategy of mass devastation in Gaza, saying humanitarian aid is only being allowed in “so the… pic.twitter.com/bhsUCf7Kq4
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 19, 2025
Trump says Gaza is ‘starving’
Last week, Trump said that “a lot of people are starving in Gaza.” This week, both the U.S. and partner Western nations seem to have noticed why.
Though a Congress sponsored by the Israel lobby has managed to sanction a court, the defendant openly confesses its crimes to the world. Israel’s powerful influence network has stopped the International Criminal Court in its tracks. It has also emboldened the Israeli leadership to the point of boasting about its active genocide on camera.
Zionist power, for so long unrestrained, seems to have destroyed not only Israel’s democracy and its moral standing in the world – but now threatens to cut the lifeline of U.S. support on which it depends.
The ICC’s case has halted – for now – but Israel’s atrocities will not. Will the U.S. fill the void it has created in sanctioning this court? Trump faces a stark choice: to act to preserve the lives of millions, or to follow Israel blindly into the abyss.
The crimes are beyond dispute. In the absence of justice there is nothing but them to witness.
To contact the White House and President Trump, click here.
