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yoav gallant
ICC Rejects Israeli Bid to Thwart Gaza War Crimes Probe
Israel is seeking to invalidate the ICC's arrest warrants for fugitive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Dec 15, 2025
Appellate judges at the embattled International Criminal Court on Monday rejected Israel's attempt to block an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes committed during the Gaza genocide.
The ICC Appeals Chamber dismissed an Israeli challenge to the assertion that the October 7, 2023, attacks and subsequent war on Gaza were part of the same ongoing "situation" under investigation by the Hague-based tribunal since 2021. Israel argued they were separate matters that required new notice; however, the ICC panel found that the initial probe encompasses events on and after October 7.
The ruling—which focuses on but one of several Israeli legal challenges to the ICC—comes amid the tribunal's investigation into an Israeli war and siege that have left at least 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and 2 million more displaced, starved, or sickened.
The probe led to last year's ICC arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation. The ICC also issued warrants for the arrest of three Hamas commanders—all of whom have since been killed by Israel.
Israel and the United States, neither of which are party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, vehemently reject the tribunal's investigation. In the US—which has provided Israel with more than $21 billion in armed aid as well as diplomatic cover throughout the genocide—the Trump administration has sanctioned nine ICC jurists, leaving them and their families "wiped out socially and financially."
The other Hague-based global tribunal, the International Court of Justice, is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by more than a dozen nations, as well as regional blocs representing dozens of countries.
University of Copenhagen international law professor Kevin Jon Heller—who is also a special adviser to the ICC prosecutor on war crimes—told Courthouse News Service that “the real importance of the decision is that it strongly implies Israel will lose its far more important challenge to the court’s jurisdiction over Israeli actions in Palestine."
Although Israel is not an ICC member and does not recognize its jurisdiction, Palestine is a state party to the Rome Statute, under which individuals from non-signatory nations can be held liable for crimes committed in the territory of a member state.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Monday's decision, calling it "yet another example of the ongoing politicization of the ICC and its blatant disregard for the sovereign rights of non-party states, as well as its own obligations under the Rome Statute."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington, DC-based advocacy group, welcomed the ICC decision.
“This ruling by the International Criminal Court affirms that no state is above the law and that war crimes must be fully and independently investigated," CAIR said in a statement. "Accountability is essential for justice, for the victims, and survivors, and for deterring future crimes against humanity.”
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Israel Bombs Yemen as IDF Rolls Through Gaza City, Displacing Hundreds of Thousands
Dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, including many women and children, as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City.
Sep 25, 2025
Israeli forces on Thursday resumed airstrikes on Yemen—whose Houthi rebels have been launching strikes targeting Israel in solidarity with Palestine—while pushing deeper into Gaza City, killing dozens of Palestinians, displacing hundreds of thousands of others, and trapping up to 1 million more.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said dozens of warplanes and air support units pounded alleged "command headquarters of the Houthi General Staff” and other buildings used by members of the rebel army also known as Ansar Allah.
Thursday's strikes followed last week's IDF bombing of a media complex in the Yemeni capital Sanaa that killed 31 journalists and four other people including a child in what the Committee to Protect Journalists called the world's deadliest single attack on media workers in 16 years.
This, after an IDF airstrike last month assassinated Houthi officials including Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi. US forces—which have been bombing Yemen since 2002 as part of the so-called War on Terror—have also carried out airstrikes in Yemen that have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.
The Israeli and US strikes came in retaliation for Houthi missile and drone attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping. The Houthis and Iran have been the only actors in the world that have answered Israel's genocidal war on Gaza with military force.
The latest Israeli bombing of Yemen came as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, an offensive aimed at conquering, occupying, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the embattled coastal exclave.
Gaza officials said dozens of Palestinians have been killed since dawn Thursday, including 25 aid-seekers. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that "intensified strikes on Gaza City, including on tents, residential buildings, [and] infrastructure continue to inflict heavy casualties."
The relentless Israeli airstrikes that hit multiple areas across Gaza City today; forcing thousands of Palestinian families to flee their homes into overcrowded and unsafe areas with no shelter, food, or medical care. pic.twitter.com/5Oj9VqtDFY
— Daniella Modos - Cutter -SEN (@DmodosCutter) September 25, 2025
Among the victims of Thursday's IDF strikes were at least 10 children and three women killed when the houses and tents in which they were sheltering were bombed, according to The Associated Press.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said Thursday that Palestinian children are being “killed while sleeping, playing, queuing for food and water, [and] seeking medical care."
“They’ve been bombed, maimed, starved, burned alive, buried in the rubble of their homes, separated from their parents... scraping through the rubble for food, enduring amputations without anesthetic,” Fletcher added.
More than 300,000 Palestinians have fled for their lives amid Israel's onslaught and engineered famine, while as many as 1 million others remain trapped in Gaza.
At least 65,419 Palestinians have been killed by US-backed Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—although experts caution that the actual death toll is likely much higher. More than 167,100 others have been wounded, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where the International Criminal Court last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
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Probe Reveals Nearly 3,000 Gaza Aid-Seekers Killed by Israeli Forces
"These repeated attacks are grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
Sep 17, 2025
An investigation published this week revealed that Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded almost 20,000 others over 23 months of Israel's US-backed genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
The New Humanitarian's open-source investigation chronologically documents the killing of 2,957 Palestinian aid-seekers and the wounding of 19,866 others.
These figures include nearly 1,000 Palestinians who United Nations human rights officials say have been killed at or near aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israeli soldiers have admitted to receiving orders to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of civilians at GHF distribution points.
The New Humanitarian noted that these numbers represent approximately 4.6% of the more than 65,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures are likely a vast undercount.
“These are not isolated incidents. They're not just similar incidents. They are a pattern, and reflect policy and an acceptance on the part of the state that this should continue indefinitely,” Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told The New Humanitarian.
Haque and other experts interviewed for the investigation called Israeli attacks on Gaza aid-seekers "grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
Israel is the subject of an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
The New Humanitarian's investigation identified "clearly discernible patterns... showing how Israel has used attacks on people seeking aid as a tool for different purposes at different points in the war: deadly crowd control, forced displacement, and the destruction of the collective ability of Palestinians in Gaza to survive."
Haque said that "if Israeli leaders were simply indifferent to the killing of so many Palestinian aid-seekers, not caring one way or the other, then international condemnation and potential liability for war crimes should be enough to lead them to change their policies to prevent or repress such killings."
"Their willingness to bear such costs is some evidence that they intend for these killings to continue,” he added.
The New Humanitarian's investigation comes as Israeli forces ramp up their assault on Gaza City during Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian exclave. Israeli leaders have publicly backed a proposal by US President Donald Trump to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
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