We Filed a War Crime Complaint Against Hamas Over Firing Rockets Toward Israel with the ICC

Israel’s enemies have used the International Criminal Court in The Hague as a headline-grabbing weapon to vilify and discriminate against the Jewish state. Terrorist groups, rogue nations, and the BDS movement have tried to have Israelis tried for war crimes in the ICC, and they made determined efforts to pervert justice in courts that are designed to promote truth, due process, and impartiality. Shurat HaDin has decided to test the legitimacy of this court by filing a complaint that Hamas be charged with international war crimes for its assault on the population centers of southern and central Israel during the May 2021 war that the Palestinian Islamic terrorist group instigated. Hamas launched 4,360 rockets and missiles during the eleven-day conflict in May 2021. The missile launches were seen by the world on news broadcasts, imagery, and one social media; the skyline over Gaza looked like a fireworks display with all the ordnance being fired from the strip into Israel’s towns and cities. The international laws that govern warfare strictly prohibit the specific targeting of civilians—the indiscriminate and unprovoked bombardment of civilians is not only immoral but highly illegal under the Rome Statutes of the ICC. The deliberate actions perpetrated by Hamas constitute the most severe form of war crimes, the Shurat HaDin filing stressed. Hamas used its population as human shields, which is also prohibited. The sole purpose of the Hamas war was to kill and injure Jews. Targeting a specific religious group is also a war crime. The complaint demanded that Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif and political chief Ismail Haniyeh be brought before the tribunal to answer for these violations of international law. Shurat HaDin founder and president Nitsana Darshan-Leitner summarized the brazen Chutzpah of the ICC and Hamas best, when she said, “The entire purpose of the existence of the Court in the Hague is to deter and prosecute violent crimes like these being perpetrated by Hamas against Israelis. It is a bitter irony that while the Palestinians, including Hamas, are insisting upon a criminal investigation of Israel in the ICC, they are intentionally carrying out violent war crimes against the Jewish state.”