sounds about right
For Israel nothing to do with the US
Rubio Targets ICC as U.S. Law Rejects Court’s Jurisdiction Over Americans
The United States fought a War of Independence beginning in 1775 to become an independent nation, a full year before the Declaration of Independence was even drafted. Today, we are a federal republic in which citizens vote directly for their legislators and, through the Electoral College, for the president. No unelected authority in Europe should ever have sovereignty over the United States. Neither Brussels, Geneva, nor The Hague should be able to dictate the actions of U.S. citizens within U.S. borders or direct American foreign policy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on July 13 that the United States would dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to US sovereignty. The announcement came in a State Department release, a video statement, and a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Rubio wrote that the US would “dismantle the ICC”, “brick by brick, if necessary,” using “all the tools at our government’s disposal.”
The State Department said the campaign will feature a “whole-of-government response” to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American service members or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty. The statement said the ICC “poses an intolerable threat to US sovereignty” because it claims authority to prosecute American servicemen and officials, and noted that all American presidents since the court’s founding have maintained that the ICC lacks jurisdiction over Americans.
Concrete steps outlined by the State Department include travel bans and visa revocations for ICC personnel, increased sanctions on the court and affiliated organizations, and pressure on allied nations to withdraw from the Rome Statute or cut off support for the court. The Wall Street Journal op-ed also said Washington would watch closely which nations join it against the court, and that countries relying on the US security umbrella are being called on to reject the ICC’s authority.
The US has never ratified the Rome Statute, the 2002 treaty that created the ICC. The American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002, passed under the Bush administration, already authorizes the use of US military force to free American or allied personnel detained by the ICC, a provision sometimes called the “Hague Invasion Act.”
The first Trump administration sanctioned the ICC prosecutor in 2020 over the court’s investigation into alleged crimes in Afghanistan involving US personnel, according to Just Security.
The current campaign follows the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza, which prompted Trump to sign an executive order sanctioning the ICC and its officials, including chief prosecutor Karim Khan, according to Novara Media. The same report noted that the administration has welcomed the ICC’s investigation into Russian conduct in Ukraine while opposing its investigations into Israeli conduct in Gaza and US conduct in Afghanistan.
Human rights organizations have pushed back on the campaign. Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said the effort was an attempt to “dress up” what he called a quest for impunity for American war crimes. A joint statement signed by national human rights organizations on July 17 called the campaign an attack on international rule of law and urged other states to defend the court, an independent judicial body created to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
The ICC has not opened any investigation on US soil. Rubio’s op-ed specifically named Democracy for the Arab World Now, an organization that has called for legal examination of US deportations to El Salvador and US military strikes, on Iran.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/rubio-targets-icc-as-u-s-law-rejects/