George Clooney Complained to White House About Biden’s Criticism of I.C.C.
The actor contacted a top official to protest the president’s denunciation of the move to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli officials over the war in Gaza, a case his wife worked on.
www.nytimes.com
George Clooney Complained to White House About Biden’s Criticism of I.C.C.
The actor contacted a top official to protest the president’s denunciation of the move to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli officials over the war in Gaza, a case his wife worked on.
George Clooney Complained to White House About Biden’s Criticism of I.C.C.
The actor contacted a top official to protest the president’s denunciation of the move to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli officials over the war in Gaza, a case his wife worked on.George Clooney contacted a top White House official in May to complain after President Biden criticized the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek a warrant against top Israeli officials over the war in Gaza, a case the actor’s wife had worked on, according to two people familiar with the situation.
His wife, Amal Clooney, a prominent human rights lawyer, served on an advisory panel that helped conduct the court’s investigation, which resulted in warrant requests for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister and three senior Hamas leaders, accusing them of illegal conduct that has led to thousands of civilian deaths.
Mr. Clooney lodged his protest with Steve Ricchetti, a counselor to Mr. Biden who played a pivotal role in his fund-raising efforts four years ago. It had no effect on U.S. policy, a senior administration official said on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Nonetheless, Mr. Clooney’s decision to contact the White House (in the form of a text message, one of the people said) underscores the problems that Israel’s actions have caused for Mr. Biden as he tries to reconcile his support for a stalwart ally with his own misgivings and increased pressure from the disillusioned American left.
The United States and Israel are not members of the International Criminal Court, which is in The Hague. After the court’s chief prosecutor announced that he would seek the warrants on May 20, Mr. Biden sharply criticized the decision, saying “there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.”
In a statement posted on her family foundation’s website, Ms. Clooney said she had worked with the court’s prosecutors for four months “evaluating evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Israel and Gaza.
Ms. Clooney, a Lebanon-born lawyer, worked as an investigator on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and prosecuted members of Hezbollah accused of assassinating Lebanon’s prime minister in 2005.
Last month, she co-signed an op-ed with other members of an I.C.C. advisory panel arguing that their investigation had found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, “have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Their report found sufficient evidence to charge the Israeli leaders with the war crime of “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and the murder and persecution of Palestinians as crimes against humanity.”
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