Family members of Israeli hostages traveled to The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday to file charges against Hamas with the International Criminal Court (ICC), submitting a 1,000-page document on Hamas’s crimes since the October 7 terror attack.
The Times of Israel reported:
The family members of hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza formally submit[ted] their war crimes complaint against the terror group to the International Criminal Court [ICC] in The Hague.
“We came to demand justice. On the 7th of October we went through a second holocaust. These human monsters are the heirs of Hitler, Eichmann and Goebbels. They must be wiped out and the notion of collective death which they spread must be eliminated. History will not repeat itself, we are taking our fate into our hands and demanding the justice that we are owed,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum organization declares.
Several hundred people attend a rally staged by the forum outside the court amid the rain in the Dutch city, in which parents, siblings and children of the hostages, along with those who were released from Hamas’s captivity back in November, and survivors of the October 7 atrocities, address the crowd.
The ICC is different from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The latter, where Israel is currently defending itself against charges of “genocide” brought by South Africa, is for settling disputes between countries. The former has jurisdiction to pursue violations of international law. Though Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that grants authority to the ICC, and is not subject to its jurisdiction, the court’s jurisdiction can still be arguably extended to war crimes by non-state actors like Hamas.
The ICC could issue warrants for the arrest of Hamas leaders and financiers, limiting their ability to travel — as they have done despite the war — and to use the international financial system to fund their terrorist operations against Israelis and others.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
