Last week, 42 House Democrats voted with Republicans to help pass a bill placing sanctions on the International Criminal Court and its officials over their pursuit of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. The 42 Democrats joined the Republican-led effort notwithstanding strenuous opposition to the bill from the White House.
The bill, which is called the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act,” calls for the imposition of sanctions on any individual who has “engaged in or otherwise aided any effort by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute” current or former U.S. officials or officials from any U.S. ally nation, as well as anyone who has in any way assisted those efforts, anyone acting on behalf of someone involved in such investigations and immediate family members of all such individuals.
The sanctions include blocking of property in the U.S., visa bans and revocation of active visas. The sanctions would remain in place until the ICC’s efforts are ended and the investigations are permanently terminated.
Although House and Senate lawmakers were working on a bipartisan approach in response to the ICC’s threats against Israeli leaders, that effort collapsed when the Biden administration announced its opposition to the imposition of sanctions.
House Republicans insisted on continuing with the bill and are being accused of politicizing Israel policy and using Israel and antisemitism as a wedge issue against Democrats.
The issue is now before the Senate. Dueling positions taken by Maryland’s two senators on the wisdom and propriety of the ICC sanctions effort reflect the political and claimed principled divide among Democrats over the issue.
On the one hand, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the state’s senior senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed disappointment with the White House’s reversal of its initial support for a bipartisan response to the ICC actions.
Cardin had worked with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and others on a more targeted sanctions package, and both Cardin and Graham have expressed hope that with some adjustments the House bill could pass in the Senate.
On the other side is Maryland’s junior senator, Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), one of the Senate’s sharpest and most vocal critics of Israel.
In a speech before the Center for American Progress last week — in which he claimed that the Biden administration has “really failed” to hold Israel and its leaders accountable for their war effort in Gaza — Van Hollen criticized the proposed sanctions on the ICC as “more befitting [actions by] Mafia thugs” than legitimate legislative action.
He warned that the biggest beneficiary of U.S. sanctions on the ICC would be Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom the ICC seeks to prosecute.
While Van Hollen suggested that he shares some of the concerns expressed by the Biden administration over the process followed by the ICC in seeking arrest warrants, he did not oppose the pursuit of the warrants themselves.
Cardin is right. A bipartisan compromise on an ICC sanctions effort makes sense and will send a much-needed message of outrage to the ICC and its officials in response to their overreach. The Biden administration will come around on the issue in the face of bipartisan support, as it should, even if Van Hollen will not.