Netanyahu: ICC decision to ready war crimes probe ‘pure anti-Semtism’

Speaking at a Hanukkah candle lighting ceremony, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that the International Criminal Court’s readying of a probe into alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories is “just as anti-Semitic as the decrees of the Seleucid Greeks.”

During the original Hanukkah story, the Jews fought and overcame anti-Semitic decrees aimed “to drive us out of our land, to say we have no right to exist,” Netanyahu says.

“And yet we find ourselves now, in the beginning of the 21st century, in the year 2019, where the International Criminal Court, that should know otherwise, has set forth decrees that are just as anti-Semitic as the decrees of the Seleucid Greeks,” he says.

“They say the Jews do not have a right to settle in the Jewish homeland. They say the Jews do not have a right to live in the land of the Jews, in the Land of Israel. Well, we say, shame on you. The light of truth lights here and we will overcome you, just as we overcame other anti-Semites in history.”

“Pure anti-Semitism, that’s what the ICC has done, and we will not bow our heads.”