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In April, Hungary announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court as it hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, making it the only EU state that will not be a member of the ICC. Now, the ICC is fighting back. “International Criminal Court refers Hungary to its oversight body for failing to arrest Netanyahu,” by Molly Quell, Associated Press, July 25, 2025:
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A panel of judges at the International Criminal Court reported Hungary to the court’s oversight organization for failing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Budapest in April, saying the move undercut the court’s ability to bring suspects to justice.
The Israeli leader received a red carpet welcome from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during a state visit, in defiance of an ICC arrest warrant. Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are accused of crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.
Israel is not a member of the court and staunchly rejects the charges.
In a filing released late Thursday, the three-judge panel wrote that “the obligation to cooperate was sufficiently clear to Hungary” and the failure to arrest Netanyahu “severely undermines the Court’s ability to carry out its mandate.”
Under the founding document of the ICC, the Rome Statute, a state’s full withdrawal from the ICC (and from the obligations that membership incurs) takes effect a year after it withdraws. Nonetheless, the powers of the ICC over Hungary are negligible. The ICC has no prosecutorial power over member states, including Hungary. It can merely attempt to shame them, marginalize them, and complain to the UN.
When Hungary withdrew from the ICC, Human Rights Watch rebuked the decision, stating that “Hungary’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC) is an insult to victims and survivors of the world’s worst crimes.” But such a statement presupposes that the ICC is trustworthy, which it is not. Like the UN, the ICC has become increasingly leftist and anti-Israel. Despite the threat to Israel’s existence after October 7, which led to Israel’s necessary war against Hamas, the ICC issued warrants for both Hamas leaders and Netanyahu. But the two should not and cannot justifiably be compared. Hamas and its fellow jihadists are determined to destroy Israel because it is a Jewish state, while Israel is determined to secure its nation from annihilation and jihad attacks. Between these two determinations — one for destruction and the other for survival — a humanitarian disaster arose, particularly because Hamas used its own Palestinians in Gaza as human shields.
The ICC does, however, have powers to arrest heads of state who are members of the ICC. Israel is not a member, so the ICC relies on other states to honor its arrest warrants. Hungary refused.
Although separate from the United Nations, the ICC has a strong cooperative partnership with the anti-Israel UN under its Negotiated Relationship Agreement. The ICC is also influenced by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which submitted a legal paper to the ICC in 2020 arguing a case for “Palestine.” This case included alleged “crimes” by Israel on “is territory,” that is, Palestinian territory. The legal paper also demanded that the ICC accept the territorial jurisdiction of the “State of Palestine” (which is fully recognized by the OIC). Add to all this the fact that Islamic countries have been buying out UN agencies to promote the Sharia globally. So needless to say, the OIC is a powerful stakeholder to both the UN and the ICC, and goes a long way toward explaining why Israel is a targeted nation.
Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC indeed represents a shift in the EU, but not on issues pertaining to international law per se. It can more accurately be stated that Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC is an indictment of the arbiters of international law such as the ICC and even the UN.
The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 was once the gold standard for human rights, until 1990, when the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) was adopted by the OIC. It defined all human rights on the basis of Sharia law, which is egregiously opposed to equal rights for all, and to human rights for infidels. This in itself separated the OIC member states from UN member states on determining the very definition of human rights. The question of how any OIC member state could be harmonized with non-Islamic states under the UN umbrella, when determining what human rights even means, has not been addressed to this day.
Given the rise of the Red-Green axis and the few countries such as Hungary and the US (under Trump) that oppose it, there is no neutral and reliable international body that is now trustworthy. As a result of the right-left divide, mainstream media reports about international law tend to be left-leaning, and favor the Palestinian cause, without factoring in critical details, such as the use of human shields in the jihad against Israel, and the toll that takes upon civilian populations. Take, for example, The Conversation’s report about Hungary’s exit from the ICC over Netanyahu. It stated: “Hungary’s open repudiation of an important part of international law is further evidence of the tectonic shifts taking place in international relations.”
Kudos to Hungary for exiting the ICC. The country has never absorbed jihad propaganda. It has also managed its borders against a Muslim migrant invasion, unlike neighboring states that are governed by leftist globalist EU leaders. Hungary has also ignored the EU Commission’s pressure and the usual smears of “racism” and “Islamophobia.” As a result, Hungary’s national identity remains proudly Christian, and in keeping with the country’s values. It did not and will not succumb to the persecution from the International Criminal Court or the likes of the UN against Israel and Netanyahu. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, has stated of the ICC that it had “lost its meaning by conducting political instead of legal activities.” As such, expect a series of attempts by the ICC and UN to smear Hungary, but these smears will almost certainly fall on deaf ears.