Some of the external advisers on whom the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague based his decision to seek arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had already expressed anti-Israel views years before the Gaza war. This was revealed by an examination conducted by the international law expert, Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, head of the International Law Department at the Kohelet Policy Forum.

Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan wrote that he was "grateful for the advice of a panel of experts in international law," which he described as an "impartial group." This is an exceptional procedure in which the court also relies on external advisers before deciding on the issue. The purpose of the consultation is to enhance credibility regarding the decision.

In an op-ed he published in the Wall Street Journal, Kontorovich exposed that at least some of the experts mentioned by Khan had expressed negative views toward Israel long before the outbreak of the war.

For example, Prof. Kevin Jon Heller, whom Prosecutor Khan described as "independent," tweeted in 2020 that "two criminals (Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu) are conspiring to commit criminal acts against Palestine and the Palestinians." Heller has served as a special adviser on war crimes to Chief Prosecutor Khan for two years. On other occasions, Heller wrote that Israel practices "apartheid" against the Palestinians.

In 2015, he wrote that Israel is "committed to systematically depriving the innocent of their most basic rights," and is guilty of the "systematic oppression of the Palestinians." Heller dismissed arguments in favor of Israel as "fake law and propaganda."

Another adviser relied upon by Prosecutor Khan is Baroness Helena Kennedy, a member of the Labour Party and the British House of Lords. Kennedy had called for the ICC to prosecute Israel long before the Gaza war began. In March, she wrote, "The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has given a warning to Israel; now is the time for all of us to say: enough is enough." Kennedy accused Israel of war crimes since the beginning of the war, and she also claimed that there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip.

Another member of the advisory panel to the chief prosecutor is a lawyer named Danny Friedman, who admitted that he defines himself as a lawyer who happens to be Jewish, except when he condemns Israel – then he puts his Jewishness at the forefront. Ten days after Hamas's heinous attack, and before the ground operation had begun, Friedman had already accused Israel of war crimes. In November, he argued that international law required Israel to immediately cease its campaign, even while Hamas was holding hostages.

Kontorovich noted that the bias of these experts was systematic and completely one-sided. The prosecutor accused Israel of committing war crimes based on the advice of people who, when chosen, had already reached that conclusion.

He emphasized that the prosecutor's reliance on biased advisers contradicts the court's own rules. "The ICC's Code of Conduct for Prosecutors requires them to 'refrain from any activity which is likely to negatively affect the confidence of others in the independence or integrity of the Office.' The Code of Conduct says the 'impartiality' section requires 'refraining from expressing an opinion that could, objectively, adversely affect the required impartiality, whether through communications media, in writing or public addresses.' These rules don't apply to outside experts, but by selecting and relying on panel advisers who don't meet the ICC's own definition of impartiality, the prosecutor undermines his own."

Kontorovich stressed that Prosecutor Khan intentionally chose only advisers known not to accept Israel's position regarding the court's lack of jurisdiction. "It would have been easy for Mr. Khan to find experts with similar views who hadn't made their prejudices public. That Mr. Khan chose these advisers indicates that he valued certainty in the results above even the appearance of impartiality."

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Marc Lamont Hill can make the outrageous claim that Israel poisons Palestinian water and still be invited to speak at fundraisers and other events. Linda Sarsour can repeat the blood libel that Jews and Zionists justify police killings of unarmed black people in America – and worse, are responsible for them – and still get a lucrative Simon & Schuster book deal and serve as an official surrogate for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign.

Her chronic displays of anti-Semitism largely are overlooked by national news outlets.

Fellow Sanders surrogate Amer Zahr can equate Israel with ISIS, a sentiment repeatedly uttered by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter directors Zahra Billoo and Hussam Ayloush, without consequence. Billoo comes right out and says she does not "believe [Israel] has a right to exist."

She's still CAIR's top official in the San Francisco Bay area.

Their obsessive focus on Israel is telling. Syria has spent years engaging in mass murder of hundreds of thousands of its own people and displacing millions more, numbers exponentially greater than Palestinian casualties in all the wars and conflicts with Israel. But thus far, none of these activists have advocated ending these, or any other states. Just the world's lone Jewish state.

And that brings us to a protest held Sunday in front of the White House. A small group met for the anti-Israel group Al-Awda: The Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees' "national rally to support Palestine and protest AIPAC." The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was holding its annual convention a short distance away.

"AIPAC is a terrorist organization," Eric Resnick, who was part of the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace from Cleveland, told the protest. "AIPAC commits war crimes."

Advocacy, when done in support of Israel, is a war crime. He didn't offer any examples.

Another protester held a sign reading, "Stop the genocide, End Israel, Free Palestine."

"Can I get an amen for that?" asked speaker Richard Siegel, identifying the sign-holder as his friend.

The data makes clear there is no genocide targeting Palestinians, whose population has grown by 400 percent in the past 50 years. But the solution Siegel and his friend offer actually would be a genocide. If you "End Israel," you destroy a people and their culture. There is no historical example of that being done without massive death and devastation.

This virtue-signaling ignorance, unfortunately, is not an aberration at anti-Israel protests.

Rare is the anti-Israel gathering that does not feature the chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." It was repeated dozens of times during Sunday's Al-Awda protest. It's a not-so-subtle dream of a Palestinian state that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, swallowing all of Israel.

That vision is codified in an updated, supposedly more moderate Hamas charter, a document that unambiguously calls for Israel's annihilation: "Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea."

The protest featured a number of D-list speakers, many of whom were introduced by first name only. One, identified as Andre from Baltimore, let his guard slip for a moment, drawing knowing laughs from the crowd.

"We say, 'Down with Israel.' I really want to say 'Death to Israel.' Israel out of occupied Palestine, Palestine for the Palestinian people. Long live Palestine, sisters and brothers."

Another Baltimore resident, Miranda, represented something called Youth Against War and Racism. Yet she offered some bigoted scapegoating of her own, blaming Israel for global woes that are felt here at home. She claimed Israel exists solely for "driving up profits, they're driving up prices." Through its "active genocide against the Palestinian people ... it's actively destroying the lives of people, working people here in the United States."

Don Bryant, from Al-Awda's Cleveland chapter, argued it is not anti-Semitic to deny Jews a country in their ancestral homeland. If anything, "Israel is the anti-Semite here," because Palestinians are a Semitic people and Israel is "bombing the crap outta Palestine."

Israel's bombings in Gaza have followed terrorist attacks, including rockets fired at Israeli communities. The attacks are focused on terrorist infrastructure and often include advanced warnings for civilians to leave the area in an attempt to minimize casualties. No speaker urged Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad to cease firing those rockets at civilians.

Siegel boasted of his past anti-Israel protests outside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "because Holocaust education basically serves Zionism ... the way Holocaust education is presented, it's presented in such a way that presents the Jews as the ultimate victims and presents Israel as the solution."

Future protests should be held at the museum instead of in front of the White House, said Eric Resnick, representing the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace.

"We need to move this rally to the Holocaust museum and use it to tell the story of the Nakba," meaning catastrophe – how Palestinians refer to Israel's creation. "Because when those people say 'Never Again,' they don't mean 'Never Again' to anyone, anywhere else. They just mean 'Never Again' to Jews. And they also mean the Jews can be as mean and as nasty and commit as many crimes as they want to because they were victims once."

The museum's website offers direct evidence proving he is wrong.

Siegel, meanwhile, likened secular Zionism to a cult.

"It's almost like we're inventing a new Jewish religion based on Christianity that poses the Jews as Jesus, Auschwitz as the cross and Israel as the resurrection."

Later, protesters marched toward the convention center to protest the AIPAC convention. There, a man was videotaped shouting that "the Holocaust will come back to you ... you gonna get burned if you don't give us the land."

Reprinted with permission from IPT News.

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