Karim Khan and the Targeted Assassination of the ICC

By Robert Inlakesh

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan submitted arrest warrants for Israeli leaders and Gaza resistance figures. (Photo: video grab)

So no, this isn’t just about Karim Khan. In fact, it isn’t even just about the ICC. This is about the United Nations, international law and the entire post-WW2 order.

The fall of the International Criminal Court’s former prosecutor will go down in history as a dark chapter – while an effort has been made to make this about Karim Khan, it never had much to do with him at all.

In May of last year, an Israeli-British defense lawyer linked to a Netanyahu adviser, named Nicholas Kaufman, had informed the then ICC prosecutor Karim Khan that Israel was willing to put a deal on the table for him.

In exchange for the prosecutor withdrawing his arrest warrants against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the proposal was allowing him and the court itself to survive.

Khan was made clear that in the event that he did not bow to Tel Aviv’s demands, he would be “destroyed”. In fact, something else was made even clearer: if he decided to go in the direction of pursuing arrest warrants against Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, “all options are off the table”. “They will destroy you, and they will destroy the court”, the Israeli-British lawyer made it clear.

It was back in May of 2024 that Khan had applied for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his then defense minister, along with three Hamas leaders, all of whom have since been killed. This came after a panel at the court had reviewed the issue and decided there was enough evidence to issue the warrants. Coincidentally, the allegations of sexual misconduct also popped up earlier this very same month.

When asked, a day after Khan requested the issuance of the arrest warrants, Netanyahu confidently stated: “I’m not concerned at all about our status. I think the prosecutor should be concerned about his status”.

Come July of 2026, the situation has played out precisely as Israel’s threats had suggested it would. Israel Lobby-paid American representatives leveraged their positions and wasted time that they were voted in to use on Americans to attack the ICC, delegitimize it, and issue sanctions against the court and its chief prosecutor.

According to Khan, his family was targeted by a pressure campaign that had been designed to intimidate them. He also lost access to his own email account due to the sanctions. But it wasn’t just Karim Khan that was targeted by American sanctions; it was also 10 others at the court, including the deputy prosecutor.

Recently, the prosecutor was removed as a result of a vote against him, amidst the sexual misconduct allegation scandal. However, as head of Khan’s legal team, Tayab Ali, pointed out, a judicial panel had previously unanimously voted to conclude that the findings by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services “did not establish misconduct or breach of duty”.

With all this being said, there is no way of knowing with any certainty what truly transpired between accused and accuser. But, this is not the point. Whether Khan is guilty or innocent is irrelevant; either way, he has been subjected to Mafia-style tactics by his Israeli opponents for daring to stand up to them. As a result of the warrants, which the court decided and he pulled the trigger on allowing, the Israelis have made it their obsession to use their puppets in the United States and intelligence assets to completely cripple the court.

It is the typical Israeli kill-the-messenger tactic. If they can’t dispute what is being said about them, then they scream anti-semitism and attempt to ruin the messenger. In this case, they are going after Khan and the entire court.

The US is also pressuring its proxy regime to withdraw their nation as a signatory to the Rome Statute that governs in the ICC, the latest of which has been the captured Venezuelan government, whose President still remains kidnapped by the United States. Chad also joined in leaving the ICC, using the Zionist approved excuse of bias.

Of course, these nations are arguing that the court only pursues African and Latin American war criminals. This would have been a good justification around 3 years ago, but today that argument simply makes no sense. What the ICC has recently done is to actually break from its long-standing tradition of avoiding dealing with accountability for Western leaders. When it finally does what these nations are suddenly complaining about, they withdraw- what a coincidence that is.

We also know that former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was subjected to intense surveillance and intimidation by Israeli intelligence to drop her investigation into war crimes in Palestine. Even more telling was the fact that they had also attempted to build up evidence against the former prosecutor’s husband, with the aim of building leverage against her and using it in an online smear campaign.

At the beginning of Khan’s tenure, he had been the UK-backed pick to assume his position and got the right to work on jobs that the collective West was very happy about. For example, the speed at which Karim Khan applied for and issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, following the invasion of Ukraine, was widely lauded in London and Washington. The Russian leader’s arrest warrant was issued in only 3 weeks. It took around a year to do the same for Netanyahu, and even then, more Palestinian arrest warrants were issued than Israeli ones.

In the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, the prosecutor appeared to have even sided with the Israelis and was repeating their propaganda, treating Palestinians as a sideshow during his trip to occupied Palestine in late 2023.

What we are watching unfold is the targeted assassination of the ICC. In order to avoid accountability, the Israelis are now in the process of using their paid assets to help them destroy the entire international system as we know it.

So no, this isn’t just about Karim Khan. In fact, it isn’t even just about the ICC. This is about the United Nations, international law and the entire post-WW2 order. Perhaps the most ironic part of this is that much of the international legal system, human rights, and the UN’s founding documents were heavily influenced by the genocide of Jews. The same genocide that Israel now uses as an excuse as to why it should be able to commit its own genocide.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.