Hollywood A-lister George Clooney called the White House last month to defend his wife’s work on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Gaza war.
As Breitbart News noted, “the ICC issued warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for three Hamas terrorist leaders, sparking outrage in Israel and the U.S. as well.”
Clooney’s wife, Amal Clooney, who works in the field of international human rights law, worked with ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who specifically thanked her in his public statement on the indictment. Both Israel and the U.S. rejected the ICC indictments.
Neither recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICC, and both criticized the ICC for equating Israel, which obeys international law, with Hamas, which does not obey such law, and which started the war.
The Washington Post reported that Clooney called a senior White House aide to complain after the president rejected the ICC’s move: “Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, to express concern about Biden’s denunciation of arrest warrants sought by ICC prosecutors for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, especially his use of the word ‘outrageous.’”
Clooney is due to host a fundraiser later this month for Biden in Los Angeles. Biden is skipping a Ukraine peace summit to raise money from Hollywood.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.