Ex-France ambassador to Israel slams Germany’s refusal to comply with ICC arrest warrants

France’s former ambassador to Israel has condemned Germany’s potential refusal to abide by the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for leaders in the Israeli government, calling it the “collapse of all western pretensions”.

On Thursday this week, judges at the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas’s military commander Mohammed Deif.

The decision – which came six months after the ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan filed the applications for the warrants, following investigations into Israeli and Hamas leaders’ alleged involvement in war crimes – received a variety of reactions from politicians and figures worldwide, with some stating their willingness to abide by the warrants while others directly rejected and condemned the ICC order.

For its own part, Germany said that it may refuse to comply with the arrest warrants, with government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit telling reporters that “I find it hard to imagine that arrests could be made in Germany on this basis”.

In response to that statement, Gerard Araud, former French ambassador to Israel and the United States, took to X to call Germany’s stance the “collapse of all western pretensions”. He also urged Berlin to not “say a word about human rights, humanitarian law, [and] international justice”.

In a later post on X, Araud stated that “We are witnessing the West committing suicide live” and that the refusal of some to heed the ICC arrest warrants “is a moral and political shipwreck that is the breeding ground for all authoritarian powers. Do they know what is happening in Gaza?”

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