What the ICC arrest warrants mean for Israel and Hamas

Benjamin Netanyahu responded with fury to the news that he might face an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It was "a moral outrage of historic proportions", he said. Israel was "waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organisation that perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust."

In a bitter personal attack, Mr Netanyahu said Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was one of the "great antisemites in modern times."

Mr Khan, he said, was like judges in Nazi Germany who denied Jews basic rights and enabled the Holocaust. His decision to seek arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister and defence minister was "callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging around the world.’

Mr Netanyahu spoke English on the video that was released by his office. He does that when he wants his message to reach the foreign audience that matters most to him, in the US.