British lawyers who helped bring about the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant warned by UK Foreign Office they could face sanctions from the US, including Amal Clooney, wife of famous American actor George Clooney.
Amal Clooney, the wife of American actor George Clooney, could be barred from entering the US over her work to secure the arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Financial Times reported.
According to the report, the UK Foreign Office warned attorneys who advised the ICC in the controversial case against Israel that they could be slapped with sanctions under a February Executive Order signed by US President Donald Trump. Among the lawyers who were given the warning was Amal Clooney, who holds British but not American citizenship.
Amal Clooney announced on the Clooney Foundation for Justice website that she was one of the experts who was tasked with the ICC to investigate whether Israel was committing war crimes by retaliating for the October 7 massacre committed by the Hamas terrorist organization.
“We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and extermination,” she wrote.
Last year, George Clooney complained to then-US President Joe Biden after Biden criticized the ICC’s decision to create the impression of moral parity between the Hamas leaders who planned the massacre and the Israeli leaders who acted to prevent Hamas from being able to commit future massacres.
Clooney voiced his concerns in a phone call with Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti in May 2024, the Washington Post reported. The Oscar-winning actor was angered by US President Joe Biden’s reference to the warrants as “outrageous” given his Lebanon-born wife’s work to bring them about.
Amal, daughter of a Lebanese Druze father and Sunni Moslem mother, has been a noted critic of Israel for over a decade and was sought by the UN Human Rights Council to participate in an investigation against the Jewish State in 2014, though she declined to participate at the time.
Just prior to her marriage to George Clooney in 2014, Amal stated, “I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed.”
