The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, hoped that issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant would cause the West to turn against Israel, a senior Western diplomat with firsthand knowledge of the ICC case told the Jerusalem Post. The diplomat said that in a conversation he had with Khan last year, he said:  “You just wait and see. If I apply for warrants against Netanyahu, this would give countries like Germany and Canada the excuse they need to turn against the Israeli government.” “I remember thinking to myself first: How naive can you be?” “But secondly, I thought: That’s not the job. You should be driven by the law and by facts and evidence, not by the thought that Germany might turn on an elected official,” the diplomat said. The diplomat added that Khan issued a statement saying that he visited Washington at the end of March 2024, “at which time he informed senior administration officials that he would be applying for warrants against those persons named in the warrants by the end of April 2024.” “If indeed Khan had made up his mind to apply for warrants in late March, then all of his interactions with both senior Israeli, US, and other officials regarding his visit to Gaza on May 27 would have been under false pretenses,” the diplomat said. That’s because the ICC Prosecutor’s Office sent an official letter to Israel on March 20, requesting information relevant to the investigation on Israel’s alleged “war crimes.” This information was supposed to be evaluated by Khan for the investigation. In April, an Israeli delegation traveled to the ICC to discuss the investigation with Khan’s team. On May 1, Khan told numerous US senators that he was still investigating the alleged war crimes and that no decision has been made yet. “I felt like we had a good conversation, that he was going to go to Israel and hear their side of the story, as I thought the law required. I think every senator on that phone call would be surprised to hear him claiming that he had already made up his mind,” US Sen. Lindsey Graham said. “The way he conducted this was really outrageous. He decided to announce the arrest warrants before he heard Israel’s side of the story,” Graham continued. “The only thing that makes sense to me is that he wanted to change the subject, because if he says that he had already made up his mind [by then], then the entire conversation he had with all of us was a fraud.” Following a damning Wall Street Journal report on Sunday revealing that Khan issued the arrest warrants against the Israeli leaders in order to deflect attention from rape charges brought against him by his female aide, Israel has requested that the ICC withdraw the arrest warrants. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)