Former State Department Adviser on Iran, Gabriel Noronha, slammed Amal Clooney for her connection to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) request for arrest warrants against Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders Monday on Fox Business.
Noronha appeared on “The Bottom Line” to discuss the ICC’s recent request for arrest warrants against the foreign leaders for alleged war crimes. Fox Business co-host Sean Duffy pointed out that Clooney’s Hollywood star husband, George Clooney, is expected to headline a fundraiser for President Joe Biden and questioned Noronha on the potential connection between Hollywood “elites” and U.S. policy. (RELATED: George Clooney’s Wife Co-Authored Report Backing ICC Warrant For Netanyahu)
“Gabriel, to you, is this driving some of our U.S. policy — are the elites in Hollywood pushing Joe Biden and others to cozy up with Hamas?” Duffy asked.
“Look, Amal might be a good celebrity, but she’s a terrible lawyer,” Noronha responded. “Israel and actually Hamas itself aren’t under the jurisdiction of the ICC. Israel never signed onto the Rome Statute, which granted jurisdiction. And Hamas isn’t a state, Gaza isn’t a state, Palestine isn’t a state. So the ICC has no business being there at all.”
“You’re right, these celebrities want to play politics,” he continued. “They’re very good — they provide a lot of benefit and value to Americans on the silver screen. But they really should stay out of areas they don’t know about. This international legal affairs is one where they should really just hang up their hats and get to better issues.”
Clooney, a human rights attorney for over a decade, co-authored the report backing ICC’s prosecutor Karim Khan’s warrants against the leaders. After a panel of six lawyers, including Clooney, investigated the international claims against Netanyahu, Gallant and three Hamas leaders, claiming to have “engaged in an extensive process of review and analysis.”
Following the probe, the panel agreed there were “reasonable grounds to believe that three of Hamas’s most senior leaders had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Clooney released a separate statement regarding the decision on her foundation’s site and attributed her involvement to her belief “in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives.”
