The U.S. found itself at odds with some key allies Tuesday after President Joe Biden denounced the chief prosecutor of the world’s top war crimes court for seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders.

France and Belgium, breaking with Biden, were among a number of countries to defend the “independence” of the International Criminal Court after prosecutor Karim Khan accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as well as others, of war crimes.

Israel sought to contain the fallout from the news, which delivered a new reputational blow even though no arrests were imminent. It called on its allies to vow not to enforce any warrants and dispatched its top diplomat, Foreign Minister Israel Katz, to Paris, according to The Associated Press.

In an interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle on Tuesday, Netanyahu said Israel was getting a "bum rap in the international scene" as he branded Khan a "rogue prosecutor who's out to demonize the one and only Jewish state."

Echoing Biden's comments, Netanyahu said Khan's decision to seek arrest warrants for both Israel's and Hamas' leaders reflected a "false symmetry" that he said was comparable to the arrest warrants that were issued for both President George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He further accused Khan of stoking "antisemitic fires" that he said were already burning across campuses in the U.S. and Europe — an apparent reference to widespread protests led by university students around the world in opposition to Israel's offensive in Gaza.

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But Israel did get public backing from its chief ally, the U.S., after months of mounting tensions between the two countries.

Some human rights advocates criticized Biden for his swift condemnation of the move to seek arrest warrants, which he described as "outrageous" and suggested implied a false "equivalence" between Israel and Hamas.

Speaking at a Rose Garden appearance celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month later in the day, he said that Israel "wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection" and that "what's happening is not genocide."

The U.S. was not alone in rejecting the ICC's move, with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying it was "not helpful to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or humanitarian aid in."

Germany said it had some concerns, particularly about the decision to issue a "simultaneous application" for arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas, which its foreign ministry said gave "the false impression of equivalence," the German newspaper Deutsche Welle reported. But ultimately, Germany said it respected the court's independence.

‘Cannot have it both ways’

Human rights advocates criticized Biden's suggestion that the ICC's announcement equated Israel with Hamas, while some also accused the U.S. of double standards, given Washington's emphatic support for the ICC's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes in the war in Ukraine.

"Biden's response was deeply disappointing," Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a phone interview Tuesday. "There was nothing 'outrageous,'" he said, about Khan's decision to apply for arrest warrants "at all."

Rejecting Biden's suggestion that Khan had implied "an equivalence between Israel and Hamas," Roth said Khan "did no such thing. He simply charged both sides for their separate crimes. And to use Biden's term, it would have been 'outrageous' had he ignored one side's crime."

"These charges are not about Israel's right to defend itself, which no one questions. They're about how Israel has chosen to defend itself, and no cause, no matter how just, can be used as an excuse to commit war crimes," Roth said.

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Biden was not alone in accusing Khan of implying a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, with both Israeli officials and Hamas leaders also accusing him of suggesting their actions in the Israel-Hamas war could be compared.

“Placing the leaders of a country that went into battle to protect its citizens — in the same line with bloodthirsty terrorists — is moral blindness and a violation of its duty and ability to protect its citizens,” Israeli war Cabinet member Benny Gantz said in Hebrew in a post on X.

Hamas separately denounced “the attempts of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to equate the victim with the executioner.”

Neither the U.S. nor Israel recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, but any arrest warrants the court issues could put Israeli officials at risk of arrest in other countries, including much of Europe.

The warrants would also put Netanyahu on similar footing as Putin on the global stage after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him in March 2023.

At the time, Biden welcomed the ICC's decision, saying he felt it was "justified." He said the ICC was "not recognized internationally by us, either. But I think it makes a very strong point."

The apparent disparity in his response to Khan's bid to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others sparked accusations of a double standard.

Roth said he believed the “different response speaks more to the lack of principle in the U.S. government’s purported respect for the rule of law.”

“It’s not the rule of law when it applies only to one’s adversaries and not to one’s friends,” he said in a nod to U.S. support for the ICC warrant against Putin.

Shibley Telhami, a Middle East scholar at the University of Maryland, said in a post on X that Biden's "defense of Israeli leaders" was "not surprising, given his posture on Israel and the Gaza war." But, he said, "his furious attack on ICC and disregard for other [international organizations] has been shocking, out of touch with his own core constituency, and undermines the global order."

The Kremlin also weighed in, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that America's “attitude and their readiness to use sanctions even against the ICC” was “more than curious.”

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Approval of Biden's handling of Israel-Hamas war falls to new low amid campus protests.

Just 26% approve of the president's approach to Gaza.

President Biden called the Israel-Hamas war “one of the hardest, most complicated problems in the world” during his commencement speech at Morehouse College Sunday morning.

Yet a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that the war is now more than just a foreign policy problem for Biden — it’s becoming a bigger political problem as well.

The survey of 1,794 U.S. adults, which was conducted from May 10 to 13, finds the president stuck in a lose-lose situation over Gaza. As pro-Palestinian protests rile college campuses and stoke cable news chatter, approval of his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has fallen to a new low (26%) while disapproval has risen to a new high (60%).

No other issue — not inflation, not immigration — tests as poorly for the president at this point.

Right after Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attacks, Americans were evenly divided over Biden’s handling of the conflict (36% approve, 40% disapprove).

But in recent months, the president — a longtime Israel hawk and self-described “Zionist” — has shifted from unequivocally supporting Israel’s military campaign to trying to steer the U.S. ally toward an immediate ceasefire, in part by withholding some weapons.

In response, more Republicans than ever now reject Biden’s approach as “not pro-Israel enough” (54%) — while a significant portion of Democrats continue to see it as “too pro-Israel” (35%).

As a result, the share of Americans who characterize Biden’s approach to the issue as “about right” has declined from 33% in October to just 24% today.

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Campus protests aren’t helping the president

Most Americans (85%) say they have heard or read at least a little about the “major protests against Israel’s war in Gaza [that] have spread on college campuses across the U.S.,” including 44% who say they have heard or read “a lot.”

But half (50%) say that they disapprove of the protests and that the protesters have gone “too far” (50%), a group driven largely by Republicans (75% disapprove, 72% too far). Among registered voters, the share who disapprove of the protests (54%) and say the protesters have gone too far (58%) is even higher. Significant numbers of voters think the protests have been “mostly violent” (34%) or that “all" (14%) or “most” (23%) of the protesters are antisemitic.

Meanwhile, far fewer Americans say they approve of the protests (25%) and that the protesters have been “about right” (21%) or “not gone far enough” (5%). (Those numbers are nearly identical among voters.)

Even among Democrats, fewer than half approve of the protests (41%) or think the protesters have been about right (33%). Just 6% of Democrats think the protestors haven’t gone far enough.

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The upshot is that only a quarter of Americans (25%) think that what Biden has “said and done” about the protests has been about right. The rest say the president’s response has been “too supportive of the protesters” (24%) or “not supportive enough” (14%). A plurality (37%) aren’t sure.

Overall, just 27% of Americans approve of Biden’s approach to the protests, and 39% think former President Donald Trump would do a “better job” handling the issue (versus 36% for Biden).

For the record, the president has said "there's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos."

“In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points,” Biden continued. “But this isn’t a moment for politics. It’s a moment for clarity. So let me be clear: Violent protest is not protected, peaceful protest is.”

Politics aside, Americans largely see eye to eye with Biden on Israel and Gaza

Actual attitudes among Americans toward the Israel-Hamas war are nuanced — and not dissimilar to Biden’s.

While the share who say Hamas is responsible for the current hostilities (56%) remains twice as big as the share who say Israel is responsible (27%), more Americans than ever before now think Israel’s military response in Gaza has gone too far (39%, up from 30% in November).

In contrast, just 19% of Americans say Israel’s response has been about right, and only 14% say it hasn’t gone far enough.

Likewise, a majority of Americans (51%) now say they would prefer the U.S. work to “broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas” rather than continue to “support Israel as it tries to defeat Hamas” (28%). Just a third (34%) want the fighting to continue “until Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza.”

Asked how they feel about “Israel invading Rafah — the southern Gaza city where more than 1 million Palestinians have taken refuge — in order to continue its campaign to destroy Hamas,” far more disapprove (41%), like Biden, than approve (26%).

Far more Americans also approve (46%) than disapprove (30%) of Biden’s decision to pause “the delivery of thousands of bombs and artillery shells to Israel to pressure Israel against launching an all-out assault on Rafah.”

Finally, 37% of Americans now support an independent Palestinian state — a new high, up from 29% in October 2023 and 27% in May 2021. Just 19% are opposed.

“As we look to the future, the only real solution is a two-state solution,” Biden said in March. “There is no other path that guarantees Israel’s security and democracy. There is no other path that guarantees Palestinians can live with peace and dignity.”

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