WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The U.S. House of Representatives has passed its first major foreign policy bill of the 119th Congressional session - in which both chambers are Republican-controlled - to sanction officials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing an arrest warrant for Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 
The warrant, issued in November, is for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the regime’s ongoing assault on Gaza. The Biden administration was quick to condemn the warrant at the time.
The Biden administration’s language is now mirrored in Thursday’s bill that condemns the ICC’s actions, entitled the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which would likely end up on President-elect Donald Trump’s desk if it passes the Senate.
For its part, the House voted 243-140-1 to sanction anyone associated with the ICC’s efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any “protected person” of the U.S. and its friends abroad who are not party to the Rome Statute, which established the court.
The legislation also mentions the warrant issued against the Zionist regime’s former war minister, Yoav Gallant.
There were 45 Democrats who joined their Republican colleagues in voting for the bill.
The text of the bill stipulates the U.S. would impose “visa- and property-blocking sanctions against the foreign persons that engaged in or materially assisted” in an investigation or arrest of Americans and their allies, and that “the president must also apply visa-blocking sanctions to the immediate family members of those sanctioned”.
“Human rights lawyers and others documenting the worst atrocities committed on this planet are heroes who should be celebrated—not punished when the war criminals they pursue are allies of the United States,” Representative Ilhan Omar, who voted against the bill, said on X.
Representative Rashida Tlaib said in an X post that the bill is aimed at protecting “genocidal maniac Netanyahu so he can continue the genocide in Gaza.”
The Zionist regime launched its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a surprise operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
So far, the criminal regime has killed at least 46,006 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 109,378 others, in the besieged territory.