The International Criminal Court prosecutor said Monday that he would seek arrest warrants for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. President Joe Biden called the move “outrageous” for its moral equivalence. He is right, but he misses the broader point. For the ICC, prosecutor Karim Khan, and celebrity advisers such as Amal Clooney, the target is not simply Israel, but also the United States.

The ICC is not an objective organization but rather allows political winds and public opinion to shape its actions. After Khan’s predecessors, Argentine lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo and Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, indicted a number of African officials including Kenyans, Rwandans, Central Africans, and Libyans, Africans questioned why the ICC singled them out. As a result, Bensouda floated the idea of indicting Americans for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.