Israel’s response to the news that the ICC prosecutor has sought arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity could have been expected (Israel calls on ‘civilised nations’ to boycott ICC arrest warrants against its leaders, 21 May). From asserting that the warrants would hinder Israel’s right to self-defence and create an offensive equivalence with Hamas’s crimes to the preposterous smearing of the prosecutor as antisemitic, Israel’s claims can be easily refuted.