The Washington Post editors are trying to exceed the immense hypocrisy 'western' leaders usually display towards against the rest of the world.
The Post declares that the International Criminal Court is the wrong place to hold Israel, and its leaders, to account for war crimes.
Opinion – The International Criminal Court is not the venue to hold Israel to account (archived) – Washington Post
The ICC is needed to help resolve war crimes in Russia, Sudan, Myanmar. Targeting Israel makes that harder.
The argument the piece tries to make is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the courts judgment:
Israel is not a member of the ICC, and the warrants will have limited practical effect, except possibly preventing Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant from traveling to countries which have pledged to enforce it.
The war crimes Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of are happening Palestine, outside of Israel's recognized borders. Palestine is a state party of the Rome Statute. The ICC thus has jurisdiction over what happens on its ground. The (im-)practicality of the court's decision is not an argument against it.
But the arrest orders undermine the ICC’s credibility and give credence to accusations of hypocrisy and selective prosecution. The ICC is putting the elected leaders of a democratic country with its own independent judiciary in the same category as dictators and authoritarians who kill with impunity.
The prosecution and the pre-trial court have found a strong likelihood that Israel is committing war crimes and genocide. To not prosecute those crimes against Israeli citizens because the country claims(!) to be democratic and to have its own independent judiciary would be "hypocrisy and selective prosecution".
By doing the opposite, by prosecuting Israeli citizens, the court is attempting to apply justice equally. The Post defies logic when it claims otherwise.
The Post editors go on to willfully misunderstand the Rome statute which forms the courts legal basis.
Israel needs to be held accountable for its military conduct in Gaza. After the conflict’s end — which is long overdue — there will no doubt be Israeli judicial, parliamentary and military commissions of inquiry. Israeli’s vibrant, independent media will do its own investigations.
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The ICC is supposed to become involved when countries have no means or mechanisms to investigate themselves. That is not the case in Israel.
The highlighted claims is false. Israel has used the argument that its own courts would, somewhere down the road, handle the issue when it tried to prevent the arrest warrants and to get the cases deferred.
The court's ruling explicitly referred to that:
The Chamber ruled on two requests submitted by the Israel on 26 September 2024. […] In the second request, Israel requested that the Chamber order the Prosecution to provide a new notification of the initiation of an investigation to its authorities under article 18(1) of the Statute. Israel also requested the Chamber to halt any proceedings before the Court in the relevant situation, including the consideration of the applications for warrants of arrest for Mr Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Yoav Gallant, submitted by the Prosecution on 20 May 2024.
The court found that the Israeli request to defer, in effect an attempt to shut down the proceedings, is premature:
Furthermore, the Chamber considered that pursuant to article 19(1) of the Statute, States are not entitled to challenge the Court’s jurisdiction under article 19(2) prior to the issuance of a warrant of arrest. Thus Israel’s challenge is premature. This is without prejudice to any future possible challenges to the Court’s jurisdiction and/or admissibility of any particular case.
The Washington Post editors do not even try to refute the courts argument. They can't.
They admit though that Israel, acting with impunity, is deliberately causing a famine:
Israel also has a responsibility to allow humanitarian aid to reach the millions of Palestinians displaced and suffering from an acute food shortage bordering on famine. On this, the Israeli government has fallen short.
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[A] Post analysis found that Israel has largely failed to comply with the U.S. government’s three main demands — a surge of humanitarian aid, not a trickle; access to Gaza for commercial trucks; and an end to Israeli’s siege of populated northern Gaza.
Despite acknowledging Israel's culpability for that war crime, the editors ignore its relevance for the court's case.
They, instead, threaten the court with presidential actions:
The ill-considered arrest warrants against Israel only give Mr. Trump a new reason to halt American cooperation with the court, at a time when it’s needed for Russia, Sudan, Myanmar and conflicts elsewhere that atrocities are being committed with impunity and the victims have no other recourse.
The Post, despite its hostility to Trump, seems to welcome any action he might take against the court.
Pointing to other cases that may deserve (or not) the attention of the court is not an argument, but whataboutism writ large.