ICC Ousts Karim Khan After Israel Warrant Campaign

International Criminal Court member states voted to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan following an approximately 18-month misconduct investigation. Khan’s office pursued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, placing the unprecedented removal inside the larger fight over the court’s treatment of Israel.

• A secret ballot produced 82 votes for removal among the court’s 125 member states, according to JNS’s report citing diplomatic sources.
• The dismissal threshold was 63 votes, and the vote marked the first removal of an ICC chief prosecutor.
• The removal followed allegations of sexual misconduct; Khan has denied wrongdoing.

Khan’s removal compounds the ICC’s institutional credibility problem at the same time its Israel warrants are being used as political weapons against Israeli officials. The next prosecutor’s handling of those files will show whether the court treats the episode as a personnel scandal or a reason to reassess the office’s broader conduct.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer endorsed Rep. Haley Stevens less than two weeks before the Democratic Senate primary. Jewish Insider frames the contest as a moderate, pro-Israel candidate facing progressive anti-Israel firebrand Abdul El-Sayed; this briefing records the political development and does not constitute a candidate recommendation.

• Whitmer had previously stayed out of the contested primary before issuing a video endorsement on Friday.
• The intervention places the Democratic governor directly into a primary with a clear Israel-policy divide.
• Candidate recommendations remain governed by vote.IsraelUSA.org.

The endorsement tests whether a major Democratic governor can mobilize institutional party strength against an anti-Israel progressive challenge in a statewide battleground. The primary result will provide a measurable indicator of how much electoral cost the party’s anti-Israel wing can impose outside deep-blue districts.

The United States and Iran appeared to halt direct strikes after 13 consecutive days of exchanges, but violence continued between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis. Separately, outlets citing a New York Times report said U.S. intelligence assesses that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is more inclined than his father to seek nuclear weapons; the articles reflect one underlying reported assessment, not multiple independent intelligence sources.

• The overnight pause ended a run of 13 days of direct U.S.-Iran strikes.
• Saudi forces struck a Houthi-held port while the Houthis launched missiles and drones at Saudi oil installations.
• The reported U.S. assessment says Iranian hardliners are arguing that a bomb is needed to deter future attacks.

A tactical pause in exchanges does not settle the strategic issue if Tehran’s postwar leadership is moving toward weaponization. The decisive indicators will be nuclear-site activity and whether the pause produces verifiable limits rather than time for Iran to rebuild.

A mural at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center was defaced with swastikas and anti-Zionist messages, and Los Angeles County authorities are investigating the vandalism as a hate crime. In France, six suspects were arrested after a suspicious vehicle near a Sarcelles synagogue triggered an evacuation and an alleged terror-plot investigation.

• The Pasadena mural was created to foster hope and solidarity after the Eaton Fire and after earlier antisemitic vandalism at the site.
• The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it is investigating the new vandalism as a hate crime.
• France’s anti-terror prosecutor said six suspects were arrested in the Sarcelles investigation.

The incidents show Jewish institutions facing both routine degradation of communal space and suspected organized attack planning. That spectrum forces local authorities to treat anti-Zionist vandalism and synagogue security as connected parts of the same threat environment.