Netanyahu in Budapest: More Cracks in the Façade of International Law
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touched down in Budapest, it was with full awareness of the symbolism his presence carried. This was no ordinary diplomatic visit—it was a deliberate, high-stakes engagement between two leaders long united by their skepticism of multilateral institutions and their shared disdain for what they describe as the politicization of international law. Netanyahu’s arrival marked the first time he set foot in a European capital since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest, an act that Hungary not only dismissed, but used as a platform to double down on its support for Israel.
The implications stretch well beyond Hungary’s borders. Orbán’s position has been consistent: support for Israel, rejection of supranational overreach, and a clear prioritization of national sovereignty over global consensus. The real question is not about Hungary’s stance- that has been consistent throughout-but about Europe’s. Can a continent that claims to champion international law afford to look the other way when one of its own breaks the very norms it asks others to uphold? And as political convenience continues to erode legal principle, how many more cracks can Europe sustain in the façade of its moral authority?
Context and Contradictions: A Political and Legal Backdrop
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war on Gaza.
The decision rattled many Western governments, forcing them to confront a dilemma: whether to uphold their stated commitment to international law or protect their political alliance with Israel. It reversed a familiar dynamic, one where international law is often wielded by the U.S. and Europe as a tool to advance political interests, under the guise of their self-appointed role as guardians of the international legal order.
Most relevant to this situation is the ICC’s earlier decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The contrast was stark. Then-President Biden instructed U.S. agencies to support the Court and encouraged states to comply with the warrant. European leaders followed suit, calling on the Global South to uphold international law and defend the Court’s legitimacy, warning that to do otherwise would risk allowing international norms to slip into irrelevance.
The Global South, by and large, disregarded these appeals. There remains a widespread perception that the ICC functions primarily as a mechanism of lawfare, disproportionately targeting African and other non-Western leaders—evidenced by the fact that the overwhelming majority of its defendants come from these regions. Not only did many states refuse to act on the Putin warrant, they continued deepening ties with Russia, engaging in bilateral and multilateral summits without hesitation. The attendance of the BRICS summit in Kazan was a testament to this, with significant global attendance at the invitation of President Putin, who used the event to flex his diplomatic clout.
When the tables turned and the ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the tone in Washington and across key European capitals shifted dramatically. The U.S., under the Biden administration, strongly criticized the decision and the Court. And upon returning to office in January 2025, President Trump escalated matters, issuing an executive order to sanction the ICC’s chief prosecutor and further delegitimize the Court. European states were more restrained, but still reluctant to comply. Instead, they sought workarounds, questioning the legal basis of the warrants and finding ways to sidestep their obligations without openly defying them.
Together, these two cases expose the deeper crisis at the heart of international law: the collision between legal norms and geopolitical interests. When the Global South refuses to recognize the Putin warrant on the grounds that the Court is biased and Western-led, and the West, in turn, refuses to enforce the warrant against Netanyahu for fear of alienating a close ally, then the question becomes unavoidable: who, exactly, is international law meant to apply to?
Breaking the Taboo
Netanyahu’s trip to Hungary marked his second foreign visit since the ICC issued its warrants—the first having been to Washington in January—but significantly, it was his first to a European member state of the Court. Hungary not only received him without hesitation, but Prime Minister Orbán used the occasion to announce that Hungary would begin the process of withdrawing from the ICC, framing it as both a gesture of solidarity with Israel and a rejection of what he described as the Court’s political bias.
Unlike many of its European counterparts, Hungary does not portray itself as a defender of international law, nor does it expect others to uphold that standard. Sharing President Trump’s disdain for multilateralism and supranational institutions, Orbán has long positioned himself as a disruptive force within the EU, and a perpetual thorn in its side, particularly by opposing the bloc’s confrontational stance on Russia and instead advocating for continued engagement.
Though Orban, as a right-wing populist, does not present himself as a standard-bearer for international legal norms, the visit still carried weight. By hosting Netanyahu, he fractured the informal taboo surrounding visits by the Israeli prime minister to ICC member states, particularly those in Europe, thus setting a precedent others may now feel emboldened -or compelled- to follow.
During the visit, Orbán reiterated his opposition to antisemitism and emphasized his government’s protection of Hungary’s Jewish community—linking both to his broader critique of illegal migration in Europe. He formally announced Hungary’s intention to withdraw from the ICC at a joint press conference with Netanyahu, seizing the moment to act on a long-held disdain for supranational bodies like the Court and the EU. Netanyahu, in turn, praised the decision and commended Orbán’s unwavering support for Israel in both EU and UN arenas.
For Netanyahu, the visit served multiple strategic objectives. Chief among them was applying pressure on European cohesion regarding international law. By securing a high-profile visit to an ICC member state, coupled with Hungary’s announcement of withdrawal, Netanyahu implicitly challenged other European allies, particularly Germany, to consider whether their diplomatic ties to Israel outweigh their legal commitments to the Court.
The visit also served as a calculated effort to project legitimacy. By standing alongside a European leader, Netanyahu aimed to counter the growing narrative that his policies have pushed Israel toward international isolation. The optics of the trip were designed to signal continuity of global engagement—that both he, and by extension Israel, remain far from diplomatically abandoned.
The trip also reinforced Netanyahu’s pivot toward cultivating alliances with right-leaning governments across Europe and beyond—part of a broader strategy to offset deteriorating relations with states critical of his actions in Gaza. Since the war began, Israel has faced mounting diplomatic fallout, and Netanyahu has been accused by domestic critics of isolating the country through his aggressive posture not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.
For Orbán, the visit offered its own set of strategic dividends. Beyond the potential for increased trade and access to Israeli technological expertise, hosting Netanyahu provides political cover. It allows Orbán to shield himself from accusations of antisemitism—particularly as he continues to strengthen ties with far-right parties and controversial groups elsewhere in Europe.
The move also enhances Orbán’s capacity to disrupt from within the EU. By hosting Netanyahu, he breaks with EU consensus on international law but in a way that’s politically difficult for others to confront. For French or German politicians to openly criticize Hungary for hosting the Israeli Prime Minister risks backlash from their own domestic opposition and opens them up to external pressure and accusations of breaking from their tradition of supporting Israel, potentially weakening their internal political positions.
It also allows Orbán to position himself as Israel’s foremost European backer, an unapologetic ally unburdened by legal or institutional nuance. This stance affords him leverage in Washington, where other European governments must carefully navigate the tension between their EU obligations and their ties to Israel.
The Ripple Effect
Orbán’s announcement of Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC—whether genuine or a tactical ploy—could serve either to fulfill a long-standing intention or to extract concessions from the EU. In either case, by hosting Netanyahu and breaking the taboo on European ICC member states refusing to abide by the ICC’s warrant, he may have triggered another visible fracture in the EU’s carefully curated image as a unified upholder of international law.
The EU—and many of its member states, though to be fair not Hungary—have long positioned themselves on the international stage as bastions of order, legalism, and principles. This moral positioning is regularly leveraged in diplomatic arenas to assert global leadership, or at least attempt to. Within Europe’s institutional echo chambers—from the European Council to the Parliament and summit halls—this ideological posture has become a sine qua non of political discourse. The result has been an entanglement of moral identity and strategic policy from which the Union struggles to disentangle itself.
However, and despite the fact that nowhere outside of Europe is Europe seen as this bastion of righteousness, the move by Budapest may present the crack in the façade. As other states jostle to reposition themselves and their relations to Israel under domestic and American pressure, Hungary’s breach of the taboo may offer just enough political cover for other European capitals to quietly follow suit particularly as they navigate mounting domestic and U.S. pressure to reaffirm ties with Israel.
Already, Germany’s new Chancellor stated back in March that he intends to find a way to invite Netanyahu to Berlin, despite the executive overreach that this would represent in the face of the judicial jurisdiction on the matter in Germany. Were this to materialize, it would be far more significant than Orban’s invitation to the Israeli Prime Minister because unlike Hungary, Germany is seeking to reposition itself as a leader of Europe as the U.S. withdraws. At the same time, it has built its international identity around a strict adherence to international law, meaning that any compromise would shatter not just its own policy stance, but the illusion of the EU as a credible legal standard-bearer.
Already, the ICC’s position and the relevance of international law has come under unprecedented pressure over the past year and a half. The struggle between political interests and international law has manifested in repeated defiance of the latter in favor of the former by virtually every government. The pattern has exposed the limitations of a system whose legal reach is consistently outpaced by the political incentives to ignore it and whose enforcement mechanisms are too weak to compel compliance.
The ICC was established as the sole permanent international court holding individuals accountable for the gravest crimes like genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity (unlike the International Court of Justice, which adjudicates disputes between states), and to provide a permanent institution to replace the ad hoc tribunals previously convened to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity such as those for Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the Nuremberg trials.
Despite persistent claims of political bias, the ICC, with its broad membership, has represented the most consistent institutional mechanism for individual accountability on the global stage, but that very potential makes it a threat to many global leaders who prefer to operate without legal oversight, and not contend with the unpredictability—or consequences—of legal scrutiny.
A Bifurcated Path
Europe now stands at a clear crossroads. It could either maintain consistency and coherence, publicly censure Hungary for breaching its obligations under the ICC, and reaffirm its respect for and adherence to international law, or concede, tacitly or otherwise, that political expediency trumps legal principle.
As the world largely shifts away from ideology and towards realpolitik and transactionalism, Europe seems stuck in a self-reinforcing cycle of rhetorical idealism divorced from strategic behavior, fed in large part by its powerful internal echo chambers. Meanwhile, on the international stage its credibility as a self described guardian of international principles, norms or values extends only as far as its own borders.
Europe must now confront the growing dissonance between its moral self-image and its geopolitical behavior, with the two becoming increasingly incompatible. On the one end, restoring any semblance of credibility on the international stage would require the EU and European governments to take uncompromising stances in defense of legal consistency, even when politically costly.
On the other, it would have to more openly prioritize its political interests in defiance of international law; at this stage obfuscating the two issues is a difficult and frankly unattainable goal. It cannot demand strict enforcement of the ICC’s warrant for Vladimir Putin while simultaneously rationalizing exceptions in the case of Netanyahu.
Trying to juggle both at the same time is increasingly muddling Europe’s ability to act with coherence or credibility. In comparison, the American administration has made it clear in no uncertain terms that not only does it not abide by international law, it will actively oppose its implementation if it obstructs its interests. It has adopted a fully transactional, interest-driven posture, more overt than in previous administrations and has abandoned even the veneer of adherence to legal norms. And while this posture may wreak havoc on the very international order the U.S. once championed, it at least offers a clarity of purpose that Europe sorely lacks.
Selective Justice, Systemic Decay
The events in Budapest are not merely a diplomatic episode—they are a symptom. A symptom of a system that has for too long relied on the illusion of universality, while quietly exempting those with the power to defy it. Hungary’s decision to host Netanyahu and signal its withdrawal from the ICC did not break international law. It merely exposed what was already fractured: the fiction that it applied equally to all.
In every corner of the world, political leaders are taking note—and acting accordingly. When the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the overwhelming response from the Global South was largely dismissive. Leaders continued to host Putin, to engage with Russia economically and diplomatically, brushing aside the Court’s authority without consequence. The warrant was treated not as a test of legal integrity, but as a political nuisance to be sidestepped.
And now, with Western leaders refusing to act on the Court’s warrant against Israeli officials—some even attacking the legitimacy of the Court outright—the last pretense of equal application is disintegrating. The legal order is not unraveling because one bloc rejected it. It is collapsing under the consensus that no one truly intends to uphold it when power or interest is at stake.
What we are witnessing is the unmasking of the façade, the increasingly apparent revelation that international law has increasingly become tool wielded when convenient, and shelved when inconvenient, by actors across the global spectrum.
The irony is devastating: those who champion the law subvert it when it touches their allies. Those who condemn Western hypocrisy ignore the law when it targets theirs. There is no longer space for rhetorical contortion. Either the rules apply to all, or they apply to no one.