Awkward: Will George Clooney have to choose, Biden or Amal?

Monday’s decision by the International Criminal Court to apply for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity was denounced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “shameful.”

Blinken, in a lengthy statement, went on to attack the legitimacy of the ICC, saying it “has no jurisdiction over this matter” and “this decision does nothing to help, and could jeopardize, ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement…”

Those attacks on the ICC’s legitimacy put A-list actor George Clooney in an awkward position. He is tentatively headlining a huge Biden fundraiser in Los Angeles on June 15 while Biden’s administration is actively attacking the work of the ICC’s panel of international legal and academic experts who evaluated the evidence leading up to the arrest warrant — experts who include Clooney’s wife, Amal Clooney.

It also stands in stark contrast with the administration’s March 2023 statements urging all members of the ICC to comply with its arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Amal and George Clooney are co-founders and co-chairs of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, a group dedicated to “a world where human rights are protected and no one is above the law,” according to its website.

The foundation published a statement by Amal Clooney on Monday, after the ICC arrest warrant applications were issued.

She said:

I served on this Panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives. The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict. As a human rights lawyer, I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than another’s. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law. So I support the historic step that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has taken to bring justice to victims of atrocities in Israel and Palestine.

That view of the ICC’s work is clearly not shared by the Biden White House but George Clooney is currently advertised as a “special guest” for the major June 15 fundraiser for Biden’s reelection campaign in Los Angeles. The event, “An Evening for President Joe Biden with President Barack Obama,” also features Jimmy Kimmel, Julia Roberts, in addition to Clooney. Ticket packages range in cost from $250 to $500,000.

The last such fundraiser was held in March at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, raising $25 million, but several hundred protesters stood outside the venue while others disrupted the event from inside the venue, shouting “blood on your hands” at Biden, until they were escorted out by security, according to The New York Times.

Protesters will likely target the upcoming LA fundraiser as well, an event at which Clooney will be in the uncomfortable role of standing on stage alongside, and actively raising money for, a president who is undermining the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s mission and attacking Amal Clooney’s work with the ICC.

The Clooney Foundation for Justice did not respond to a request for comment.