By: Fern Sidman

Human rights attorney Amal Clooney, wife of actor George Clooney, could potentially be barred from entering the United States due to her role in advising the International Criminal Court (ICC) on controversial efforts to seek arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to a report on Tuesday published by Israel National News.

The latest development comes as tensions escalate between the United States, Israel, and international legal institutions following the ICC’s preliminary ruling accusing Israeli leaders of war crimes related to their military operations in Gaza after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre.

As the report at Israel National News noted, the UK Foreign Office has warned several attorneys involved in advising the ICC—including Amal Clooney—that they may be exposed to U.S. sanctions. These warnings stem from a February 2024 Executive Order, which allows the U.S. government to impose sanctions on individuals who assist international bodies pursuing politically motivated legal action against America or its allies, most notably Israel.

Though Amal Clooney is a British citizen and not a U.S. national, her involvement in the ICC case could still place her at risk of being denied entry into the U.S., having her assets frozen, or facing other punitive measures under the executive order’s framework, Israel National News reported.

Clooney openly confirmed her involvement in the case via a public statement on the Clooney Foundation for Justice website, where she disclosed that she had been appointed by the ICC as an expert to assess whether Israel had violated international law in its military response to Hamas.

“We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and extermination,” Clooney wrote, according to Israel National News.

The statement was met with fierce backlash in both Jerusalem and Washington, where critics said it falsely created moral equivalence between Israel’s democratic government and the terrorist group Hamas, which launched a savage attack on Israeli civilians last October.

As Israel National News also reported, Clooney’s husband, George Clooney, attempted to lobby the Biden administration after former President Biden publicly called the ICC’s arrest warrant request for Netanyahu and Gallant “outrageous.” According to The Washington Post and cited by Israel National News, Clooney phoned Counselor to the former President Steve Ricchetti in May 2024 to voice his anger over the President’s strong condemnation of the ICC’s actions, especially given his wife’s instrumental role in preparing the legal opinion.

The Oscar-winning actor reportedly viewed Biden’s statement as a personal slight to Amal, whose involvement with the ICC had been kept under wraps until the arrest warrant opinion was released publicly.

This is not Amal Clooney’s first foray into highly politicized international legal efforts targeting the Jewish state. According to Israel National News, Clooney was approached by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2014 to join a commission investigating alleged Israeli war crimes, but she declined at that time.

Nevertheless, her long-standing public criticism of Israel has been well-documented. Just months before marrying George Clooney in 2014, she made a public statement condemning Israel’s actions during that summer’s conflict in Gaza, saying: “I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed.”

As the report at Israel National News pointed out, Clooney’s family background—her father is a Lebanese Druze, and her mother is a Sunni Muslim—has often intersected with her advocacy in the Middle East. Her critics say this has contributed to a pattern of selective outrage disproportionately aimed at Israel, while remaining relatively muted on far more egregious human rights abuses in the Arab world.

The prospect of Amal Clooney facing sanctions or entry restrictions to the United States has sparked a fierce debate in legal and diplomatic circles. While some international human rights lawyers have defended her right to pursue legal advocacy regardless of political consequences, many Israeli and American commentators view her ICC role as a biased and dangerous misuse of international law.

Meanwhile, supporters of the executive order have called on President Trump to enforce the sanctions mechanism to ensure that lawfare does not become a tool to delegitimize democratic allies such as Israel.