Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the International Criminal Court of anti-Semitism after it issued arrest warrants against himself and his former defense minister on Thursday, calling it "a modern-day Dreyfus trial".

"The anti-Semitic decision of the International Criminal Court is comparable to the modern-day Dreyfus trial -- and it will end in the same way," Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to the 19th century Alfred Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of treason in France.