"As the Prime Minister of Israel, I reject with disgust the prosecutor's comparison between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas. This is a complete distortion of reality," Netanyahu said on Monday.
"The outrageous decision by the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to seek arrest warrants against the democratically-elected leaders of Israel is a moral outrage of historic proportions. It will cast an everlasting mark of shame on the international court," the Israeli Prime Minister said in a video message posted on X.
Israel was waging a just war against Hamas, Netanyahu said, describing Hamas as a "genocidal terrorist organisation".
He rejected any moral equivalence between Hamas and Israeli leaders as "twisted and false".
The warrant application was a "travesty of justice and a disgrace," he said.
It was an attempt to deny Israel the basic right of self-defence and would fail.
Netanyahu accused Khan of pouring fuel on the fires of "anti-Semitism" and said his abuse of his authority would turn the ICC into "nothing more than a farce".