Monday, November 25, 2024
Elder of ZiyonThe International Criminal Court, of which neither Israel nor the U.S. is a member, has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and former defense minister as well as a Hamas terrorist commander who is probably dead. Although Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant can’t be arrested in the U.S. or Israel, several European countries have already indicated they would arrest them, if they are found within their territory.This case will be tried in a courtroom in The Hague. It will also be tried in the court of public opinion, both in the U.S. and throughout the world. For that reason, I am assembling a team of world class lawyers from around the globe to help defend Israeli leaders against the false charges....We will argue that the ICC has no jurisdiction against Israel, not only because it isn’t a member, but also because the treaty that established that court precludes it from considering cases against any country with a valid judicial system that is willing and able to investigate the alleged crimes. This concept is called “complementarity.” Israel has one of the best and most independent legal systems in the world, one that is both willing and able to investigate its own leaders. The Israeli courts have convicted and imprisoned a former prime minister, a former president and several ministers. Hamas has no such judicial system.We will also demonstrate that Israel’s actions in Gaza don’t violate any international law or laws of war over which the ICC has jurisdiction. Even if the inflated numbers of casualties provided by the Hamas Health Services were accurate, the proportion of civilians to combatants killed by the Israel Defense Forces would be lower than in any comparable war anywhere in the world. This certainly doesn’t qualify as genocide or any other war crime. In addition, the efforts by Israel and the international community to send food and other provisions into Gaza have been stymied by Hamas and by gangs who have stolen the shipments....The validity, integrity, legitimacy and acceptability of international law and the laws of war depend on the application of a single standard. The double standard that has been applied by international tribunals against the nation state of the Jewish people is demonstrated by the issuance of these arrest warrants. In opposing them, our group of lawyers hopes to bring justice to Israel and its leaders, as well as the rule of international law, which is being disgraced and destroyed by the ICC. We welcome others to join in this endeavor.
This is very nice and I wish this team the best of luck, but Dershowitz still lives in a world where facts matter. As someone who has spent twenty years bringing the facts about Israel to the world's attention, I can say with certainly that facts don't matter to most people.
The accusers don't actually believe their lies. They make their charges not based on law nor on reality. As I tweeted yesterday about an article of mine from years ago, the "apartheid" charge in 2022 and "genocide" charge in 2024 didn't come because Israel did anything differently than any other nation, nor has Israel changed its policies over the past couple of decades. The blueprint for accusing Israel of the most heinous human rights crimes was written in Darfur in 2001, not from anything Israel did in Gaza decades later.
Israel had a "dream team" defending itself from the genocide charge at the ICJ at the Hague in January. The accusers from South Africa were destroyed on facts. They don't care. They aren't looking to convince anyone based on facts; they are looking to appeal to deep prejudice against Jews. All they need to do is to support an plausible sounding argument for those who are already biased, which unfortunately includes much of the media, much of the world's diplomatic corps, and many of the world's people.
The proofs that Israel is not guilty of genocide, nor of apartheid, is easy to formulate. All you have to do is to look at the actual definitions of the terms, Israel's actions and the reality on the ground. You don't need a dream team of legal scholars - you need an audience that is willing to objectively listen to facts.
The anti-Israel side leans heavily on emotional arguments, on out of context half-truths, on ignoring and silencing all counter-evidence, and on blatant lies. (They also literally create international law just for Israel. Really.) They know the facts aren't on their side, so they twist the facts. Worse, they attempt to create "facts" by dint of repetition, so eventually the general public accepts "genocide" and "strvation as a weapon of war" as facts themselves. Most people cannot distinguish between truth and lies and depend on others to interpret the facts for them - and the interpreters have their own agendas.
The haters have created a world where the underdog is assumed to be always right. Where objective truth itself is derided as oppression. Where the Big Lie propaganda method is an essential part of the toolkit. And where it is again fashionable and even praiseworthy to be antisemitic as long as you call it "anti-Zionist."
Facts and sound legal arguments cannot counter decades of indoctrination where truth itself has been under attack.
The answer is also not just better PR for Israel. It is a return to a world that existed not long ago where the existence of objective truth was not controversial, where good ideas are worthy of study no matter who came up with them, where some cultures are objectively more moral and successful than others. All of today's antisemitism comes from the lack of basic truths being taught to students and from there these brainwashed kids become the next generation's journalists and pundits and leaders.
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