Phyllis Chesler: The world should be on trial in Jerusalem, or should it be Nuremberg?
The only place a fair and trustworthy trial of Hamas could take place is Jerusalem.The lies of Josep Borrell
According to one prominent international lawyer:
“There’s no existing framework for trials against Hamas terrorists or the Hamas terrorist organization in Nuremberg (the closest would be trials with German prosecutors and under German law, which will never happen). There’s no way I can see any agreement for a new tribunal and, in any event, I wouldn’t have great confidence in any such tribunal judging Palestinian terrorists or even being willing to put them on trial. I would like to see fair trials of Hamas terrorists; the only chance of that is in Israel, and even in Israel, there’s a danger it would be too forgiving to the terrorists (depends on the court).”
But we face an even greater problem:
Hamas terrorists, starting with their leader Yahya Sinwar, are not the only ones who should be on trial in Jerusalem and before history.
With a few blessed exceptions, almost the entire world must be judged for supporting Iran and Qatar’s proxy armies: Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, etc.
-The United Nations belongs on trial. The only thing it has ever done is legalize Jew-hatred. They passed a resolution falsely claiming that Zionism is racism rather than a resolution that accurately stated that anti-Zionism is racism.
-The world professoriate, students, human rights activists and media also belong on trial for having incited the immediate and continuing jackal chorus for a “ceasefire,” which is the equivalent of a call to ethnically cleanse the Holy Land of Jews. Some of them have been on the Iranian and Arab oil payroll for more than 60 years.
-Iran’s leaders must also appear in the dock. The mullahs have indoctrinated, funded and strategized with not only Hamas but also the zombie armies who march for jihad in the West.
-Let’s not forget every single Muslim country that has refused to offer safe passage or temporary shelter to Gaza civilians. They also belong on trial. None of them want the Arab Palestinians. They do not want the enormous trouble they will inevitably bring with them.
Please note: Such countries, by refusing entry to civilians, make no distinction between the “innocent” civilians of Gaza and the terrorists whose ideology and torture control them.
Borrell, however, surely knows that he’s lying. At the moment, 80% more trucks loaded with food are entering Gaza than before the war. Pre-Oct. 7, there were 70 trucks per day; there are now 126 on average and the number is growing. Israel places no limits on aid and has opened new routes to deliver it.I've Won an Argument about Israel I Wish I Hadn't
Unfortunately, Hamas and other malign actors are doing everything in their power to stop the aid from getting to the people Borrell supposedly cares about. Last week, for example, six trucks entering via a new route were forcibly seized, likely by Hamas and local criminal gangs.
So, the problem is not the lack of food, of which Hamas has already accumulated great quantities. The problem is Hamas. As long as the terror group reigns, it will steal the food and use it to feed its terrorists or sell it on the black market.
Of course, all this could end if Hamas releases the remaining hostages and then simply surrenders. Indeed, it would end if Hamas accepts the offered six-week ceasefire, for which it would receive a thousand murderers of innocent civilians in exchange for a few dozen hostages. But that, we know, will never happen.
If Borrell is not a liar, then he lacks any moral clarity whatsoever. It seems that he does not even know what starvation-induced extermination actually looks like. Despite being ostensibly tasked with foreign affairs, he appears not to have seen the heartbreaking images from Sudan, where Islamist militias are demanding slaves in exchange for food. Some 250,000 Sudanese children are dying of hunger at the whim of the barbarians. Their parents must kneel before these monsters and hand over their children to an unthinkable slavery. But not a word is heard about them.
Double standards and lying are two of the best-known symptoms of antisemitism. Here, they go together.
Over my 20+ years of blogging at Volokh, commenters have often questioned why I focused my attention on what I saw as unfair attacks on Israel, rather than on Israeli policies I disagreed with that might be obstacles to a future peace deal. My response was consistent: debates over specific Israeli policies were a sideshow. Israel's harshest critics simply wanted Israel to cease to exist, and given that this goal could likely be achieved only via genocide, I chose to focus my attention on that. My commenters were also pretty consistent, arguing that I was being paranoid, that the vast majority of critics, even the harshest ones, wanted a two-state solution, not to eliminate Israel.Netanyahu Made a Huge Mistake in Suspending Eylon Levy
We have had something of a test of this debate since 10/7. Hamas is a terrorist theocracy with explicitly genocidal goals. It carried out a taste of those goals on 10/7, and its leaders promised to repeat those atrocities again and again until the "Zionists" were driven from Israel.
So whatever one thinks of Israeli policy, or Israel's eventual response to 10/7, one would think, based on my interlocutors' position, that critics of Israeli policy would nevertheless agree on one thing: Hamas must be deposed, one way or another. There is no plausible two-state solution with Hamas in power; the harsh critics are almost all self-styled progressives, and there is nothing progressive about Hamas's policies toward freedom of religion, LGBTQ rights, women, militarism, antisemitism, and so on, nor its constant theft of humanitarian aid. Hamas's rule in Gaza is essentially every Progressive's worst nightmare.
Yet, ever since at least 10/10, when it became clear that Israel's reaction to Hamas's atrocities was not going to be to capitulate, the harsh critics have been all but unanimous in calling for Israel to essentially surrender ("immediate ceasefire") with Hamas still in power, and have almost to a person not called on Hamas to surrender and abdicate. (And self-styled human rights organizations have felt free to make up human rights law, including contradicting their own past public positions in other conflicts.)
I have to admit that I underestimated the mendacity of these people. As much as I knew that they hated Israel much more than they were concerned with the well-being of Palestinians, I didn't imagine that they would be willing to run interference for, if not outright support, Hamas, certainly not after Hamas put its brutality and genocidal intentions on display for all the world to see. I would have expected something more like "immediate ceasefire, but the world has to work on replacing Hamas with something else."
In a terrible PR decision, Eylon Levy — the brilliant spokesperson for the Israeli government — has been suspended by the Prime Minister’s Office after Levy’s response to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron regarding humanitarian aid provoked anger.
Whether the UK or anyone else in the world likes it, Levy is a very effective spokesman for Israel, and suspending him is a bad decision. There were also reports that Netanyahu’s wife had pushed for the ouster because of Levy’s past criticism of Netanyahu.
As the owner of one of the world’s leading independent PR firms, I know that Eylon is a native English speaker, quick-thinking, intelligent, quotable, and is doing simply a brilliant job. Eylon should be given many more opportunities to defend Israel — not taken off the case.
The Zionist prophet Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the ideological forefather of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said about the importance of Public Relations: “The work of the publicist is a legacy from the Prophets of Israel … Our passion is to speak, to proclaim … One thing that the audience forgets is that speech is also an action — perhaps the most authentic of all other actions. Cities have been destroyed, and more will fall, but what was shouted in the wilderness thousands of years ago is alive and still relevant. The world was created by the word. The world will be mended by the article.”
Eylon Levy has been doing just that. From his raised eyebrows to battling absurd media questions, he fights day and night against a biased media as he brilliantly articulates Israel’s point of view on the world stage.