11/25 Links Pt2: Why Palestinians Will Not Have New Leaders; The Guardian’s culture of cowardice; Man charged with shooting Orthodox Jew had map of Jewish targets

From Ian:

Bassam Tawil: Why Palestinians Will Not Have New Leaders

For the past three decades, leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have systematically targeted political activists, journalists, social media users, students, professors and human rights activists as part of an ongoing campaign to silence critics and deter others from speaking out against the lack of democracy and freedom of speech.

Torture included beatings, solitary confinement, feet-whipping, threats and taunts, and forcing detainees into various painful positions for extended periods. [Human Rights Watch] commented that "the habitual, deliberate, widely known use of torture, using similar tactics over years with no action taken by senior officials in either authority to stop these abuses, make these practices systematic."

This abuse has transformed the PA-controlled areas in the West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip into Palestinian dictatorships similar to those that have long existed in most Arab countries. In addition, it has resulted in the suppression of the emergence of new leaders capable of leading the Palestinians towards security, stability and prosperity.

Palestinians still remember how political activist and human rights defender Nizar Banat, an outspoken critic of corruption in the Palestinian Authority, was beaten to death by PA security officers in Hebron in 2021. Until today, no one has been punished for the killing of Banat.

The family of the slain political activist was naïve enough to believe that the ICC or any other international agency would serve them justice.

The ICC does not care about crimes committed by Palestinians against their own people. Instead, the court's antisemitic prosecutor is busy searching for ways to punish Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for daring to fight back in a war that was launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Palestinians have not only been deprived of a large portion of the international financial aid -- stolen by corrupt Palestinian leaders -- but also of the right to elect new leaders and representatives through free elections.

Those who are hoping that a new (and pragmatic) Palestinian leadership will take over one day are in for a disappointment. Even after 89-year-old PA President Mahmoud Abbas is gone, his cronies and inner circle will continue to run the show. They will not, under any circumstances, share the cake with other Palestinians.

The same applies to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. No Palestinian will agree to play any role in the administration of the Gaza Strip after the current Israel-Hamas war, as long as the Iran-backed terrorist group and its friends are still around. That is why it is necessary to eliminate Hamas completely and make sure that it loses its military, political and civilian capabilities in the Gaza Strip. This could take a few more months or years, but it is far better than ending the war in a way that keeps Hamas in power.

Telegraph Editorial: The Police must prioritise the ancient hatred: Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism is sometimes called “the oldest hatred”, but on the streets of London and other British cities it was until recently still comparatively unfamiliar.

Since October 7th last year, however, Jews in this country have endured thousands of vile attacks, often in connection with marches and other protests against the war in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon. Perhaps for the first time in recent history, British Jews have felt anti-Semitism to be a serious threat.

The police have been slow to respond to the scale of this hostility. They have shown culpable reluctance to pass even the most egregious cases on to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Now Jews are fighting back. Gideon Falter, head of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAAS), says that his charity has been forced to bring private prosecutions when police refused to act. In effect, the CAAS is doing what ought to be the police’s job.

Meanwhile, the notorious (and now abandoned) investigation by Essex Police into a year-old social media post by our columnist Allison Pearson has highlighted the colossal waste of police time on trivial incidents online. In Mr Falter’s words: “Recent events show that the police do have the capacity and will to act when they want to, but they too often devote their resources to nonsense.”

It is high time that recognising, pursuing and prosecuting anti-Semitism were made a top priority by the police and criminal justice system. As the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, this form of hatred is a virus that has mutated over time and now appears most conspicuously in the form of Anti-Zionism.

Jews were first hated for their religion, then for their race, and today for their state. Denying Jews the right to live peacefully in their own state, as Hamas, Hezbollah and various other Islamist organisations do, is the most dangerous present-day manifestation of anti-Semitism.

Julie Bindel: The Guardian’s culture of cowardice

“I’m not sorry to be leaving Guardian newspapers. For years now being Jewish, however non-observant, and working for the company has been uncomfortable, at times excruciating…It will be a joy to know that I’m not a part of that anymore.”

Jay Rayner’s parting shot as he announced his departure from The Observer after 28 years tops off a turbulent few months at Guardian Media Group (GMG). Next week, indignant journalists will be striking in protest at the sale of the paper to Tortoise, an online media organisation. The Scott Trust, they claim, is betraying its commitment to The Observer — a feeling reflected by The Observer’s former editor, Paul Webster, who lambasted the deal as a betrayal when he retired last week.

Rayner also expressed concern at the sale, claiming that “The Guardian has told me they will terminate all our contracts if they can sell The Observer to Tortoise”. Perhaps he was also anticipating this cost-cutting by the new owners as he resigned. But his strongly worded statement about the failure of the Editor in Chief, Katherine Viner to deal with antisemitism struck a chord.

Rayner is not the first big name to have publicly accused Viner of not handling controversial issues as she should. In December 2020, Suzanne Moore jumped ship, having been the subject of a complaint sent to Viner, signed by over 300 “colleagues” after she was finally allowed to write about the gender wars.

Moore was followed by Hadley Freeman in November 2022. She resigned because she was unable to write freely about the “gender issue”. But in her resignation letter she disclosed that she had been warned off writing about Israel “from her perspective as a Jew” describing the paper as “internally dysfunctional”.

I’m no fan of Rayner: it often feels like his ego is bigger than his appetite. A decade ago, I made a joke about his attitude on Masterchef, and received a nasty, vitriolic email in response, despite having never corresponded with him in the past. Nevertheless, I believe him when he says there are antisemites at the paper — because I have encountered them myself. Once upon a time, before I was slowly cancelled from every section of the newspaper, I would go to parties there, and I recall one particular member of staff saying the most outrageous things about Jews under the guise of anti-Zionism.

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11/25 Links Pt1: Israeli Cabinet to vote on Lebanon ceasefire; The international criminal kangaroo court strikes again; Israel is Right to ‘Cancel’ the UNRWA

From Ian:

The international criminal kangaroo court strikes again

The moral emptiness of the court’s actions is matched only by its legal frivolity and the danger of its potential impact.

Israel is not a member of the ICC. Israel has an independent and robust legal system. There is no evidence that Israel is committing war crimes by intentionally targeting civilians or using starvation as a tool of war—quite the contrary. All reliable evidence points to Israel’s extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties and to provide as much food as needed to the people of Gaza. Moreover, it is known, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Hamas is operating from within civilian infrastructures, using civilians as human shields in contravention of international law. Hamas continues to steal most of the aid that goes into Gaza and is using it as a tool of repression against its own people. Yet, based primarily on Hamas’s own propagandized news reports, Kahn and his cohorts at the ICC have brought these baseless charges and arrest warrants. The reason is clear: The world’s institutions will do anything to stop Israel from defending itself from the terrorist regimes that surround the Jewish state.

It is worth noting that the Palestinian Authority managed to be admitted to the ICC as a member “state” in 2015. This comes despite the fact that there is no “state of Palestine” and that the P.A., Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are dictatorial terrorist entities that should be given no shelter in international institutions, such as the ICC. In fact, to become a member state of the ICC, the country must ratify the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty. This is laughable for the Palestinian leadership for various reasons, including that the Rome Statute reaffirms in its preamble that “all States shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any [other] State.” But no one ever accused the ICC of being intellectually honest. Mahmoud Abbas, the dictatorial leader of the P.A. joined the ICC with impunity as a platform from which to openly launch lawfare attacks against Israel. Abbas has achieved his goal. The ICC has become the useful idiot of the P.A. and Hamas and has created immense pressure on Israel and the West through these dangerous actions.

Of course, no trial will ever occur. No country is going to arrest Netanyahu or Gallant despite grandiose statements by woke leaders such as Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There will never be an adjudication of these nonsensical claims. The entire process is simply a charade of the left, although the danger posed by the position taken by the court cannot be understated. The ICC, which was only established in 2002, is done. It has revealed itself as a puppet of the far-left and of Islamist regimes, much like the United Nations. The court has only brought 32 cases since 2002 and has convicted just 11 people. The court was meant to be a court “of last resort” for crimes against humanity and genocide, where local courts are corrupted and are not prosecuting these most grave crimes. Kahn’s move may be the end of the ICC.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13928 authorizing asset freezes and family-entry bans against International Criminal Court officials for their threats to assert jurisdiction over the United States, which is also not a member of the ICC. The sanctions worked, and the ICC dropped its investigation into the United States. President Joe Biden inexplicably revoked the sanctions on April 2, 2021. But Trump is back and so will the sanctions. All indications are that this time, the sanctions will be taken to the next level. The United States should, and likely will, pressure its allies to do the same.

Even if the case goes nowhere, there will certainly be a lasting negative impact of the ICC’s actions. Remember, the war launched by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Islamic Republic of Iran against Israel will not be the last. In the next war launched by a terrorist regime against a sovereign Democratic Western nation, be it in the United States or Europe, the supposed guardrails the global community had built through the walls of the United Nations, and later the International Criminal Court will be nowhere to be found. Terrorists will continue to use the Palestinian’s playbook, which has proven to be effective in Western pseudo-intellectual institutions: Attack civilians, kidnap civilians, hide behind civilians and cry foul when those you attack launch a responsive war in response. In the end, we all lose.

I hope that this bell can be unrung, not just for Netanyahu and Gallant, but for all leaders in the Western world.

Australia Turns against Israel, While New Zealand Moves Closer

Independent of the ICC, the government of Australia appears to have already started closing its doors to Israeli dignitaries, in this case barring the former justice minister Ayelet Shaked out of fear she might “incite discord” by giving a speech to local supporters of Israel. Elliott Abrams comments:
To what other democratic country has this approach been applied? It seems the answer is none.

As Abrams goes on to explain, this sort of attitude has come to typify the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has placed catering to the wishes of the hard left “over solidarity with a fellow democracy fighting for its life against Iran and against three terrorist groups.”

By contrast, Abrams notes the very different situation in New Zealand, where the anti-Israel Labor party suffered a bruising defeat in the October 2023 election:
Lo and behold, the new National Party government announced in February of this year that it was designating Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist organization, dispensing with the fiction that there is a Hamas “political wing” uninvolved in terrorism. Then this week it designated Hizballah in its entirety as a terrorist organization, again junking the ridiculous notion of a “political wing.” New Zealand also designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization this week.

In short, Abrams observes, elections have consequences.

JCPA: Five Requirements Abbas Must Meet to Demonstrate His Commitment to Peace

While Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is quick to express his commitment to peace, his actions tell a different story entirely. If Abbas genuinely seeks to promote peace, there are five specific actions he must take:

Unequivocally condemn the Oct. 7 massacre - While it seems unfathomable to decent people, Abbas, the PLO and the PA (both headed by Abbas) has never condemned the massacre. Abbas' Fatah even bragged about participating in the massacre.

Abolish the PLO/PA pay-for-play policy - Every year the PLO/PA pays hundreds of millions of dollars to promote, incentivize and reward terror. Abbas, the PLO, and the PA continued rewarding terrorists even after Congress passed the Taylor Force Act. While the policy is universally condemned, Abbas refuses to abolish the policy, preferring to repeatedly declare that even if the PA has one last penny in its coffers, it would be paid first to the terrorists.

Stop all delegitimization of Israel and incitement to violence and dehumanization of Jews and Israelis - In order to fuel the flames of hatred, Abbas, the PLO and the PA have turned rabid anti-Israel propaganda, incitement to violence and terror, and antisemitism into daily events. No Palestinian leader can claim to seek to promote peace, while simultaneously sustaining and supporting mechanisms that generate hate.

Agree to the resettlement of the "Palestinian refugees" - Abbas and the Palestinian leadership have cynically abused the "Palestinian refugees" for over 75 years, using them as a political tool to attack Israel. Instead of demonstrating flexibility, Abbas has dogmatically rejected any solution, demanding that the refugees demographically and democratically destroy Israel.

Clarify who he represents and what authority he has - Abbas has never enjoyed wide Palestinian support. When the Palestinians were asked who they thought was "the most deserving of representing the Palestinian people," 49% expressed support for Hamas, that led the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. Only 17% expressed support for Fatah, led by Abbas. Abbas is a dictator, now in the 20th year of his initial four-year term as PA Chairman. Since discussions with a person incapable of delivering on his commitments are futile, before Abbas can claim to represent the Palestinians, he must first clarify exactly what authority he has to speak on their behalf.

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What the world cannot grasp about Israel: Jews are family, not just citizens

I recently received this heartwarming story:

The Shlesinger family from Alon Shvut was vacationing in Northern Israel. Their 28-year old son, Elisha, was driving up to be with them for Shabbat. He needed to refuel, but kept missing the turn offs as he sped toward his destination. After passing five gas stations, he finally decided to pull into the next one. He looked at his watch. It was 3 hours before Shabbat, and he was an hour from his destination. All in all, the timing was good.

As he filled his car, he noticed a woman with children standing next to their car, noticeably upset. He approached her and asked if he could help.

“I accidentally filled my car with diesel fuel instead of regular, and now it won’t start!”

Elisha listened to her predicament, and furrowed his brow. There was no way to remove the fuel. It needed professional attention and there were no mechanics on duty at the station.

“Where were you headed?” he asked the woman.

“To Alei Zahav in the Shomron,” she said, anxiety filling her voice.

Elisha knew exactly where that was … almost 3 hours away, and there were only 3 hours till Shabbat! She clearly needed to get there, but how? No wonder she was frantic. It seemed impossible.

But not to Elisha. He didn’t think twice, he held out his car keys to the astounded woman.

“Here, take my keys and start driving to Alei Zahav! I filled up so you have plenty of gas. You’ll just make it in time! Here’s my cell phone number. Let’s be in touch after Shabbat and we can figure out how to get the car back to me.”

The woman was flabbergasted. A young man, a total stranger, giving her his car?!

She thanked him profusely and took off for Alei Zahav. Meanwhile, Elisha called his father and explained the situation. His father promptly came to pick him up, and everyone made it to their respective destinations in time for Shabbat.

On Sunday, the woman returned with the car. She met Elisha’s mother and told her how amazed she was by Elisha’s kindness and generosity. Elisha’s mother beamed with pride in her son’s gracious nature.

“How can I thank him? What present can I give him?” asked the woman.

“He doesn’t need presents; he needs a wife!” Elisha’s mother exclaimed.

When the woman got home she wrote up the encounter and posted it on Facebook, adding that Elisha was seeking a wife. Ideas came pouring in. One of the first suggestions was a woman named Naomi. I am happy to tell you that with God’s help, Naomi and Elisha recently married!

Let's think about the first half of the story. A man without hesitation offers his car to a complete stranger. 

Where else would that happen?  Can you imagine even the most wonderful person, a cleric for example, doing something like this in upstate New York, Oregon or Italy? It would be regarded as foolhardy at best, dangerous at worst. 

Now, imagine the scenario outside Israel a little differently. The young man asks the woman her name, and then realizes that she is a distant relative. Suddenly, the story makes sense - even if they had never met before, they are relatives and therefore the bond is that much stronger. Of course you help out your family!

That's what people don't understand about Israel. For Jews, it is not merely a nation - it is a family. It is a tribe. And it is on our historic homeland. 

Paradoxically, this is why Israelis come off as so impolite. You don't have to have your guard up around family - you can relax and say what you want to say, because they aren't going to pull out a gun and shoot you if they don't like your opinion. There is a non-zero chance of that happening in American cities. 

This dynamic was captured in the 1960s Israeli musical Kazablan, which is about discrimination against Mizrahi Jews by the Ashkenazim.  The song "Kulanu Yehudim" - here translated as "We are all Jews, everyone" in the English version of the movie -  shows the friction as well as the unity between subgroups.

If you don't understand this, you don't understand Israel. 

This underlying feeling of literal brotherhood is necessary to understand Israel's conduct in Gaza and Lebanon. 

10/7 wasn't merely an attack on Israel. It was an attack on everyone's family.  Defending your family is much more imperative than defending your nation. It is as impossible to imagine telling Jews in the South and North to just accept occasional deadly attacks as it would be to tell your cousins not to overreact about the murderers next door who already killed one of them. 

When you belong to a tiny minority that has been persecuted for no logical reason for millennia, normal members look out for each other.  And that means risking your lives to ensure everyone is safe. 

Living without security is intolerable. And just as a family would not accept an authority telling them not to care so much about their members, Israel isn't going to listen to a world that tells them not to care so much about Jews. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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October 7 fallout: Some supermarkets closing their kosher sections

I heard secondhand about a high end supermarket in Seattle closing its kosher section after October 7 2023. So I looked up whether there were any reports about this, and I found a Reddit discussion on this very topic from last June.

A woman from Maryland wrote about her local Wegman's:

My local grocery store used to have a well-marked kosher section in the middle of their store. It wasn’t big, but you could find it pretty easily. My husband went out to the store this evening and said it’s completely disappeared, with the kosher section now having been moved discreetly to a smaller section in the baked goods area, almost entirely hidden behind another display- like they’re *** embarrassed to be making kosher food available. We’re living in a *** twilight zone, you guys

Others chimed in, including from Seattle:

The kosher section of two stores I've been to in my area have disappeared. I'm in Seattle and when I went to QFC it was just gone. I asked where it was because the aisle it used to be in changed the whole row so thought maybe it had just been shifted. The workers seemed evasive and said "maybe it's with the other things" from the old aisle. It wasn't. I found the remains of the section on the clearance rack. It's just gone :(

Another said:

The kosher sections have disappeared from a Fred Meyer and my QFC in Seattle. I was heartbroken.

This does not feel like a widespread problem, yet.  The Seattle QFC being discussed appears to be in an area that is heavily "progressive," other QFCs in the Seattle area have full kosher sections including meats and sushi. 

Nevertheless, it is definitely concerning that some stores either want to boycott kosher products themselves - or feel that making kosher products visible would result in their being attacked. 

Needless to say, this is antisemitism, not "anti-Zionism." And it shows how the wave of protests affects the daily lives of ordinary Jews. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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The ICC and complementarity

In the previous post, I quoted Alan Dershowitz in the WSJ about why the ICC case is baseless. This is one reason he gives:

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.

When the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan first announced his intention to request arrest warrants earlier this year, Israeli international law experts Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany wrote about this topic of complementarity, and the case is not so clear cut.

Just because Israel has an independent judiciary, a High Court that can (and has!) heard cases regarding the Gaza war, and an independent military court system to investigate crimes by soldiers, is not enough for what the ICC demands. They are saying that since Israel has not already opened up a criminal investigation against Netanyahu and Gallant that the state is not willing to prosecute them so therefore the ICC must step in.

The argument is absurd - for Israel to open up a criminal investigation there must be evidence of crimes committed by those two individuals. That requires months of investigations ahead of time to gather the evidence, and given that Israel is not acting any differently than any other country would in a war against an enemy that embeds itself among civilians, there is no evidence at all of criminal activity. 

Nevertheless, Israel should have taken the ICC prosecutor's intent more seriously. While opening up a criminal investigation when there is no evidence of crimes (like intentional "starvation") would be an insult, Israel could have created a non-criminal Commission of Inquiry into the war which would, according to ICC precedent, be adequate for addressing the complementarity requirement. That is what Cohen and Shany recommended then, and it is something that the Israeli public wants to see, not only for the conduct during the war but also for the intelligence failures that led to the war. 

The ICC, according to its own policies, should be encouraging such an investigation. Its evidence against Israel is secret, but its memo written in April on cooperation and complementarity says that the ICC should work with, not against, national authorities to encourage their own investigations; presumably that would involve sharing the evidence it claims to have that would not compromise the lives of "witnesses" (in reality, virtually all of their "evidence" probably came from Al Jazeera reports.) Prosecutor Khan did not even attempt to cooperate with Israel on his brand new charges of "starvation" which appear to have circumvented the ICC's own procedures. 

From all I can tell, the Netanyahu government did not take the ICC announcement last May seriously enough. As Haaretz writes:

Since last June, Israel's Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has warned Netanyahu on several occasions that his failure to establish a state commission of inquiry into the events of October 7 could expose the country to risks in the international legal arena. In a letter to Netanyahu, Baharav-Miara wrote, "No other existing mechanism is adequate for addressing the unique risks the country faces at this time."

Also in June, former Supreme Court Justice Menachem Mazuz told Haaretz that the most appropriate solution to Israel's crisis with the World Court was the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the war, the members of which would be appointed by the president of the Supreme Court. Despite this, Netanyahu refrained from setting up such a commission.

 Israel can still do this, although it is more difficult because it would appear more like a response to the ICC than an organic desire for an investigation. Israel's history of independent Commissions of Inquiry does not help this situation now, as Dershowitz seems to be arguing. 

Still, if sch a COI includes prominent independent legal figures and has a mandate that theoretically could lead to criminal charges, it is something that should be done. Even though it is an insult to the State of Israel to even consider that its wartime decisions are criminal, the damage done by the ICC warrants overrides the insult. 

Israel has not handled the public portion of these wars competently. Hoping that a new prosecutor will drop the case is not a strategy. This is one aspect where it dropped the ball. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Sorry, Alan Dershowitz, but we are in a world where the truth doesn't matter

At the Wall Street Journal, famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz writes:

The 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 Durban 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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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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11/24 Links: The ICC has granted succour to terror organisations around the world; UAE arrests 3 suspects in murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan

From Ian:

Natasha Hausdorff: The ICC has granted succour to terror organisations around the world

Perhaps even more concerning than the “legal technicalities” of a lack of jurisdiction and abandonment of the Court’s rules is the incorrect ground the warrants have been based upon. The Prosecutor’s public summary of his application, endorsed by some celebrity “experts”, contained only false material.

Every phrase of every sentence was untrue. How could the Prosecutor have got this so wrong, when publicly available information puts the lie to the allegation of starvation and when Israel’s conduct in this conflict has been unparalleled in protecting civilians from harm, a far higher standard that the UK or US acknowledge they could meet? Even more concerning was the Prosecutor’s response to being called out by multiple organisations writing as amicus curiae (“friends of the Court”). “Nothing to see here” was the reply.

The unprecedently public nature of Khan’s application and the subsequent granting of these warrants is a further give-away of the political game that is being played. “Real” arrest warrants for genuine suspects are issued in secret without press conferences and media interviews. But here the anti-Israel optics are the main objective.

Who are the winners of this dastardly enterprise? The internationally proscribed terror group Hamas publicly thanked the Court for its interventions on its behalf. But the message that is sent by this disgraceful development is one of encouragement to terror organisations the world over. It is an unconscionable attack on the inherent right of self-defence that other democratic states may well seek to exercise against similar fundamentalist terrorist organisations in the future.

The incoming US administration has plainly recognised this as an attack on law, liberty and liberal values. It understands the dangerous consequences that this decision has for other states, members and non-members alike, now that the Court has departed from the requirement of jurisdiction.

Keir Starmer’s equivocation indicates he is not entirely ignorant of the political game being played. One can only hope he will find the fortitude to stand up to the Israel-haters in his party and act in the UK’s national interest by calling out the politicisation of international legal institutions.

Amb. Alan Baker: The ICC Arrest Warrants Are an Illegal Action in Violation of the ICC Statute

After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, the issue is if the issuing of the arrest warrants is ultra vires [beyond the legal power or authority] of the ICC Statute, since there exists no Palestinian state, no sovereign Palestinian territory and hence the court has no jurisdiction. Therefore, the warrants are illegal, in violation of the court's statute and worthless, and should be ignored by all states.

The ICC has been permeated by politicization conducted over the years by the Palestinian leadership to such an extent that the court has lost any credibility.

Israel has sound legal justification in international humanitarian law for all its actions, as has been acknowledged by leading military experts and as is borne out by accurate statistics and footage.

Claims of starvation are false and contrived and footage exists indicating passage of food trucks and statistics regarding calories per person.

The ICC prosecutor, in addition to his own personal issues under investigation, has consistently demonstrated stark bias in respect to the Palestinian claims against Israeli political and military personnel, in violation of the terms of his job as set out in the statute.

Any state cooperating with the ICC arrest warrants is endorsing an illegal action by the court in violation of the ICC statute.

Why Some Countries Like the U.S. Won't Join the ICC

Several powerful countries, including the U.S., do not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court and refuse to become members. The U.S. seeks to prevent the tribunal from being used to prosecute Americans. Other nations including China, India, Russia and Israel are not members.

U.S. administrations from both parties have argued in the past that the court should not exercise its authority over citizens from countries that are not a member of the court. "There remains fear of...being prosecuted for political, rather than evidence-based, reasons," said David Scheffer, a former U.S. ambassador and a chief negotiator of the statute that established the court.

Former ambassador John R. Bolton said, "These indictments [of Israeli leaders] prove precisely what is wrong with the ICC. A publicity-hungry prosecutor first goes after the victims of a terrorist attack, before going after the real criminals. I hope this is the death knell of the ICC in the United States."

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American Jews Voters And American Arab-Muslim Voters Are Not So Different (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The Jewish vote tends to be consistent.

The American Jewish Committee regularly releases its Survey of American Jewish Opinion. In 2007, for example, the AJC survey found that 58% of Jews in the US identified as Democrats, while only 15% saw themselves as Republicans (26% identified as Independent, and 2% were not sure).

No surprise there. Nor was there any surprise on how American Jews said they felt about Israel. According to that survey:

34. How important would you say being Jewish is in your own life?
Very important	61
Fairly important	29
Not very important	10

 

 

 

37. How close do you feel to Israel?
Very close	30
Fairly close	40
Fairly distant	21
Very distant	8
Not sure	1
38. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “Caring about Israel is a very important part of my being a Jew.”
Agree	69
Disagree	28
Not Sure	3

So according to these results:

o  90% said being Jewish was important.
o  70% said they felt close to Israel.
o  69% said caring about Israel is very important to their being a Jew.

However, that same 2007 survey indicated that those numbers did not predict how Jews would vote on the issues.

19. In deciding who you would like to see elected president next year, which issue will be most important to you? Please select one of the following:
War in Iraq	16
Economy and jobs	23
Terrorism and national security	14
Health care	19
Support for Israel	6
Immigration	6
Education	4
Energy crisis	6
Not sure	5

Only 6% of American Jews said a politician's support for Israel would help them decide who they would vote for in the presidential election. On the plus side, those numbers serve as a rebuttal to those who accuse Jews of dual loyalty, yet it also calls into question to what degree Israel is a consideration when Jews vote.

So how did Jews view the issues in 2020?

According to the AJC's 2020 survey, nothing changed:

We have to assume that concern for Israel falls under the category of "Foreign Policy" for Israel to even show up on the radar of American Jews as an issue in the 2020 election.

In its 2024 survey, the AJC did not ask about the most important issues. Instead, it focused on Israel:

There is no question that Israel figured in how American Jews voted in 2024--unlike in past elections.

How about Arabs and Muslims in the US? How have they been voting?

According to the AI Perplexity, here are the issues most important to Muslims and Arabs in the 2020 election:

While foreign policy/Middle East was a major concern to Arab and Muslim voters, in 2020 it ranked behind healthcare, the economy, and civil rights.

And like the Jewish vote, the war in Gaza affected their vote as well in 2024:

This appears to indicate that the American Muslim/Arab voters might not be so different from American Jewish voters. Both are concerned and feel connected to the Middle East, but generally, both are more concerned with local issues such as the economy when things are relatively quiet. However, when things heat up, both groups focus on the Middle East when considering who to vote for in an election year.

Not surprisingly, some are framing the Muslim vote this year as a general warning to Democrats on how they should act in regards to the Middle East. Al Jazeera reports that ‘We warned you,’ Arab Americans in Michigan tell Kamala Harris, while The New Arab reports Muslim and Arab voters refuse to take the blame for Democrats' 2024 US election defeat.

Meanwhile, the Jewish vote is also being framed differently, depending on which side you are taking. J Street has a poll that assures us that Harris won the Jewish vote 71-26, with Halie Soifer--CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America--crowing, "Jewish voters are the only segment of the electorate where Trump did not make meaningful inroads." The poll claims that Harris won 75% of the vote in Pennsylvania. But according to the Orthodox Union-Honan Group, Harris beat Trump only by 48-41 among Jewish voters, and according to the Fox poll, Harris beat Trump nationally by a 66-32 margin with Jewish voters, indicating Harris underperformed previous Democrats.

Let's face it--whether we are talking about the Arab-Muslim vote or the Jewish vote, there is going to be a major effort to frame the results in a way that makes each group a king-maker.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Chabad rabbi murdered in the UAE, in the latest of many Iranian attacks and attempts on Jews worldwide

Zvi Kogan, the Chabad rabbi in the UAE who has been missing since Thursday was found murdered, in his car, with signs of a struggle. The Mossad confirmed that he was attacked by three Uzbek nationals, acting on behalf of Iran, who then fled to Turkey.

There have been a string of Iranian terror plots against Jews worldwide, and they have been accelerating. Their preferred method is to hire local criminals to give them plausible deniability.

The Mossad says that they have helped thwart some 50 plots against Jews and Israelis worldwide, half of them since October 7 2023.

Here are some of these plots:

Last week it was revealed that there was an Iranian assassination plot against Jewish human rights expert Irwin Cotler in Canada.

Earlier this month, the US Justice Department issued charges against an IRGC asset named  Farhad Shakeri who directed multiple plots against Jews and other Americans, including Donald Trump. He said he was offered $500,000 to assassinate either of two Jewish Americans. 

Greek authorities foiled an Iranian plot against a Jewish center and kosher restaurant in Athens this year that was intended to kill as many people as possible.

Also this year, German and French authorities uncovered an assassination plot against a Jewish lawyer in Berlin, and at least a half dozen other Jews and Israelis.

In June 2023, Cypriot authorities foiled a plot from northern Cyprus to attack Jews and Israelis. 

In February 2023, the UK announced that Iran is hiring criminal gangs in the United Kingdom to spy on Jews in preparation for a potential assassination campaign.

In 2022, Germany charged a man with an Iranian plot to firebomb a synagogue.

In 2018, US authorities arrested two Iranians who collected information on Jewish targets in Chicago.

In October 2014, a Hezbollah operative was caught in Peru before his attempts to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets,.

Iran was behind the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Argentina, which killed 85 people.

In December 1986, Iranian backed Hezbollah abducted and killed three Lebanese Jews.

These are only the ones I could find that were public. I am not even beginning to list the many Iranian plots against Israeli embassies or prominent individuals throughout Europe and elsewhere. I'm only listing the plots and attacks against Jews themselves.

Sadly, people still believe the fiction that Iran is not antisemitic, but  merely anti-Israel. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Two mainstream newspaper articles about Zionism from 200 years ago, including an eerily accurate prediction of the State of Israel

On November 25, 1824, the Daily Argus (Portland, Maine) quoted a letter from George Bethune English, an American convert to Islam,  who visited Constantinople and wrote back a letter about the Jews of Turkey.

He describes how the Jews of Turkey had their own independent justice system consisting of an apparent Beth Din of three led by a grand rabbi, and a senate of seven who determined the laws for the Jews intheir territory.

But he also discussed how the community maintained relations with Jerusalem, and how every year a shipload of Jews would travel from Constantinople to Israel.

Finally, there is a committee of four charged with keeping up the relations subsisting between the Jews of Palestine and those of Constantinople. The eastern Jews make it a point of duty at least to visit the Holy Land, if their affairs will not permit them to go there in their old age and die; and they send considerable sums to Jerusalem for the support of these devotees. A vessel leaves Constantinople every year, carrying from a hundred and fifty to two hundred pilgrims of both sexes. The rich pilgrims pay the passage of the poorer ones. Assembled in the valley of Jehoshaphat, they weep bitterly over the graves of their ancestors, and pray fervently for forgiveness of their own sins and those of the nation, both living and dead.

It might have been decades before Herzl, but this is Zionism - Jews keeping connections with their Jewish brethren in Israel, sending money to them, and visiting every year, a remarkable achievement for the early 19th century.

The idea of Jews returning to Israel was not at all unusual in the 19th century. The New York National Advocate newspaper, November 9, 1824, discussed the potential practical and political problems with "The Restoration of the Jews" even when there were rumors that the Rothschild family might purchase the entire Palestine from the Ottomans.  (This article was reproduced in various other American newspapers.)

There is no transfer of the land of Canaan that the sultan can make, that will be respected by the Turks. He may take a loan and give a deed, but its validity will never be recognized by the Mussulmen, they never will consent to allow these Jews to govern in the Holy Land, and any peaceable attempt of that nature, will be the signal of a general massacre of the chosen people. The land of Canaan is to be recovered by the sword, not acquired by the purse strings.

... Even admitting that the sultan did transfer the Holy Land to the Jews, the Egyptians, the Wechabites, the wandering Arabs, and the Tartar hordes, would be of more annoyance to them, than the Philistines and Amalekites were of old.

Jews might buy the land, but ultimately they will have to fight for it.

This, the author notes, it will definitely happen, in what sounds eerily prophetic:

That the Jews will be restored to their former country, and possess it in full sovereignty, cannot be doubted. All that has passed, and that which is to come, and will be, are types of confirmation of the promise held out to the race of Jacob. No reading, reflecting man can doubt it; but there is much to be done before the period of restoration arrives. It is not desirable at the present, that the children of Israel should possess the Holy Land. ...

 The Jews, rendered capable of governing, from living under mild laws, and acquiring, as they will, strength, stability, character, wisdom and wealth, will be restored to the land of Canaan, by and with the consent and approbation of the Christian powers, not only in the fulfilment of the prophecies, but in atonement for the oppressions which the chosen people have unjustly encountered, from those who entirely mistook the mild character of the Christian faith.

It could not happen in November of 1824, but the author knew it will definitely happen.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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11/23 Links: Would the ICC have accused Churchill of war crimes?; Bibi effigy burnt in Montreal 'pro-Hamas' riots; UAE Chabad Rabbi missing feared kidnapped

From Ian:

WSJ Editorial: The ICC’s Assault on Israel—and the U.S.

This is about more than Israel, whose military may have achieved the lowest ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in the history of urban warfare. The effect of the ICC warrants is to disarm any Western democracy that is responding to atrocities from terrorists and rogue states. This precedent will be used against the U.S., which, like Israel, never joined the ICC.

The ICC indicts Mr. Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for allegedly using starvation as a method of warfare and several other crimes against humanity. The politicization begins with the list of the accused. It includes only two of the three members of Israel’s then-war cabinet, leaving out Benny Gantz, who was the hope of those who want to oust Mr. Netanyahu.

The charge of deliberate starvation is absurd. Israel has facilitated the transfer of more than 57,000 aid trucks and 1.1 million tons of aid, even though Hamas’s rampant theft means Israel is provisioning its battlefield enemy, something the law can’t require.

This is why President Biden said on Oct. 18, 2023, that if Hamas steals the aid, “it will end.” The President broke that promise, and Israel has exceeded its aid obligations.

The international Famine Review Committee found on June 30 that famine isn’t occurring in Gaza—Hamas attributes 41 deaths in the entire war to malnutrition—but that elevated risk of famine will persist as long as the war goes on. Especially when the world backs Egypt’s decision not to allow refugees out of Gaza, trapping civilians in the war zone.

Using Palestinian civilians as political weapons is the essence of Hamas’s strategy, which the ICC now vindicates. Hamas cheered the ICC warrants on Thursday in a statement that “international justice is with us and against the Zionist entity.”

Third, the consequences: Messrs. Biden and Schumer will no longer be able to protect the ICC, which conveniently waited to grant arrest warrants until after the U.S. election and before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

But Rep. Mike Waltz, the President-elect’s pick for national-security adviser, says action is coming. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton plan to press Mr. Schumer to hold a vote on the House bill in the lame duck Congress. If Mr. Schumer refuses, a vote is certain in the next Congress. Mr. Graham is also planning to introduce a bill that goes further and sanctions groups and nations that aid and abet those like the ICC that harm the security of the U.S.

President Trump sanctioned some ICC officials in 2020 for lawlessly investigating U.S. troops, and the court backed down. Mr. Biden revoked the sanctions in 2021. Cutting off the ICC and, say, its top 100 officials from the U.S. banking system via sanctions—with all that means for European bank accounts as well—could cripple the court.

The court’s self-immolation is one more consequence of a Biden foreign policy that has too often put the authority of international institutions above the U.S. national interest. It’s also a reason he soon won’t be President.

Telegraph Editorial: Would the ICC have accused Churchill of war crimes?

Since Hamas launched its murderous terrorist assault against Israel from Gaza on October 7 last year, the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in a major military offensive, justified as self-defence under international law, to destroy Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.

Civilians, as inevitably occurs in any war zone, have been killed or injured in the bitter fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists, who regularly use Palestinian civilians as human shields, itself a clear violation of the rules of conflict. In such circumstances, and with hostilities ongoing, making a proper assessment of the civilian casualty figures is difficult, if not impossible. The only figures available are those provided by Hamas-controlled health bodies, which appear to make no distinction between the number of dead Hamas terrorists – estimated to be around 20,000 – and civilians.

Yet, despite not having access to reliable facts, the ICC has nevertheless felt compelled to issue warrants for the arrest of Israel’s prime minister and former defence chief, the first time such action has been taken against the leaders of a democratic country.

The ICC decision raises worrying questions for other democratic countries – including the UK – that could find themselves engaged in conflict. It compromises the ability of democracies to prevail over their enemies if their military operations cause civilian casualties. Would Britain and its allies have emerged victorious from the Second World War had Winston Churchill and other wartime leaders been distracted by the prospect of facing war crime accusations?

The ICC action is also problematic for the British Government which, as a member of the ICC, is now obliged to detain the accused Israelis if they arrive on British soil, despite the fact that Israel is still supposed to be our close ally in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

Sir Keir Starmer’s immediate response was seemingly to back the ICC’s decision, a gesture he may come to regret if either Mr Netanyahu or Mr Gallant visit these shores at a future date. The Government’s confusion on this issue was reflected in the inability of Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, to provide a coherent answer when challenged. Labour would be well-advised to determine how they do intend to deal with the challenge presented by the ICC’s erroneous act.

ARRESTING TIMES IN THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

In the ICC, people in black robes sit to pass judgement on the democratically elected leader of a sovereign civilised country founded to protect its citizens. and world-wide Jewry, against another holocaust, a victim as it is, of attempted genocide by a terrorist organisation whose stated aim is the extermination of Jews.

‘Love of country’ might have been the explanation for the corruption of the judicial system in Hitler’s Germany. But underlying it was the willingness to accept rhetoric that Germany’s depressive economy was due to ‘the other’, Jews, other racial and ethnic minorities, undesirables, homosexuals.

We live in more sophisticated times where justification is softened by less colourful language but the prejudice against Jews and their nation state remains. The truth is, whatever Israel would have done to defend itself, it would have been wrong in the eyes of much of the world. However much humanitarian aid reached Gaza, it would never have been enough. However many civilians died, it would have been too many.

My faith in the international rule of law has been severely shaken.

In Numbers 23:9, the wicked prophet Balaam stares at the Jews, freshly freed from slavery in Egypt, and says: I see them from the tops of the mountains. I gaze on them from the heights. Behold, they are a nation that shall dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations. [Num. 23:9] .

The Midrash (a mode of biblical interpretation prominent in the Talmudic literature) says that this phrase means: When Israel rejoices, no other nation rejoices with them... And when the [other] nations prosper, Israel will prosper with them… [Tanchuma Balak 12, Num. Rabbah 20:19] .

Jews have always stood alone. Successfully so for more than 3000 years. They, and their nation state to which they have returned will continue to do so. This madness will pass and those who persecute the victim will, in time ask themselves

“What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies, and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part?”

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11/22 Links Pt2: The international system is broken beyond repair; Released hostage describes terrorists bringing civilians to observe him

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The international system is broken beyond repair

Since Oct. 7, the outgoing Biden administration has been playing a game of footsie with the U.N. system. While paying lip service to Israel’s right to self-defense, President Joe Biden and his advisers have enabled and emboldened the world body and its agencies to side with Hamas by refusing at every turn to take any action against agencies siding with or aiding and abetting Hamas.

Consider UNRWA. On Oct. 7, UNRWA employees in Gaza participated in the atrocities. As the weeks and months passed, it became apparent that UNRWA was Hamas’s diplomatic and welfare arm. Its infrastructure was enmeshed in Hamas’s terror infrastructure. Its personnel were Hamas personnel. And this was by design.

UN Watch revealed this week that in 2017, then UNRWA head Pierre Krähenbühl met with Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror commanders in Beirut and pledged to work with them in full partnership. Krähenbühl , who now heads the International Committee for the Red Cross, emphasizes the “spirit of partnership” between UNRWA and the terrorist organizations. He urged them to keep the cooperation private to avoid angering UNRWA’s donors and endangering its funding.

Although the administration cut off funding to UNRWA after its employees’ involvement in the Oct. 7 atrocities was exposed, the U.S. State Department has repeatedly extolled UNRWA, promised to restore funding and threatened Israel with arms embargoes if it cuts off the U.N.’s in-house terror group. So the administration’s actual policy is to support UNRWA even as its terrorist activities have become undeniable.

Then there is the International Court of Justice. Two months after Oct. 7, the ICJ began to adjudicate South Africa’s allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the scandalous allegation, the ICJ agreed to hear the case. So today, Israel is on trial for the crimes Hamas and its supporters carried out against the State of Israel.

While decrying the trial, the Biden administration did nothing to intervene on Israel’s behalf with the ICJ. It placed no pressure on South Africa to withdraw its case.

By taking no action against the ICJ or South Africa, the Biden administration indirectly but clearly supported their decision to place Israel on the dock.

Last week, the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism revealed that the South African government and African National Congress (ANC) governing party are bankrolled by Hamas, and its state sponsors Iran and Qatar. So in effect, South Africa is acting as their agent. The actual party accusing Israel of genocide is Hamas, which actually continues its war of genocide still today.

Finally, we come to the International Criminal Court. For the past 15 years, the ICC has been working with Palestinian terrorists to build a legal fiction where Israel, which is not a member of the ICC and over whom the ICC has no jurisdiction is a terrorist organization; and the terror-infused, PLO-controlled, and Hamas aligned-Palestinian Authority is a sovereign state empowered to give the ICC jurisdiction over Israel.

Recognizing the threat the ICC posed not only to Israel but to the United States itself, during his first term, President-elect Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that required sanctions be imposed on ICC staff in the event the institution issued arrest warrants against U.S. military personnel or U.S. allies, including Israel.

Upon entering office, Biden canceled the Executive Order. He refused to reissue it following ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s announcement last May that he intended to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. When the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill legislating the sanctions that appeared in Trump’s executive order, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) blocked it from being launched in the Senate.

Through its actions, the administration actively protected the ICC—and indirectly encouraged the ICC in its hostile, unlawful acts against Israel. And, just to be clear, the act in question is kidnapping. Netanyahu and Gallant have committed no war crimes and no atrocities. The ICC is acting without legal authority, outside the bounds of international law, with no evidence of any crime save claims from terrorists who are themselves war criminals. Its decision to issue international arrest warrants under the circumstances renders the ICC nothing more than a kidnapping ring. And every ICC member nation that agrees to execute the warrants is a member of the ring.

By enabling the international system to escalate its war against Israel and its people, the Biden administration completed the process initiated 50 years ago at the United Nations. Although Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have repeatedly protested their commitment to protecting the liberal world order, their actions in office have transformed the U.N.-based system into a mechanism for the advancement of the genocide of Jews and the destruction of the Judeo-Christian civilization.

These institutions are now beyond repair. They cannot be reformed, only dismantled. To this end, Israel, the Jews and the world are lucky that Trump has the courage to clean up the mess his predecessor is leaving and dismantle the now-broken international system that is Biden’s legacy.

Ruthie Blum: Penalizing the criminal international court

Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune (R-S.D.) on Thursday called the International Criminal Court’s issuing of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “outrageous, unlawful and dangerous.”

Thune then demanded that current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “bring a bill to the floor sanctioning the ICC,” warning that “if he chooses not to act, the new Senate Republican majority next year will.”

The double threat—aimed simultaneously at Schumer and the kangaroo court at The Hague—was significant for two reasons.

First, Thune has good reason to finger-wag at his Democrat counterparts, thanks to their disturbing attitude towards Israel. Professing an “ironclad commitment” to the Jewish state’s “right to defend itself” while withholding crucial arms shipments to America’s key ally and only democracy in the Middle East has made them deserving of suspicion by the likes of Thune and the rest of the unflinchingly pro-Israel Republicans.

The fact that a whopping 19 Democrat senators voted this week to advance resolutions put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block the transfer to Jerusalem of offensive weaponry necessary for its self-defense is a case in point.

Though Schumer—like President Joe Biden and other members of his party who have been critical of Israel’s prosecution of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon—opposed those resolutions, they’ve been openly hostile to the Netanyahu government since its inception; so much so that they’ve never concealed their desire for it to be toppled.

Second, there are concrete steps that the powers that be in D.C. can take against the ICC, such as the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, passed in May by the U.S. House of Representatives. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday reiterated his demand that the Senate vote on it “immediately.”

Similar to Thune, Johnson pulled no punches.

“The ICC’s decision to target America’s ally, Israel, is antisemitic, reprehensible and completely ridiculous,” he declared. “It has absolutely no jurisdiction over Israel or the United States, and these illegitimate warrants are an attack on the very concepts of sovereignty and due process. … If Senator Schumer and President Biden do not act now, they will most assuredly invite future lawfare against Israel and the United States. We cannot afford to show weakness.”

It’s a bit late for Biden and the Democrats to hide their weakness, however, since they long ago let the ICC off the hook. They did this by canceling Executive Order 13928—“Blocking Property of Certain Persons Associated with the International Criminal Court”—signed on June 11, 2020, by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.

The impetus for the order, which went into effect three months later, was the repeated attempt by then-ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and co-worker Phakiso Mochochoko to investigate “war crimes” committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghani forces and—you guessed it—the American military.

ICC arrest warrants against Israel could cut both ways

Israel has rejected allegations that it targets civilians, stressing its consistent and robust efforts to spare civilian lives in Gaza and beyond.

Beyond the international response to Israel’s defensive actions, the ICC warrants are an escalation in a broader struggle for sovereignty waged between democracies led by elected leaders and global institutions with unelected or unrepresentative leaderships, said Andrew Tucker, director of The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, or thinc.

“We’ve seen an incredible reliance on this global legal system to achieve world peace and security. But the problem is that Western states hold themselves to the highest legal standards, while terror groups and many non-Western states remain unaccountable. The court’s approach will have a chilling effect that threatens the security of Western states. With these Israeli arrest warrants, every Western state faces now the question: Are we going to continue to put our faith and trust in these global institutions,” said Tucker, whose Netherlands-based research institution focuses on exposing and educating on international lawfare.

In Tucker’s view, the warrants are an expression of a desire by the court and its prosecutor Karim Khan to go after Israel. But in so doing, Tucker said, this legal action is threatening to disarm other democracies of counter-terrorism tools.

“Europe is going to face potentially a wave of terrorist activities and attacks,” he said. “What are they allowed to do under international law to defend themselves against terror? If this is the direction that the court is taking, then Western countries are held to an extremely high standard while the enemy is completely unaccountable.”

Sharansky opined that the ICC move against Netanyahu could expose court officials to punitive action by the United States under Trump, and that the ICJ one could cost the United Nations billions of dollars in U.S. funding.

Ultimately, however, Israelis need to assess the arrest warrants in the context of their country’s war against Iran and its proxies, Sharansky argued. “The PR is of secondary importance. Right now, Hamas is on the ropes and so is Hezbollah. The warrants give our enemies new hope, and that’s their main damage. I’m concerned by it,” he said.

Yair GolanThen-Israeli Deputy Economy Minister Yair Golan speaks during a conference organized by Commanders for Israel’s Security in Herzliya on Oct. 2, 2022. Photo by Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90. But Sharansky is also encouraged by some of what followed the arrest warrants. One encouraging effect, he said. has been the united condemnation of the warrants by all Zionist parties, including the ones harshly critical of Netanyahu, among them the left-wing The Democrats party under former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair Golan.

The ICC warrants are based “on an antisemitic blood libel,” Sharansky said, “but there’s an important difference with previous blood libels.” Amid a resurgence of pro-Israel voices and movements in Europe and throughout the West, he said, “Jews do not stand alone in seeing and calling out the mendacious blood libel.

“A significant part of the world stands with us. And we just need to stand firm until enough people recognize these blood libels so that they’re no longer possible,” Sharansky said.

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