Thursday, January 08, 2026
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: How international law has been weaponized against Israel
Melanie Phillips: How international law has been weaponized against Israel
The ICJ case is a glaring example of how international law repudiates justice and truth in concert with its “human rights” enablers.The UN’s Apartheid Accusation: Political Narrative Over Facts on the Ground
At the center of this web of hate squats the United Nations. People believe its self-designation as the ultimate custodian of peace and justice in the world. This is because it represents most of the world’s countries, and so plays into the pleasing fantasy of the brotherhood of man.
But most countries are dictatorships, kleptocracies or other human-rights abusers. These dominate the U.N. General Assembly, while the presence of tyrannical Russia and China on the U.N. Security Council makes a mockery of holding the world’s malefactors to account.
Last year, what was the number of times the General Assembly condemned Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan, Turkey, Hamas, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon or Venezuela? Zero. The number of times it condemned Israel? 15.
In its increasingly brutal crackdown against the current insurrection in Iran, the Tehran regime has killed at least 36 protesters. The number of U.N. resolutions or emergency sessions about this? Zero.
International law isn’t the pathway to a fairer and more civilized world. In its ferocious weaponization against Israel, it has been turned into the negation of justice and the legal instrument of evil.
The rules-based order has expired in disgrace. The only “might” it constrained was the ability of the victims of aggression to defend themselves. The only rule that should govern tackling evil is instead to bring about its total defeat.
It is now a well-established tactic to accuse Israel of any wrongdoing under the sun with a fancy name. Definitions get twisted deliberately in order to be leveled against the only Jewish state. Facts are either purposefully ignored or intentionally warped to fit a pre-determined narrative that frames Israel as a state continuously convicted of the most horrendous crimes.The Palestinian Authority’s long game in Gaza
The UN, on January 7, did exactly this yet again by accusing Israel of “racial segregation and apartheid” in the West Bank. The report spans several years, but focuses specifically on the period from October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2025.
Although the report has yet to make front page news in the vast majority of outlets – likely because the UN accusations leveled against Israel have unfortunately become commonplace and therefore unnewsworthy – the BBC wasted no time in publishing the story, displaying the outlet’s obsessive desire to push an anti-Israel agenda.
Counterterrorism Efforts in the West Bank
Incredibly, while the focus of the report is on the aftermath of the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, the report merely skims over them. Had it recognized the severity of the attacks, the UN would then also have to acknowledge that Israel’s counterterrorism and security strategy shifted in real time to prevent terrorist attacks before they occurred and counter any perceived threats.
From October 7, the potential opening of a new front in the West Bank was not just some delusional possibility but a high likelihood, as Hamas and other terrorist organizations have established strongholds in several cities. Hamas even called on Palestinians living in the West Bank to carry out armed attacks against Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7.
Any state that had just experienced a horrific terrorist attack against its civilians would be expected and indeed obliged to take more preventative and preemptive measures to ensure that nothing like that could ever occur again. This requires the IDF to implement new counterterrorism operations in hotbeds of terrorism such as Jenin and Tulkarm. This is not apartheid but counterterrorism and ensuring the safety of Israeli civilians.
The UN attempts to prove its point that the IDF is indiscriminately targeting Palestinians living in the West Bank, with a spike in deaths reported after October 7, using data provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Not only is the context of October 7 once again missing, but the UN also conveniently omits that many of these Palestinians were members of terrorist organizations, or operating as lone actors attempting to or committing terrorist attacks against Israelis. When the ongoing terrorist threat is considered alongside the fact that Israeli operations have been concentrated in cities long known as hotbeds of terrorism, the claim of indiscriminate targeting collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
While the UN attempts to draw a connection based on the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank, the data more accurately reflects the effectiveness of Israel’s counterterrorism operations, resulting in the reduction of Israeli fatalities.
Western officials speak endlessly about “the day after” in Gaza, as if it were a technical planning exercise rather than a brutal political struggle. For the P.A., the real endgame is the day after the day after.
It seeks to return to Gaza not as one faction among many, but as an internationally installed authority—armed with donor funding, security guarantees and insulation from blame for the war that preceded its return.
This is why it has invested so heavily in cultivating diplomatic respectability while doing almost nothing to improve Palestinian lives anywhere outside the patronage networks of its dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, now 90 years old. It assumes that any multinational transitional authority will either fail or depart—and that the final choice will be between the P.A. and anarchy.
The P.A. is positioning itself accordingly, maneuvering to be included in any transitional governance framework, even if it is just a small role, so that it can gradually assume more control until inevitably it has the job. Long-term thinking is an Islamist strength the West struggles to match.
Gaza’s civilians bear the cost. Hamas sacrifices them on the altar of resistance; the P.A. on the altar of legitimacy. Palestinian suffering in Gaza is not incidental to the P.A.’s strategy; it is instrumental. Each war, each humanitarian collapse, each funeral deepens a claim that only its rule can restore order and international standing. The message is simple: “You may not like us, but look at the alternative.”
This logic has worked for decades. Israel alone has consistently challenged this cynical and destructive formula.
When the P.A. finally moves to reclaim Gaza, it will insist that Hamas and Israel are gone, and that responsibility for the devastation lies elsewhere—with Israel, the global community or history’s arch itself.
What it doesn’t want is continuity. It wants a reset without reckoning. The P.A. doesn’t want to govern Gaza as it is, but Gaza as a symbol: liberated, suffering and returned at last to “legitimate” Palestinian hands.
This type of strategy is not confusion or incompetence; it is patience, weaponized. It is the belief that international guilt will eventually converge to restore its power without demanding reform, compromise or courage.
Until this strategy is named honestly and confronted openly, Gaza’s future will remain bleak. It will continue to be ruled by those willing to destroy it—and claimed by those waiting to inherit the ruins.
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