The Free World is reaching new heights of absurdity. A terrorist organization whose ideology is Nazi for all intents and purposes, an organization whose spokesmen talk about the extermination of Jews, all Jews, and even the extermination of Christians, an organization whose leaders talk about taking over the world, the whole world, to establish an evil empire.
Some 1,200 people were murdered, including Jews, Arabs and others. Women were raped. Babies were burned. And how do the two international courts, ICJ and ICC, respond? By threatening Israel, whether by declaring that Israel is committing genocide or by issuing international arrest warrants against heads of state who dared to speak out against those who rose to destroy it.
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Pro-Israel protesters call for release of Gaza hostages outside ICJ in he Hague, February 2024
(Photo: Eyal Radushitsky)
We already know that in all the international bodies established immediately after World War II, there is an automatic and malicious majority against Israel. Genocide in Sudan? Internment camps for millions of Muslims in China? A brutal suppression of opposition in Iran? Massacre and displacement in Myanmar? Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine? The massacre of nearly half a million people in Syria? Since all these events began, which continue unabated, Israel has been condemned more than all world countries combined.
When all these condemnations are received by majorities in bodies such as the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council, we are not moved. A malicious majority produces malicious decisions. When professors and students in Free World countries in general, and the United States in particular, demonstrate in favor of Hamas, Hezbollah and the elimination of Israel – we say that they are crazy. We've gotten used to it, and it's not a good thing.
Two international bodies were supposed to be a little different. The ICJ and the ICC. We already know about the proceedings taking place in the first, the International Court of Justice. There is no decision there that Israel committed genocide, but it is completely unclear that there will not be.
In the second, according to more and more reports, the International Criminal Court is completing preparations for issuing international arrest warrants against several heads of state and the army. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will become Russian President Vladimir Putin. It's kind of like an international tribunal issuing an arrest warrant for Winston Churchill for the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, not against Adolf Hitler, humanity's most despicable human monster.
We are at a historic crossroads in which we must all set aside all political disagreements and all criticism of the Israeli government's conduct in order to say in a clear voice: Hamas has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hamas carried out a massacre. Hamas declares that it supports the extermination of Jews. And you go against those who defend themselves from annihilation!
We need domestic and international mobilization of Jews and non-Jews alike. Of every person who has reason, justice, common sense and humanity left in their heart. Because this absurdity, in which the aggressor celebrates and the defender fears arrest warrants, is not only a threat to Israel. It's a threat to the Free World.
The battle in Gaza is not over, nor is it clear how it will end. The international battle for justice and truth on campuses and in international tribunals is just beginning. And it is no less important.
Ben-Dror Yemini is the author of Industry of Lies