The decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague calling upon the international community of nation-states to bring justice to Israeli Prime Minister Bunyamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as war criminals responsible for committing genocide and crimes against humanity is absurd and totally prejudicial. This is not to suggest that Israel has handled the war in Gaza with “kid gloves” or with sufficient regard for the lives of innocent Palestinian women and children. Israel, however, has been grossly encumbered and undermined by Hamas’ grossly inhumane treatment of its own civilian citizens. As Israel responded to Hamas’ horrific October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, it has consistently been constrained by Hamas’ intentional embedment of its military forces amongst civilians and within civilian institutions including schools, hospitals, mosques, and welfare centers. The proliferation of civilian deaths and wounded are in the eyes of many Hamas supporters as an effective consequence of their war against the Israeli State.
Israel and Hamas, nevertheless, have failed to adequately prioritize ending the military conflict, returning the hostages home, and eliminating further civilian suffering. With the decision of the ICC, Israel’s behavior is being singled out once again by an international body for actions which appear to be able only to criticize Israel (read Jews) for war crimes. Israeli leaders have been repeatedly identified as responsible for violations which sadly are evident in the conduct of numerous other actors engaged in the military conflict. (The ICC admittedly had intended to single out Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar, but he was killed by Israeli forces last month.)
Leaving aside the specific international political consequences which this ICC decision could have for Prime Minister Netanyahu, the action of the Court comes in the midst of an escalation of incidents of concerns for Israel and Jews throughout the world. Anti-Semitism is on the increase not only in the United States but throughout the world—especially in the free world. The attacks have proliferated in Amsterdam after an Israeli team played in a soccer tournament; in Poland where Israelis were forced to take down their Israeli flags as the walked though Auschwitz; in Lithuania where more than one leader in the new coalition government has espoused anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and Jew hatred; and in Germany where the AfD extreme right-wing, populist party is growing in strength in local elections as well as within the Parliament. In the United States college campus protests against the war in Gaza continue to intimidate Jewish students. Demonstrations in front of pro-Israel events are disrupted, and pro-Palestine voices on many campuses continue to undermine efforts at open dialogue and conversation.
What Israeli leaders as well as many Jews in the U.S. and throughout the West understand but do not express is that Israeli leaders—specifically Netanyahu—have failed to recognize the extent to which many of their political decisions must bear the brunt for the dramatic resurgence of world-wide anti-Semitism. No one is suggesting that Israel ought not to be permitted to defend itself and its people, but there remain significant numbers of scholars and diplomats as well as Jewish leaders who recognize the significant shifts emerging against Israel and Jews since the war has persisted. Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, the oldest hatred in history is exploding at a moment when Israel had and might still be able to reverse this trajectory.
Israel has largely defeated and dismantled both the military and political forces of Hamas and Hezbollah. There remain weapons with the terrorist groups as well as with their Iranian suppliers who can deliver lethal armaments in abundance to both groups.
The Israeli people, meanwhile, are becoming tired of having to continue to wage what is being seen more than ever as Bibi’s War. In a country which relies so heavily on a huge number of reservists soldiers, the personal burden reflected in their families, their professions, and their health are beginning to engulf the population. They recognize that military might alone will not defeat ideology.
This situation now has moved rapidly on to the agenda of the incoming Trump Administration. It is very hard to believe that President-elect Trump wants to permit Netanyahu to distract so much of the foreign policy attention from the new Government in Washington. Trump may well appreciate that Netanyahu is continuing the current crisis to avoid his own intense litigation.
From his own personal experience, the President-elect can totally relate to Bibi’s own pending legal affairs. At the end of the day, however, Trump will likely jettison his warm relationship with Israel for much more productive and effective deals. For someone who desperately wants to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump needs to have the extensive U.S. engagement in Israel to be modified.
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