Let’s speak plainly about what happened yesterday. Four hundred and eleven days after the Jews were subjected to the worst act of anti-Semitic barbarism since the Holocaust, arrest warrants were issued for the Jews who fought back. Thirteen months after Israel was invaded by the racist killers of Hamas, indictments were made against the men who pursued those racist killers. A little over a year since a species of fascism was visited on the world’s only Jewish nation, the Jewish nation’s own leaders found themselves turned into fugitives for the ‘crime’ of fighting that fascism.
When all is said and done, this is what the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant add up to: the creeping criminalisation of the Jewish State’s right to defend itself against the armies of anti-Semites that wish to destroy it. The ICC and its voluble cheerleaders in the Israelophobic set have just engaged in one of the most chilling acts of moral inversion of recent times: they have made criminal suspects of those who stood up to one of the gravest crimes of the 21st century so far.
It matters not one iota what we might think of Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, or Gallant, who was Israel’s defence minister until he was fired earlier this month. Everyone, from the ICC’s own activists-cum-judges down to the millions of tweeters gloating over the arrest warrants, knows full well it isn’t only those two men who’ve been indicted – all of Israel has. As a writer for the Jerusalem Post says, the warrants inflame the fashionable prejudice that says Israel is a ‘pariah state’, meaning the entire nation is likely to pay a ‘dramatic cost’ for what the ICC has done. This is right. A nation subjected to one of the most barbarous assaults of our era is indicted for being barbarous – truth and reason turned utterly on their heads.
There is much to discuss about the ICC’s cynical, dangerous stunt. There’s the ridiculousness of its issuing of a warrant for Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas’s military wing, alongside Netanyahu and Gallant. Deif is widely thought to be dead, courtesy of an Israeli strike in July. Many suspect his name was only included to add a gloss of impartiality to the ICC’s imperious meddling with Israel’s right to wage war on the anti-Semites who attack it. What’s more, what an outrage to imply moral equivalence between the fascist who butchered Jews and the democratic Jewish nation that pushed back against him. It terrifies me that a chief institution of the ‘rules-based order’ is so bereft of moral reason that it seemingly cannot distinguish between fascism and fascism’s target, between the man who started a war and the men who responded in kind.
Then there’s the staggering cant of Western leaders puffing themselves up to say they will obey the ICC and arrest these wicked Israelis should they set foot on their soil. Behold the grim audacity of Justin Trudeau saying he will ‘abide’ by the ICC’s decision. Canada took part in the post-9/11 Afghan War whose consequences were far more devastating than what is happening in Gaza. Tens of thousands perished in that calamity. Millions were plunged into ‘acute food insecurity’ – what we used to call starvation. Address your own nation’s ‘crimes’, Justin.
Keir Starmer has indicated that Britain, too, will abide by the ICC. Oh, will we? The nation that was a key player in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars that killed more people than every war Israel has been involved in since 1948 combined – will arrest these suspected ‘war criminals’? Who’s buying this? Who’s falling for this posturing of politicians who lead states whose warmongering makes Israel’s look like small fry in comparison? I know who: the myopic Israel-haters of the woke left and hard right who have convinced themselves, in the absence of anything resembling evidence, that Israel is a ‘uniquely murderous’ state. So deep are these people in the poison well of Israelophobia that they will gladly cheer anyone – even nations with higher kill counts than Israel’s – who agrees to treat Israel as the great untouchable of world affairs.
Then there’s the infantile treatment of war as a crime. The ICC charges Netanyahu and Gallant with such ‘crimes against humanity’ as withholding food, water and medicine from Gaza and thus causing ‘severe suffering’ to its people. I hate to say this, but this is what happens in war. Normalcy ends, things run out, people go hungry, people suffer, people die. It is dreadful. It is why, ideally, wars should not be started. It is why Hamas should not have started this one, this infernal clash that has doomed so many Palestinian innocents alongside Israelis.
All wars contain such horrors. Acute malnutrition doubled in Iraq in the year after the allies’ invasion in March 2003. A savage famine has ravaged Yemen as a result of the Western-backed Saudi war there. And yet Mohammed bin Salman still swishes around his palaces, mingles with Western leaders, and rarely troubles the consciences of the West’s woke loathers of Israel.
For 24 hours straight we’ve been treated to the nauseating spectacle of states and even terror groups that are genuinely murderous welcoming the ICC’s indictment of Israel’s ‘murderers’. Turkey, violent suppressor of the Kurds, described the arrest warrants as an ‘extremely important step’ towards ‘justice’. Jordan, the state that fought a vicious year-long war against the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the 1970s, said it will implement the ICC’s ruling. Even Hamas is now in love with the ICC, despite its indictment of Deif, cheering it for sending an important message to ‘every war criminal’. Guilt by association is bad politics, I know, but, seriously, if your actions make the fascist terrorists of Hamas grin from ear to ear, it is time for a moral rethink.
Then there is the bizarre spectacle of the activist class cheering an institution like the ICC. These are the kind of people who cry ‘white supremacy!’ when Katy Perry wears her hair in cornrows and yet they’re content to simp for a notoriously biased court that mostly targets the leaders of Africa. Most of the people indicted by the ICC have been black Africans. All it did yesterday was add a couple of Jews to the list. Honestly, not since the KKK has there existed an organisation with such a curious obsession with blacks and Jews.
That so many so-called progressives are willing to overlook the ICC’s gross racial track record because it has now issued arrest warrants for leaders of the Jewish nation is a testament to the bigotries swirling in the Israelophobic set. The cacophony of noisy gloating we’ve seen in influential circles since the ICC issued its warrants is proof of the neo-imperial hubris that underpins Israelophobia. The woke elites’ feverish demonisation of Israel echoes the old colonial elites’ demonisation of African and Asian nations as suspect, fallen, lesser. The chauvinist streak in the fashionable hate for Israel suggests that where once our ‘betters’ feared the ‘dark heart’ of Africa, now they fear the ‘dark heart’ of the world’s only Jewish State. New bigotries for old.
Fundamentally, the ICC’s actions speak to the profound moral disarray of the West. Let it be recorded that when something very like fascism returned to our world, the institutions of the ‘rules-based order’ went after the nation that was its victim. When the Jews were once again targeted for racist murder, they went after the Jews. When the very values of the civilised world were upended by the rapists and racists of Hamas, they essentially rewarded Hamas by agreeing with it that the state it hates is indeed the worst state. It isn’t only Israel that has been thrown to the wolves of unreason by the ICC and its powerful backers – so has civilisation itself. These arrest warrants are worthless and offensive. Every civilised state should rip them up.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
It matters not one iota what we might think of Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, or Gallant, who was Israel’s defence minister until he was fired earlier this month. Everyone, from the ICC’s own activists-cum-judges down to the millions of tweeters gloating over the arrest warrants, knows full well it isn’t only those two men who’ve been indicted – all of Israel has. As a writer for the Jerusalem Post says, the warrants inflame the fashionable prejudice that says Israel is a ‘pariah state’, meaning the entire nation is likely to pay a ‘dramatic cost’ for what the ICC has done. This is right. A nation subjected to one of the most barbarous assaults of our era is indicted for being barbarous – truth and reason turned utterly on their heads.
There is much to discuss about the ICC’s cynical, dangerous stunt. There’s the ridiculousness of its issuing of a warrant for Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas’s military wing, alongside Netanyahu and Gallant. Deif is widely thought to be dead, courtesy of an Israeli strike in July. Many suspect his name was only included to add a gloss of impartiality to the ICC’s imperious meddling with Israel’s right to wage war on the anti-Semites who attack it. What’s more, what an outrage to imply moral equivalence between the fascist who butchered Jews and the democratic Jewish nation that pushed back against him. It terrifies me that a chief institution of the ‘rules-based order’ is so bereft of moral reason that it seemingly cannot distinguish between fascism and fascism’s target, between the man who started a war and the men who responded in kind.
Then there’s the staggering cant of Western leaders puffing themselves up to say they will obey the ICC and arrest these wicked Israelis should they set foot on their soil. Behold the grim audacity of Justin Trudeau saying he will ‘abide’ by the ICC’s decision. Canada took part in the post-9/11 Afghan War whose consequences were far more devastating than what is happening in Gaza. Tens of thousands perished in that calamity. Millions were plunged into ‘acute food insecurity’ – what we used to call starvation. Address your own nation’s ‘crimes’, Justin.
Keir Starmer has indicated that Britain, too, will abide by the ICC. Oh, will we? The nation that was a key player in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars that killed more people than every war Israel has been involved in since 1948 combined – will arrest these suspected ‘war criminals’? Who’s buying this? Who’s falling for this posturing of politicians who lead states whose warmongering makes Israel’s look like small fry in comparison? I know who: the myopic Israel-haters of the woke left and hard right who have convinced themselves, in the absence of anything resembling evidence, that Israel is a ‘uniquely murderous’ state. So deep are these people in the poison well of Israelophobia that they will gladly cheer anyone – even nations with higher kill counts than Israel’s – who agrees to treat Israel as the great untouchable of world affairs.
Then there’s the infantile treatment of war as a crime. The ICC charges Netanyahu and Gallant with such ‘crimes against humanity’ as withholding food, water and medicine from Gaza and thus causing ‘severe suffering’ to its people. I hate to say this, but this is what happens in war. Normalcy ends, things run out, people go hungry, people suffer, people die. It is dreadful. It is why, ideally, wars should not be started. It is why Hamas should not have started this one, this infernal clash that has doomed so many Palestinian innocents alongside Israelis.
All wars contain such horrors. Acute malnutrition doubled in Iraq in the year after the allies’ invasion in March 2003. A savage famine has ravaged Yemen as a result of the Western-backed Saudi war there. And yet Mohammed bin Salman still swishes around his palaces, mingles with Western leaders, and rarely troubles the consciences of the West’s woke loathers of Israel.
For 24 hours straight we’ve been treated to the nauseating spectacle of states and even terror groups that are genuinely murderous welcoming the ICC’s indictment of Israel’s ‘murderers’. Turkey, violent suppressor of the Kurds, described the arrest warrants as an ‘extremely important step’ towards ‘justice’. Jordan, the state that fought a vicious year-long war against the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the 1970s, said it will implement the ICC’s ruling. Even Hamas is now in love with the ICC, despite its indictment of Deif, cheering it for sending an important message to ‘every war criminal’. Guilt by association is bad politics, I know, but, seriously, if your actions make the fascist terrorists of Hamas grin from ear to ear, it is time for a moral rethink.
Then there is the bizarre spectacle of the activist class cheering an institution like the ICC. These are the kind of people who cry ‘white supremacy!’ when Katy Perry wears her hair in cornrows and yet they’re content to simp for a notoriously biased court that mostly targets the leaders of Africa. Most of the people indicted by the ICC have been black Africans. All it did yesterday was add a couple of Jews to the list. Honestly, not since the KKK has there existed an organisation with such a curious obsession with blacks and Jews.
That so many so-called progressives are willing to overlook the ICC’s gross racial track record because it has now issued arrest warrants for leaders of the Jewish nation is a testament to the bigotries swirling in the Israelophobic set. The cacophony of noisy gloating we’ve seen in influential circles since the ICC issued its warrants is proof of the neo-imperial hubris that underpins Israelophobia. The woke elites’ feverish demonisation of Israel echoes the old colonial elites’ demonisation of African and Asian nations as suspect, fallen, lesser. The chauvinist streak in the fashionable hate for Israel suggests that where once our ‘betters’ feared the ‘dark heart’ of Africa, now they fear the ‘dark heart’ of the world’s only Jewish State. New bigotries for old.
Fundamentally, the ICC’s actions speak to the profound moral disarray of the West. Let it be recorded that when something very like fascism returned to our world, the institutions of the ‘rules-based order’ went after the nation that was its victim. When the Jews were once again targeted for racist murder, they went after the Jews. When the very values of the civilised world were upended by the rapists and racists of Hamas, they essentially rewarded Hamas by agreeing with it that the state it hates is indeed the worst state. It isn’t only Israel that has been thrown to the wolves of unreason by the ICC and its powerful backers – so has civilisation itself. These arrest warrants are worthless and offensive. Every civilised state should rip them up.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
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