On Wednesday, hikers around the southern
Israeli city of Arad discovered the remains of an Iranian ballistic
missile from the April 13 overnight assault. Israel’s Channel 11
identified it as a Khader-1 missile. The Khader-1, like the Imad
missiles, which Iran also used in its strike, are nuclear capable.
The fact that Iran used two ballistic
missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads should sound every alarm
bell. In an interview with Deutsche Welle on Tuesday,
International Atomic Energy Agency chairman Rafael Grossi said that Iran
is “weeks rather than months” away from having enough enriched uranium
to develop a nuclear bomb.
Israel’s war is not a war of choice. It
isn’t a conflict that Israel can shrug its shoulders and walk away from,
or opt for a limited goal of blocking incoming strikes. This is a war
for national survival. Hamas made clear the genocide it aims to achieve
on Oct. 7. Its appalling cruelty to the hostages it has held captive for
more than six months demonstrates still further that there is no way to
fight to a draw with this jihadist terror regime. There is no “deal” to
be had with Hamas leaders. The same is true of Hezbollah-controlled
Lebanon. And, of course, the same is true of Iran.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and their terror
partners have used all the resources at their disposal to expand their
capacity to annihilate Israel. They have not done this to jockey for
stronger negotiating positions. They are putting everything they have
into building these capacities because they really want to destroy
Israel and kill the Jews. The calls for Israel’s destruction are not
mere slogans. They are solid commitments.
The good news is that Israel has the
military and economic power to defeat its enemies completely. The bad
news is that in their efforts, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and their other
partners are not fighting alone. While the United States and other
Western nations are willing to speak out against Hamas and Iran from
time to time, they completely oppose Israel’s effort to defeat its
enemies. Israel is permitted to defend against incoming attacks. But it
is prohibited from taking decisive offensive action.
To block Israel from winning, the United
States and its partners in Europe and the United Nations are waging an
unprecedented, comprehensive and ever-escalating political war against
Israel. Its clear goal is to criminalize Israel’s war effort and to
effectively deny the Jewish state the right to self-defense.
Consider the news from the International
Criminal Court at The Hague. Israel is not a member of the ICC. But to
seize jurisdiction over Israel, the ICC took the legally dubious step of
accepting “Palestine” as a member state. Since Oct. 7, the Palestinian
Authority has deluged the ICC with war crimes complaints against Israel,
even though they lack evidentiary basis. But they are supported
politically by a slew of anti-Israel NGOs, and the U.N.’s
institutionally anti-Semitic governing apparatus and agencies.
Early this week, rumors began to swirl
that ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan is poised to act on these
groundless complaints and issue international arrest warrants against
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
and Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.
If Khan proceeds as reported, Israel’s top leaders will be unable to
visit any of the ICC’s 120 member nations without first securing
bilateral agreements with authorities in each country not to arrest them
during their stay.
This is terrible in and of itself, of
course. But the wider implication is even more dire. If Khan goes
through with his plan, he will essentially declare Israel a criminal
state with no right to self-defense.
Given that Israel is in the midst of a
terrible war for its national survival, by denying Israel the right to
self-defense, the ICC will deny Israel the right to continue to exist.
Moreover, the ICC will have made it the position of the international
community that the Jewish state must be destroyed.
The United States is not a member of the
ICC. All the same, Khan owes his election to the support he received
from Washington. To repay the favor, Khan closed two ICC investigations
into alleged U.S. war crimes related to the American war in Afghanistan
shortly after he assumed office.
On Tuesday, Israel’s top political
reporter, Amit Segal, revealed that “very senior officials” at the ICC
told him that Khan’s initiative was given a “green light” by the Biden
administration.
“There is no way the chief prosecutor
would decide on such a dramatic step, in a war still ongoing—with very
little evidence—without first getting at least a ‘green light’ from the
Americans,” Segal cited his sources as saying.
If their allegation is true, Segal noted,
then “this is yet another unprecedented low in relations between Israel
and the United States at a very sensitive time on the eve of the ground
operation in Rafah.”
Listing Israel as a major human-rights abuser
Rafah is the heart of the story. For
months, it has been clear that the key to Israel’s victory in its war
against Hamas is the seizure of Rafah, Hamas’s final outpost,
strategically located along the border with Egypt.
For months, U.S. President Joe Biden and
his top officials have done everything to block Israel from seizing the
city. They insisted that Israel was responsible for the welfare of the
1.4 million Gazans in the city and that Israel had to evacuate them.
They also prohibited Israel from opening the border with Egypt to permit
Palestinians to leave Gaza and seek safety in third countries.
Rather than argue, Israel purchased tens of thousands of tents and has set them up for the Gazans leaving Rafah in a safe area.
As the clock ticks down to the operation,
the United States has ratcheted up its slanderous claims against Israel.
USAID administrator Samantha Power accused Israel of deliberately
inducing a “famine in northern Gaza.” The United States made resupplying
Gaza its primary war effort. Never mind that Gaza may be the
best-stocked enclave on earth with aid packages selling for pennies in
open markets. On Monday, Biden announced that America is providing $1
billion to Gaza and pointed an accusatory finger at Israel.
“We’re going to immediately secure that aid, and surge it, surge it,
including food, medical supplies, clean water. And Israel must make
sure this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay,” Biden
barked.
The massive quantities of supplies
entering Gaza daily have enabled Hamas to ready itself for the coming
battle and to restore its control over all aspects of civilian life in
the area. It has also enabled Hamas cells to quickly reinstate
themselves in areas that IDF forces vacate, forcing soldiers to retake
areas time after time.
Ahead of the news of the ICC initiative,
the U.S. State Department informed the media of its intention to
sanction an entire IDF unit, manned by soldiers on the ultra-Orthodox
spectrum. The State Department also expanded U.S. sanctions against
Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria to include organizations and
individuals fingered by anti-Israel NGOs in the United States and the
Palestinian Authority that seek to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.
This week, the State Department issued its
annual Human Rights Report for 2023. The report places Israel together
with Russia, China and the Taliban as major human-rights abusers. The
State Department’s assault on Israel flies in the face of in-depth
reports from U.S. and British military experts that have detailed how
Israel has gone to lengths to prevent civilian deaths that are
unprecedented in the history of warfare. The ratio of civilian to
combatant deaths in Gaza is at most 1.3:1, the lowest in history, they
have shown.
Like the threat of ICC arrest warrants,
all of these shockingly hostile U.S. actions are directed towards the
goal of criminalizing Israel’s war effort and intimidating Israel’s
leaders into canceling the operation in Rafah, suing for a hostage deal
that will lead to Israel’s strategic defeat and securing Hamas’s
survival and Iran’s strategic victory and emergence as the uncontested
regional hegemon—on the cusp of a nuclear arsenal.
‘More has to be done’ to fight antisemitism
The administration-directed onslaught is
buffeted by the anti-Jewish, pro-Hamas pogroms at campuses from coast to
coast. The symbiotic relationship between the vilification of Israel by
the U.S.-led international community in support of Hamas’s survival and
Israel’s defeat, coupled with the assault on Jews at universities, is
forcing a choice on us all. A video address on Wednesday drew the link
explicitly.
Noting that many leading universities have
enabled the antisemitic violence on their campuses, Netanyahu said
“more has to be done,” to fight antisemitism.
“It has to be done not only because they
attack Israel. That’s bad enough. Not only because they want to kill
Jews wherever they are. That’s bad enough. It’s also … because they say
not only ‘Death to the Jews,’ but ‘Death to America.’ And this tells us
that there is an anti-Semitic surge here that has terrible consequences.
Explaining the connection between events
in the war on the ground and assaults on Jewish students and faculty,
Netanyahu said: “We see this exponential rise of antisemitism throughout
America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend
itself against genocidal terrorists. Genocidal terrorists who hide
behind civilians. Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide.
Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and sundry war crimes. It’s
all one big libel. But that’s not new.
“We’ve seen in history that antisemitic
attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander; lies that were
cast against the Jewish people that were unbelievable. Yet people
believed them.
“And what is important now is for all of
us, all of us who … cherish our values and our civilization to stand up
together and to say: Enough is enough.
“We have to stop antisemitism because
antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine. It always precedes larger
conflagrations that engulf the entire world. So I ask all of you, Jews
and non-Jews alike who are concerned with our common values and our
common future to do one thing: Stand up. Speak up. Be counted.”
Israel’s choice is between defeating its
enemies on the battlefield even at the cost of terrible condemnation and
isolation or collapsing under pressure and losing. Israel is called to
make this choice in the immediate term, and its fate stands or falls
with its decision about Rafah.
But while the focus is on Israel, the
choice belongs to all who seek to preserve their freedom and safety.
Will you stand with Israel, and by doing so, protect your own freedom
and rights, or will you sacrifice both by staying silent?
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