The bitter harvest of decades of Israeli moral capitulation

It seems not to have crossed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's mind that the ICC arrest warrant put out for him on 21 November 2024 is the culmination of what he and almost every Israeli spokesperson have been doing for eighty years: explaining Israel's position in a propaganda war. They have learnt nothing from the Islamic-Communist gang-up at the United Nations in November 1975 to have Zionism declared a form of racism. The scandalous Resolution 3379 was not only adopted, but survived for sixteen years, all the way through to December 1991. The best that Israel could come up with to confront this malicious propaganda attack was to explain that Israel was not a racist state by herself indulging in the racist pathos of holding up her Arab MKs, as if that proved anything.

Incidentally, Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor to NGO Monitor, thinks it all began in 2001, when some pretty nasty people at a UN conference in Durban decided to weaponise the ICC against Israel. She was right about one thing, though:

Whenever there are periods of extreme violence against Jews, it is always coupled with these types of political warfare moves, because our conflict has two components: it has military operations and it has information warfare, and the UN has become a critical component of that information warfare.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 followed hard upon the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Arab Muslims having had two years to seethe in their humiliation and plot their next move. It began earlier, though, even before the manufacture of the "Palestinians", and the 2001 Durban obscenity was just another milestone along the path towards the ICC arrest warrants against the leaders of Israel, whoever those leaders might have been.

The beleaguered Prime Minister of Israel was shaking with rage as he, once again, explained what good people Jews are and how they are wronged simply for defending themselves. The Government Press Office released the statement:

The antisemitic decision of the International Criminal Court is a modern Dreyfus trial – and will end the same way.

Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the International Criminal Court, a biased and discriminatory political body.

No war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza since October 7th 2023, when the Hamas terrorist organisation launched a murderous assault and perpetrated the largest massacre against the Jewish People since the Holocaust.

The decision to issue an arrest warrant against the Prime Minister was made by a corrupt Chief Prosecutor who is trying to save himself from sexual harassment accusations and biased judges who are motivated by antisemitic hatred of Israel.

The ICC Prosecutor lied when he told American senators that he would take no action until he had visited Israel and heard its side.

Instead, he cancelled his arrival in Israel last May, several days after suspicions of sexual harassment were made against him, and announced his intention to issue arrest warrants against the Prime Minister and former Defence Minister.

No anti-Israel decision will prevent the State of Israel from defending its citizens.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not give in to pressure.  He will continue to pursue all the objectives that Israel set out to achieve in its just war against Hamas and the Iranian axis of terror.

Even Anne Herzberg's political warfare insight ought to be enough to expose the weaknesses in this press release:

1. It is not an "antisemitic decision"; this is an act of war.
2. It is not "a modern Dreyfus trial"; the Dreyfus trial targeted one Jew, the ICC warrants target the entire Jewish people and their state.
3. It will not "end the same way", because it is not a trial, whether fair or unfair; it will end either in the destruction of this UN weapon of propaganda war, or the destruction of its target, Israel.
4. "No war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza since October 7th 2023, when the Hamas terrorist organisation launched a murderous assault and perpetrated the largest massacre against the Jewish People since the Holocaust"; Israelis seem incapable of comprehending hatred, the reference to "antisemitic hatred of Israel" notwithstanding. When someone hates you, there is nothing you can say or do or not say or not do that is going to impress them. None of this explaining will cut any ice. They hate you. Their minds are sealed shut. This is also the weakness of the charge of "anti-Semitism": it softens hatred to a mere unsavoury sentiment, and thereby obscures just how dangerous and implacable Jew-haters are.
5. "a corrupt Chief Prosecutor"; the Chief Prosecutor is not corrupt, he is simply behaving as any Muslim male is entitled to behave.
6. "The ICC Prosecutor lied"; he is a Muslim! He is obligated to lie.
7. "he would take no action until he had visited Israel and heard its side"; why would Israel indulge this theatre when she insists the ICC has no jurisdiction? Is this indulgence not an implicit recognition of jurisdiction?
8. "he cancelled his arrival in Israel last May, several days after suspicions of sexual harassment were made against him, and announced his intention to issue arrest warrants against the Prime Minister and former Defence Minister"; even if this were true, as it most likely is, this is a petty conjecture that is beneath Israel and the nobility of her cause.
9. "No anti-Israel decision will prevent the State of Israel from defending its citizens"; this is the original concession. When the most fundamental right that Israel claims is only "the right to defend ourselves," she immediately concedes that everyone has the right to attack her. All else follows from this, all the way to the right of the ICC, a court that has no jurisdiction over Israel, to issue arrest warrants against her leaders, an attack that Israel has already conceded in claiming only "the right to defend ourselves". No other country or people on earth claim "the right to defend themselves". They hold it to be self-evident that the right to live in peace is inherent to their existence. By having conceded the right to live in peace, i.e., to not be attacked, Israel has drawn her own existence into question. Is it any wonder that she is constantly attacked? And that her attackers enjoy near-universal acclaim?
10. "its just war against Hamas and the Iranian axis of terror"; we can see how meaningless this "just war" becomes in light of the above.

All that Israel's excessive explaining amounts to is excessive apology: apology for defending herself despite claiming the right to do so. As is so often the case, this latest self-inflicted predicament forces to mind Ze'ev Jabotinsky's 1911 warning against precisely reactions such as this, in his essay "Instead of Excessive Apology":

We constantly and very loudly apologise... Instead of turning our backs to the accusers, as there is nothing to apologise for, and nobody to apologise to, we swear again and again that it is not our fault... Isn't it long overdue to respond to all these and all future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly and calmly answer with the only argument that is understandable and accessible to this public: 'Go to Hell!'?

Who are we, to make excuses to them; who are they to interrogate us? What is the purpose of this mock trial over the entire people where the sentence is known in advance? Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. ... The situation that has been created as a result, tragically confirms a well known saying: "Qui s'excuse s'accuse." We ourselves have acquainted our neighbours with the thought that for every embezzling Jew it is possible to drag the entire ancient people to answer, a people that was already legislating at the time when the neighbours had not even invented a bast shoe. Every accusation causes among us such a commotion that people unwittingly think, 'why are they so afraid of everything?' Apparently their conscience is not clear.' Exactly because we are ready at every minute to stand at attention, there develops among the people an inescapable view about us, as of some specific thievish tribe. We think that our constant readiness to undergo a search without hesitation and to turn out our pockets, will eventually convince mankind of our nobility; look what gentlemen we are--we do not have anything to hide! This is a terrible mistake. The real gentlemen are the people that will not allow anyone for any reason to search their apartment, their pockets or their soul. Only a person under surveillance is ready for a search at every moment.... This is the only one inevitable conclusion from our maniac reaction to every reproach--to accept responsibility as a people for every action of a Jew, and to make excuses in front of everybody including hell knows who. I consider this system to be false to its very root. We are hated not because we are blamed for everything, but we are blamed for everything because we are not loved...

We may apologise only in rare, unique and extremely important moments when we are completely confident that the Areopagus in front of us really has just intentions and proper competence. We do not have to apologise for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. Yes, we do have provocateurs and draft dodgers, and it is even strange that we have so few of them under current conditions. Other people have also these kind of "good," and, in addition, they have embezzlers, and pogrom-makers, and torturers--so what– the neighbors live and are not ashamed.... Do our neighbors blush for the Christians in Kishinyov who hammered nails into Jewish babies' eyes?" Not in the least,– they walk with head raised high and look everybody in the face; they are absolutely right, and this is how it must be, as the persona of a people is royal, and not responsible and is not obliged to apologise...

We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody's examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change and we do not want to.

Nowadays "Go to Hell!" would seem rather polite.

Picture credits:

Choinowski - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149866973

Beny Shlevich - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1999119

Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken - https://www.flickr.com/photos/78392295@N06/51996992028/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148564887

Avi Ohayon / Government Press Office of Israel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128577654

Screenshot from https://saturday-october-seven.com

By צלמי קק"ל - Jewish National Fund photo archive. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68136427

Comments:

On 28 November 2024 at 8:29, Ben Dor A. wrote:

Dear Anjuli Pandavar

Thank you for posting this essay.
I will try to translate it ASAP.

Meanwhile this decision was taken by Netanyahu. I think it's a big mistake:

https://www.jns.org/israel-will-appeal-to-icc-against-arrest-warrants/?utm_source

Best Regards
Ben Dor A.

On 28 November 2024 at 13:25, Anjuli Pandavar wrote:

Dear Ben Dor A.,

Thank you very much for the translation and the alert about the next capitulation. This quotation made me scream:

“Should the ICC reject the appeal, this will underscore to Israel’s friends in the United States and around the world how biased the ICC is against the State of Israel,” the PMO said.

What will it take?!