"Urgently Need Post-Biden Blackmail Strategy"

Amid all the hype and faff over the latest meaningless "ceasefire" between Israel and a jihad terrorist organisation, Murtadd to Human considers Dr Aaron Lerner's 28 November 2024 attempt to cut through it all to what actually matters, on the Independent Media Review and Analysis website. The urgency in Dr Lerner's title refers to the gravity of the damage the departing Biden administration can do to Israel at the UN over the next two months. Yet, there is another urgency: the threat of Israel herself legitimising whatever action the UN might take against her. Dr Lerner speaks of "all my anger and frustration," when learning of the ceasefire, or "blackmailer's bullet," as he puts it. This is exactly what I felt when I read that, in response to the ICC's arrest warrants against the Prime Minister and the former Defence Minister:

The Prime Minister’s Office announced Israel’s intention on Wednesday to appeal to the International Criminal Court in The Hague against its decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and to demand a delay in the implementation of those warrants.

[...]

“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.

Thus voluntarily submitting to the ICC that has no jurisdiction over Israel and thereby extending its jurisdiction over Israel. This brings to mind the state of affairs in the Old Yeshuv, when the highest rabbis had to submit to the lowest Arab rabble, hand over their meagre coins and be thankful for the beating they invariably got, all to avoid something worse. "There's a bullet in the chamber of the gun pressed up against our temple," says Dr Lerner.

And we are fully aware that once a United Nations Security Council Resolution invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter "bullet" is fired, a Russian veto would prevent President Trump from readily undoing the damage.

Once you put "bullet in the chamber" and "Russian" together, you risk getting carried away in an escalating metaphor. So let us take a step back. What is Chapter VII of the UN Charter? Chapter VII is the UN's baseball bat. While the worst damage that UN forces (the blue helmets) can do is stand aside so terrorists and mass murderers can get on with their business, and maybe run a little paedophile ring on the side, Chapter VII authorises member states, singularly or in coalition, to use deadly force to restore peace, as was done, for example, when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Unfortunately, Chapter VII is also the Devil's whore. The US invoked it in support of assassinating an arch-terrorist, Qassim Soleimani, but Russia also invoked it in support of invading a peaceful, independent state, Ukraine. When the highest international body is itself an instrument of both warfare (Chapter VII) and "lawfare" (the ICC), the most inappropriate stance a victim of the UN can take is legal grandstanding, such as the Prime Minister's appeal against the mendacious arrest warrants, especially if only to once again prove that which has been blindingly obvious for decades. The only effective response is to out-blackmail the blackmailer, especially now that multiple existential threats are bearing down on Israel.

So, for all my anger and frustration that my Prime Minister yielded to the blackmailer's bullet, I understand why Mr Netanyahu accepted a ridiculous deal that, if implemented, will ultimately result in Hezbollah, under the (at best) blind eyes of UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army, completely rebuilding and restocking their forward positions for a massive ground invasion.

I just wonder why, with the Israeli public so clearly behind him, the Prime Minister is so reluctant to simply level with the people of Israel. If he could bring himself to tell the Israeli people about the coup that the legal and security establishment is mounting against him by forcing him to Court while he has to run a country at war, then he can certainly do the same about the pressure the Biden administration has brought to bear on him. Not just Israel is on the line, the people of Israel are on the line, and the Prime Minister does not trust them. His instincts are always to operate behind their backs: Bibi knows best. That aside,

The challenge Prime Minister Netanyahu faces is to prepare a "package" for President Trump - a viable, robust resolution of the situation in the north that Trump can embrace and adopt as his alternative to the sham deal imposed by the Biden administration.

Such a package would include intuitive features like a deep "no man's land" north of the Lebanese border. To be clear: this won't be a simple task.

Well, President Trump has already endorsed exactly such a robust resolution, a chip to now cash in: “Hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later.” And "the rest" includes Chapter VII. Here I would turn to my dear friend, Rafael Castro, who can be brilliantly incisive. Castro suggests that Israel would quickly bring the Iranian regime to its knees if she were to drop a nuclear bomb somewhere in the middle of the vast Iranian desert, along with the warning: the next one drops on Qom. Such a profound humiliation will immediately obviate the need for a deep no man's land in Lebanon, as all that still remains of Hezbollah will be weeping at shrines.

Our package must be capable of being implemented in days rather than weeks or months. And with no cost to America.

These criteria are certainly met. I cannot see how the man who took out Qassim Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, blackmailed the EU into paying their fair share into NATO, and advises, “Hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” is not going to be impressed. Just keep him in the loop. If he should show any signs of misgivings, just remind him that even a bullet can be defied. He'd like that.

Picture credits:

Klára Nováková - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35505355

Mahdi Fathi Arjmand - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133289663

Screenshots from "Why are Young Iranians Knocking Turbans off Islamic Clerics' Heads?", The Quint, YouTube, 5 Nov 2022. https://youtu.be/AJDfjxvyers