Benjamin Netanyahu (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
As Israel defeats its enemies on the battlefields in Gaza and Lebanon, the intifada has gone global. The fronts of the war against the Jewish state encompass America's cities, the United Nations, the U.S. Senate, and the International Criminal Court. Marches, resolutions, embargoes, arrest warrants—these are the tactics by which Hamas sympathizers worldwide intend to isolate Israel diplomatically, undermine Israel's war against terrorism, and intimidate the Jewish people.
Only one response is appropriate. America must stand in the breach. America must provide Israel with the cover and support it needs to cripple Hamas and Hezbollah and restore deterrence to the Middle East.
These are perilous times. The president is a lame duck. The vice president is nowhere to be seen. The next administration does not take office until January 20. Thus Israel's adversaries—and America's—sense an opportunity.
This week began, for example, with an anti-Israel march through a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. The protesters targeted a Jewish community center where a presentation on real estate opportunities in Israel was taking place. Police arrested two individuals when the demonstration turned violent. A few residents described the incident as a nuisance. But that is a mistake. A nuisance is something that can be ignored or forgotten. The Marine Park march cannot be ignored, cannot be excused. Why? Because it is another step toward the normalization of anti-Semitism in the United States of America.
Anti-Semitism is already well entrenched at the United Nations. On November 20, the U.N. Security Council demanded, for the umpteenth time, that Israel submit to a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza. The United States vetoed the resolution. That is because the U.N. proposal failed to call for the release of the more than 60 men, women, and children, including Americans, who are thought to be alive since Hamas kidnapped and took them to underground dungeons on October 7, 2023. The proposal also said nothing about the remains of the innocents who have died in Hamas captivity.
An anti-Israel U.N. resolution is an everyday occurrence. What made this week's proceedings remarkable was the fact that America stood alone in Israel's defense. Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members voted to impose a ceasefire on a democratic nation state. Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members voted to abandon hostages, including babies. Supposedly "advanced" economies such as France and the United Kingdom affirmed this unconscionable measure. They need a remedial education in Western civilization and its principles of moral clarity. Stat.
I know who ought to instruct them: the 80-some U.S. senators, Republicans and Democrats, who on Wednesday evening rejected Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I., Vt.) resolutions to block the sale of weapons to Israel.
On one level, Wednesday's vote was a reaffirmation of the U.S.-Israel relationship and a stinging rebuke to Sanders and to the anti-Zionist Left. On another level, however, the sight of 19 senators, all Democrats or independents who caucus with Democrats, voting to abandon Israel in the middle of its existential war against Iran and its terrorist proxies cannot help but produce a certain anxiety among supporters of the Jewish state.
That a fifth of the U.S. Senate is ignorant of, blind to, or willing to overlook the reality of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis in favor of anti-Israel and anti-Netanyahu propaganda is disturbing enough. That Sanders and company may also be a harbinger of the future direction of the American Left—a future heralded by the anti-Israel turn in the U.K. and Western Europe—is chilling.
We are long past the time, after all, when disagreements over the United States and Israel were confined to debates, plenary sessions, symposia, and exchanges in the letters pages of intellectual journals. Not only did October 7 clarify the stakes. It inaugurated an era of unchecked anti-Israel and anti-Semitic conduct on the part of governments, NGOs, multilateral institutions, and groups. In this toxic environment, one anti-Israel or anti-Jewish act amplifies another. Sanders might be a minority. But he is the voice of an ideology that pressured President Biden and Vice President Harris to slow-walk weapons transfers to Israel and urge the IDF not to enter Hamas's stronghold in Rafah.
Within 24 hours of the Senate vote on Sanders's amendments, moreover, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant. The court also issued a warrant for Hamas capo Mohammed Deif, who is presumed to be dead. This faux-evenhandedness, where both sides of the war are subject to the ICC's "justice," is a revolting instance of moral equivalence. Netanyahu and Gallant are elected officials in a democracy. The accursed Deif was an unlawful combatant and murderer. To speak their names in the same sentence is an admission of idiocy.
The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant are bogus. They stand accused of starving Gaza, while convoys have been delivering many tons of food and other humanitarian aid since the war began. I can think of no other belligerent that has fed the civilian population of its enemy during ongoing military operations. Yet Israel is still held liable for not providing "enough" aid, despite Hamas's theft and looting of the supplies once they enter the Gaza Strip.
At the same time, the ICC says Netanyahu and Gallant have intentionally targeted Gaza's civilian population, even though the research of experts such as John Spencer of West Point has demonstrated that Israel has taken extraordinary steps to keep civilian casualties low.
Truth matters little, however, in the morally inverted world of the ICC. Hamas breaks a ceasefire with Israel, Hamas murders, rapes, wounds, scars, abducts, and uses human shields, yet Israel takes the brunt of the response. Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and the militias and Iran fire rockets, drones, and missiles indiscriminately into Israel, yet Israel is the party to the conflict that international institutions and some U.S. senators want to disarm. Anti-Semites threaten and harass and assault Jews from America's campuses to the streets of Amsterdam, yet it is a former Israeli minster who is turned away from Australia due to fears that her presence might incite violence. All because she is a proud Jew and Zionist.
The mind reels. Israel's enemies cannot be allowed to warp politics and society in this manner. The Senate must pass the ICC sanctions bill—not in the next session, today. The Senate must pass laws to combat anti-Semitism on America's campuses—not in the next session, today. The Senate must revive maximum pressure on Iran—not in the next session, today. Help is coming for Israel in 2025, for sure. But each moment counts when the Jewish people face growing threats from a vicious and empowered and global mob.
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