The Answer Is: It’s Antisemitism. The ICC vs the Jewish people.

It’s not us, it’s them.

The International Criminal Court forecourt, entrance and sign. The Hague, Netherlands....

One of my pet peeves is people asking questions with answers that I know they know (and they, usually, know that they know). Sometimes it’s just because they think (for some reason) that it’s clever. Far more often, it’s because people don’t want to face the answer themselves – so they let other people face it first.

Dozens of times per week, I see people asking various questions to which the answer is: antisemitism. Why was there a pogrom in Amsterdam? Antisemitism. Why were people openly protesting in favor of Hamas in the streets of Montreal and Toronto? Antisemitism. Why are thousands of college students across the country still calling for policies which they know would put the entire global population of Jews in danger? Antisemitism.

So why did the International Criminal Court (ICC) recently issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant? No, it’s not because of “Israeli policies,” some misguided concern for the people of Gaza, and it’s sure as hell not because of the reason that the ICC gave: Israel using starvation of the civilian populace as a tactic of war.

It is because of antisemitism.

According to the ICC’s own statement, the warrants were issued on November 21 “for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest.”

It is obviously repugnant that these people used the language of the Nuremberg Trials to attack the world’s only Jewish state. Moreover, everyone knows that these warrants were issued by people who hate Jews. No amount of pretending will change that.

What else makes it so obvious?

It is based not just on a lie, but an egregiously false lie. Israel has shipped in over 1.1 million tons (not pounds: tons) of food into Gaza since the beginning of a war in which it was attacked in the most brutal and sub-human fashion imaginable. In my opinion, Israel was under no obligation to ship in so much as a Big Mac. I also believe that the Israelis showed weakness, and set themselves up for accusations that it is culpable for the war and everything that always goes along with war, by taking the unprecedented action of shipping in tons of aid to an enemy while the war is still happening.

But what is done is done, and there is no truth to the idea that there is mass starvation in Gaza, let alone that Israel is responsible for it. Do you remember the Ethiopian famines of the 80s? Because I do. One of the most common visuals of the era were pictures of starving children with distended bellies. Those images were inescapable.

Don’t you think that given that Hamas has resorted to using AI to produce pictures of supposedly victimized Gazans, we would have been inundated with photos of starving Gazans, particularly women and children, all day, every day?

I haven’t seen one. Have you?

There is no famine, and therefore, there are no “war crimes.” If the ICC had to make crimes up – there must be no legitimate crimes for which to accuse Netanyahu and Gallant (and by extension, Israel). Furthermore, the fact that the third member of the former War Cabinet, Benny Gantz, was left out of the indictments also demonstrates that they are not only fake, but also political in nature. At the time, Gantz was the favorite to oust Netanyahu.

Fortunately, Israel and the United States are not signatories to the ICC, so they are not bound by these idiotic warrants. Some member countries like Hungary (led by Viktor Orban who the left regularly accuses of antisemitism) have said that they will not comply. In fact, Orban recently invited Bibi to Hungary and has been a strong ally to Israel. Meanwhile supposedly closer allies like the United Kingdom and Canada have signaled that they would comply with the arrest warrants. That means that they have said (along with many other Western nations) that they would arrest the democratically elected leader of an ally – based on lies told by an “international” body. So, you gotta love Hungary giving the middle finger to the Hague (home of the ICC) even more. But you also have to wonder how strong ties to the ideas of democracy, self-determination and sovereignty remain in the Western world.

Or, do those ties weaken significantly only when those concepts are applied to Jews?

For its part, the White House condemned the ICC ruling. While that is the morally correct move, I am also gratified that an administration is returning to the White House which already actively defended Israel from the dark maneuverings of the ICC.

In 2020 the first Trump administration sanctioned two of the top officials at the ICC, as well as leveling visa restrictions against others. At that point the ICC’s investigation into Israeli policy was driven by the 2014 Gaza war. That war was sparked when three Jewish teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frenkel, were murdered by Hamas terrorists. The ICC pointedly refused to investigate those murders, and instead chose only to harass Israel.

As one of his administration’s first acts, in early in 2021, Biden issued an executive order reversing the Trump era sanctions against the ICC. His State Department also reversed the previous visa restrictions. So his condemnation of the current arrest warrants for Netanyahu/Gallant ring very hollow.

In addition, the Republican led House passed a bipartisan resolution sanctioning the ICC just this past June. The Senate, as directed by the president, has refused to vote on the legislation for more than six months. Had those sanctions passed, the ICC may not have felt confident enough to issue the current warrants.

The politics of why this occurred aside, Israel went to war because it was attacked. After October 7, Hamas pledged to use its base in Gaza to carry out similar massacres of Jews “again and again.” Given Hamas’ (and Iran/Hezbollah’s) previous history, the 10/7 attacks, and their obsession with murdering Jews post 10/7 - under no sane interpretation of the rules of war is Israel precluded from defending itself. Nor is it precluded from utterly destroying these enemies. In fact, it has a moral obligation to protect its people, and, in this case, total destruction of the enemy is the only way to achieve that goal.

Israel also has the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant death in the history of modern warfare. As I mentioned above, Israel has transferred more than 1.1 million tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza which required more than 57,000 individual truckloads. That’s the case even though Israel knows that most of that aid is being stolen by Hamas to finance its war against Israel (again, a policy that I never agreed with). It was an enormous strategic undertaking for which Israel risked Israeli lives, with very little upside. In fact, it has been used as a cudgel against the Netanyahu government, and the people of Israel. There are multiple examples, but as recently as November 24 Democrat Senator Van Holland was claiming on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” that Netanyahu was not allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. Remember: 1.1 million TONS.

Not that we needed outside “proof” of any of this, but even the multi-national Famine Review Committee found that there is no famine in Gaza (not exactly worthy of a spoiler alert). That just happened last June.

So while the United States is not a signatory to the ICC, it is partially responsible for the current situation, because it has given legitimacy to the lies that the ICC used as its rationale, and flatly refused to take action which very well may have stopped the warrants from being issued.

What we have here, once again, is the “international community” using Arabs as props, and an imaginary famine in Gaza as the latest in their constant attacks on Israel (the best example of which is the long antisemitic history of the United Nations). The “Palestinians” are, of course, more than willing to go along (as usual) with all of this.

So, to ask, after all this, “Why?” is beyond absurd. This type of attack is central to the strategies of Hamas, and all of Iran’s other proxies. The strategy is one identical to medieval antisemitism, and every other iteration throughout history: villainize Jews, set us apart from the rest of the humanity, and refuse to apply the rules to us which are applied to the rest of the world.

And I think we all know by this point that when you single out the lone Jewish state and apply standards to it that are applied to no other nation, that is definitionally antisemitism.

As hard as it may be, we need to face the relentless ubiquity of Jew hatred in order to fight it. But never believe that the motivation behind actions like the ICC arrest warrants are anything other than antisemitism.

In other words, it’s not us: it’s them.

Never be afraid. Never give in.

Am Yisrael Chai.

This article appeared originally in Orange County Jewish Life.

Joshua Namm is a longtime Jewish community pro, passionate Israel advocate, and co-founder/co-CEO of Moptu, a unique social platform designed specifically for article sharing, and dedicated to the principle of free speech.