Even before the creation of Israel, significant elements of the international left opposed Zionism, embraced anti-Semitism, and defended the murder of Jews. A new book, Anti-Semitism and the Far Left, chronicles this history from the 1920s to the present. As Tony Michels writes in his review, Israel’s victory in the June 1967 war inaugurated an era of especially virulent rhetoric:

In the summer of 1967, American leftists began speaking about Israel in new, jarring ways. The Jewish state had just won a quick but transformative war with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, resulting in the capture of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. A good many leftists sided with Israel, but a growing number reacted against it with levels of vituperation more characteristic of the ultra-right than the traditional socialist left. From 1967 forward, one could hear angry, often outlandish, public pronouncements with growing frequency.

An article in the Students for a Democratic Society’s newsletter counseled Holocaust survivors and their children to leave Israel for “historically more appropriate place[s]” such as “the vicinities of Stuttgart, Liverpool, and Kiev.” The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s newsletter accused Israel of indiscriminately slaughtering Arabs and connected this to a long history of Jewish rapaciousness. “[F]amous European Jews,” the newsletter stated, had “long controlled the wealth of many European nations.” The Socialist Workers party dismissed objections to this calumny as “chauvinist hysteria.” The Maoist Progressive Labor party labeled Israel a “Nazi state” while the Weather Underground claimed Nazi propaganda owed a debt to “Zionist writings.”

Drawing in part on her own experiences, Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains the circumstances that led to the creation of institutions like the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose prosecutor last week requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister along with the senior leaders of Hamas. This move, she argues, stems from the simple fact that the court “is not fit for purpose,” and not intended to judge the activities of democratic countries like Israel with functioning judiciaries. What is happening now, she explains, is “a concerted effort to weaponize the court to target the Jewish state,” which originated with the Palestinian Authority itself and enjoyed the eager collaboration of the previous prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.

What are the likely results of this perversion of international law? Stephen Daisley explains:

Granting these warrants would require ICC signatory countries such as the UK to arrest the men if they set foot in their territory and hand them over. The likely effect of their arrest would be to cripple Israel’s war effort and throw the country into political chaos. . . . The applications relating to Hamas leaders are little more than fig leaves. Terrorist organizations can function pretty well despite arrest warrants. . . . Lawfare is a mere inconvenience to terrorists but to democrats it is a grave threat to their ability to lead their country.

Daisley calls for a counterattack:

Israel and its supporters should begin in earnest a campaign arguing for mass withdrawal from the Rome Statute, which would effectively abolish the ICC. The very notion would be scandalous to law professors, the human-rights industry, and progressives but the ICC has existed for just 22 years. . . . The ICC has contributed little to the upholding of the Fourth Geneva Convention in its two decades of existence and has evolved into a thoroughly political organization.