At a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday to discuss the “situation in the Middle East,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened with a long speech focused almost exclusively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making only a passing reference to the war in Syria and none at all to that in Yemen. Ban took pains in his speech to justify Palestinian terror by asserting that “it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as an incubator of hate and extremism.” Jonathan Tobin writes:

[T]he recent upsurge in [violence] wasn’t the “natural” reaction to Palestinian frustration about the failure to bring about a two-state solution that the majority of [Palestinians] continue to oppose. The spark was the lies told by Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership about alleged Israeli plans to harm the mosques on the Temple Mount. The driving force since then has been the same spirit of rejectionism that has animated the Palestinian national movement since its inception. Palestinian public opinion continues to view the Jewish presence in any part of the country as unacceptable. . . .

It is not “human nature”—normal instincts that are presumed to exist in all people—that drives Palestinians to seek out random Israelis, whether they are young or old, male or female, or even pregnant, and to stab or shoot them. In this case, the “incubator” of hatred and extremism is not Israel’s refusal to give up land it knows will be used as a launching pad for more terrorism, but rather a Palestinian ideology that views territorial compromise as treason.

One need not be an expert in international law to see the absurdity of the ICC prosecutor’s determination that the leaders of Hamas and the leaders of Israel are equally guilty of war crimes. It takes only a little more knowledge to understand that the court has no jurisdiction over Israel, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty. In a careful analysis, Avraham Russell Shalev outlines some of the many legal holes in this case, and observes that the problems are inherent in the court itself:

A review of the ICC’s relationship towards Israel over its two decades of existence demonstrates a fundamental bias and double standard toward the Jewish state. This bias is not a function of any specific prosecutor. Rather, it is an institutional feature, found even in the Rome Statute. . . . Israel initially refused to sign the Rome Statute as it became apparent that the Arab states had politicized the Rome Conference and introduced language that departed from existing international law specifically to criminalize Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Therefore, argues Shalev, Jerusalem should deal with the case against it not as a legal problem, to which it would respond by dispatching lawyers to make carefully reasoned arguments, but as a political and diplomatic one. More specifically, he contends that

collaboration with the ICC will not reduce the very high chances of arrest warrants being issued against Israeli officials, but will give those charges great weight and legitimacy when they come. Instead, Israel must adopt a policy of non-cooperation and even offense.

And what does a policy of offense entail?

Israel has repeatedly stated that it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction. Therefore, any legal proceedings are completely illegitimate and as such, the various legal bodies—the attorney general, the Justice Ministry’s International Affairs Office, the Foreign Ministry’s legal advisors, and the Military Advocate General’s International Law Department—will no longer communicate with the ICC. [In addition], the Knesset must pass legislation modeled on the American Service-Member’s Protection Act. This legislation would bar any government agency from cooperating with the ICC without a government decision.

While Israel has never accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has willingly accepted it. The court can hardly turn around now and deny jurisdiction to avoid prosecuting Palestinian crimes. . . . Palestinian nationals, acting on behalf of Hamas, Fatah, and other terrorist organizations, and with no affiliation, have carried out serious war crimes against Israelis and Palestinians. Israel must publicly demand that the ICC issue indictments against them.