In May of last year, the UN Human Rights Council established a commission of inquiry dedicated to investigating “alleged violations” of international humanitarian law and human-rights law “leading up to and since April 12, 2021” in Israel and what it terms “the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” The commission recently released the first of its reports, which, as could be expected, finds extensive but dubious Israeli wrongdoing, while ignoring Hamas’s war crimes and abuses of its own people. Joe Truzman provides a window into how this happens:

UN investigators have difficulty processing information that points toward misconduct by Palestinian armed factions. Four years ago, a UN team investigating the violent 2018-2019 Gaza protests interviewed me to discuss my research. The team was looking at the role of Palestinian militant organizations in fomenting the unrest, commonly known as the Great March of Return.

The lead investigator questioned me on a range of subjects related to the riots, such as how I obtained evidence of terrorist activity at the Gaza border and my opinion on how Palestinian militant organizations were involved in the Gaza protests. My evidence was derived from various open-source channels, and it was compelling: Hamas and like-minded militant groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) were orchestrating attacks at the security fence between Israel and Gaza under the guise of civilian protest.

The UN investigators conducted interviews with participants from both sides of the conflict, as well as independent analysts. They obtained thousands of documents. Yet their final report in 2019 said almost nothing about the role of Hamas and other militants in orchestrating riots that targeted Israeli troops and installations. Instead, the report focused on Israel’s responses without explaining that Hamas-led militant activity was largely responsible for spurring the clashes.

Earlier this month, an operative working for, or in conjunction with, Hizballah snuck across the Israel-Lebanese border and planted a sophisticated explosive near the town of Megiddo, which killed a civilian when detonated. On Thursday, another Iranian proxy group launched a drone at a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five American soldiers. The former attack appears to be an attempt to change what Israeli officials and analysts call the “rules of the game”: the mutually understood redlines that keep the Jewish state and Hizballah from going to war. Nadav Pollak explains how he believes Jerusalem should respond:

Israel cannot stop at pointing fingers and issuing harsh statements. The Megiddo attack might have caused much more damage given the additional explosives and other weapons the terrorist was carrying; even the lone device detonated at Megiddo could have easily been used to destroy a larger target such as a bus. Moreover, Hizballah’s apparent effort to test (or shift) Jerusalem’s redlines on a dangerous frontier needs to be answered. If [the terrorist group’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah has misjudged Israel, then it is incumbent on Jerusalem to make this clear.

Unfortunately, the days of keeping the north quiet at any cost have passed, especially if Hizballah no longer believes Israel is willing to respond forcefully. The last time the organization perceived Israel to be weak was in 2006, and its resultant cross-border operations (e.g., kidnapping Israeli soldiers) led to a war that proved to be devastating, mostly to Lebanon. If Hizballah tries to challenge Israel again, Israel should be ready to take strong action such as targeting the group’s commanders and headquarters in Lebanon—even if this runs the risk of intense fire exchanges or war.

Relevant preparations for this option should include increased monitoring of Hizballah officials—overtly and covertly—and perhaps even the transfer of some military units to the north. Hizballah needs to know that Israel is no longer shying away from conflict, since this may be the only way of forcing the group to return to the old, accepted rules of the game and step down from the precipice of a war that it does not appear to want.