Signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention (of which Israel is one) pledge that genocide “is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.” Shany Mor draws the logical conclusion:

Israel’s war in Gaza is not a violation of its commitments as a contracting party to the 1948 Genocide Convention. It is, in fact, a fulfillment of its obligations under the treaty. . . . For Israel to do nothing in the face of Hamas’s actions on October 7, or to cut its actions short and somehow acquiesce to a reality where that orgy of murder, rape, torture, and abduction would recur, would be a violation of the first article of the Convention.

The question of why the Jewish state was on trial two weeks ago at the International Court of Justice cannot be answered by examining Israel’s actions, but the thinking of its accusers. Mor continues:

Hanging over any discussion of Israel and any discussion of Jews and violence is the long, unremitting, and unfading shadow of the Shoah. It is impossible to understand just how much Israel bothers Western intellectuals without understanding how much the Holocaust bothers them. Haunts them. Frightens them. And, occasionally, thrills them.

Hauling the Jews in to plead their case before a special tribunal and face the charge that they are the real Nazis has been the fantasy of every anti-Semite since the first gavel hit a sound block in Nuremberg in 1946. It is the dark fantasy behind the insistence over decades on speaking of controversial Israeli actions always in terms of “war crimes.” This, and not a poor grasp of complex legal arguments, is the reason every Israeli military action in the last half-century has been criticized as “collective punishment” or “disproportionate.”

As long as the Shoah looms large in the civilized conscience, there will be those among us who project our fears and our discomfort in the most transparent way. The damage from this obsession is enormous, both to the cause of human rights and to the people this obsession claims to care about, the still-stateless Palestinians.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Israeli special forces carried out a daring boots-on-the-ground raid on September 8 targeting the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in northwestern Syria. The site was used for producing and storing missiles which are then transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon. Jonathan Spyer notes that the raid was accompanied by extensive airstrikes in Syira,and followed a few days later by extensive attacks on Hizballah in Lebanon, one of which killed Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, a senior officer in the terrorist group’s Radwan force, an elite infantry group. And yesterday, the IDF destroyed a weapons depot, an observation post, and other Hizballah positions. Spyer puts these attacks in context:

The direct purpose of the raid, of course, was the destruction of the facilities and materials targeted. But Israel also appeared to be delivering a message to the Syrian regime that it should not imagine itself to be immune should it choose to continue its involvement with the Iran-led axis’s current campaign against Israel.

Similarly, the killing of al-Shaer indicated that Israel is no longer limiting its response to Hizballah attacks to the border area. Rather, Hizballah operatives in Israel’s crosshairs are now considered fair game wherever they may be located in Lebanon.

The SSRC raid and the killing of al-Shaer are unlikely to have been one-off events. Rather, they represent the systematic broadening of the parameters of the conflict in the north. Hizballah commenced the current round of fighting on October 8, in support of Hamas in Gaza. It has vowed to stop firing only when a ceasefire is reached in the south—a prospect which currently seems distant.