Let’s now turn from America to Africa, where Jerusalem has made significant diplomatic inroads in the last decade. South Africa, where the ruling party is fully aligned with the Palestinian national movement, has led the legal campaign against Israel at the International Court of Justice and elsewhere. Arab countries in North Africa have also responded to the present war with typical hostility, with the exception of Israel’s allies Morocco and Egypt. As for the other African nations, Asher Lubotzky examines their reactions:

Most African countries, including a number of countries that have good bilateral relations with Israel (such as Uganda and Angola), have either employed ambiguous and neutral language in statements or have completely ignored the war.

The litmus test of Israel’s standing in Africa during the war was the UN votes on October 27 and December 12. The resolutions adopted on these dates called for an immediate ceasefire and did not condemn Hamas, and, thus, Israel and its close allies opposed them. These resolutions won substantial support in Africa, and even countries friendly to Israel, such as Kenya and Ghana, voted for them. At the same time, a few African countries stood by Israel.

Furthermore, the weakening of American influence in Africa vis-à-vis both China and Russia in recent years has negatively affected the ability of the United States to gain support from African countries for Western interests around the world, such as the war in Ukraine and the war against Hamas. Countries that have become close to Moscow in recent years, such as the Central African Republic, have also tended to adjust their UN votes to reflect Russia’s views. . . . Conversely, Israel has good relations with Christian-majority countries in eastern, central, and western Africa.

Lubotzky also notes one especially good piece of news:

As of the writing of this article, not a single African country—including the Muslim countries that have recently established relations with Israel, such as Chad, Sudan, Guinea, and Morocco—has officially severed its relations with Israel. From a historical perspective, this alone is an Israeli achievement; . . . during the Yom Kippur War and in its aftermath, more than twenty African countries broke off diplomatic relations with Israel.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.