In his Yom HaShoah address on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu responded to reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) might be getting ready to issue arrest warrants for Israeli commanders and politicians. Neither Washington nor Jerusalem recognize ICC jurisdiction in Israel or Gaza, but the court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, believes otherwise. Arsen Ostrovsky and John Spencer explain why going through with a case against Israel would, as Netanyahu put it, leave an “indelible stain” an international law:

The ICC was established in 2002 as “a court of last resort,” with the primary goal of ending impunity for those accused of the most heinous of crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. It was never intended to be applied in the Orwellian circumstances of prosecuting Israeli leaders as they defend the Jewish state against the murderers and rapists of Hamas and seek to bring back hostages held captive by the terror group in Gaza.

The IDF has gone to unprecedented lengths, not seen in the history of modern warfare, to abide by the laws of war and avoid harm to civilians, even when doing so has put the IDF’s own soldiers at risk. This has included warning of impending attacks and creating safe corridors for civilians to evacuate through. They have done this while continuing to facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid and supplies, including more than 25,000 aid trucks to date, notwithstanding Hamas continuing to intercept and syphon much of this aid.

Not only is there absolutely no legal basis to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, doing so now would only reward Hamas and unleash a further firestorm of anti-Semitism.

The U.S., and indeed all Western allies, cannot stand idly by now as the court is dragged into irredeemable disrepute. This is not the time for quiet, timid diplomacy. It must be made clear, in no uncertain terms, that if Khan chooses to proceed with issuing warrants, it will be the death knell of the court’s very legitimacy.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].