On Monday, Karim Khan, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for three senior Hamas leaders. Kyle Orton examines some procedural flaws in Khan’s case, and argues that the ICC’s investigation, with which Israeli officials cooperated, was in fact a “sham.” He then turns to the bigger picture:

The prosecutor, the judges, and the rest of the ICC bureaucracy are drawn from an international layer of highly ideological academics and lawyers committed to the “progressive development of international law.” . . . By definition, this cadre sees national sovereignty as the biggest impediment to its objectives, and is by disposition virulently hostile to claims based on traditional rather than rational-legal authority, to claims of national interest generally, to the use of force in pursuit of same, to nationalism or patriotism in any form, and really to democracy, seeing it as a destabilizing factor that produces undesirable elements in the international system—look at Donald Trump—which compete with their own magisterial impartiality.

This obviously makes the Jews a special problem, holding to their ancient creed of peoplehood centered on the Land of Israel. . . . During the Enlightenment, Jews were attacked for stubbornly holding on to their insular, backward particularism. . . . The language has changed, but the theme of Jews as not only holdouts against the tide of universalist progress, but as a cosmic danger to the entire enterprise, has remained within Western elites, whose members now come from the four corners of the earth and staff the ICC.

The next step, of course, is to use the ICC against the United States and other democracies. Orton concludes:

As with so many things that start as problems for Jews, “international law” of the modern kind, embodied in the ICC and United Nations institutions like the International Court of Justice (ICJ), is a problem for us all.

Taking stock of the events of the last year, including the recent battering Israel has dealt Hizballah, Ben-Dror Yemini believes it is time for the Jewish state to take an even more significant step:

The Iranian axis of evil has attacked Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, and Syria—and a significant part of the world has aligned with the dark and murderous forces. A year in which even the leaders of countries expected to lead the free world, who should oppose the axis of evil, are imposing arms embargoes on Israel.

With or without the U.S., Israel must destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. . . . Because if this regime is not eliminated, if it gains the capability, if it [obtains] nuclear weapons, it will destroy Israel. It will commit genocide on millions. Oil prices will rise? Let them rise. Our lives are more important.

The Middle East needs peace and rehabilitation. They will not come so long as the ayatollahs rule Iran. Tens of millions of Iranians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, and Palestinians are the primary victims of the Iranian regime, which brings destruction, hunger, devastation, and bloodshed. It’s not clear if the U.S. can afford to abandon them. It is clear that Israel cannot abandon itself. It is possible that an action by Israel, alone, will exact a high price. But any price today will be lower than the price Israel will pay in the future.