Independent of the ICC, the government of Australia appears to have already started closing its doors to Israeli dignitaries, in this case barring the former justice minister Ayelet Shaked out of fear she might “incite discord” by giving a speech to local supporters of Israel. Elliott Abrams comments:

To what other democratic country has this approach been applied? It seems the answer is none.

As Abrams goes on to explain, this sort of attitude has come to typify the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has placed catering to the wishes of the hard left “over solidarity with a fellow democracy fighting for its life against Iran and against three terrorist groups.”

By contrast, Abrams notes the very different situation in New Zealand, where the anti-Israel Labor party suffered a bruising defeat in the October 2023 election:

Lo and behold, the new National Party government announced in February of this year that it was designating Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist organization, dispensing with the fiction that there is a Hamas “political wing” uninvolved in terrorism. Then this week it designated Hizballah in its entirety as a terrorist organization, again junking the ridiculous notion of a “political wing.” New Zealand also designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization this week.

In short, Abrams observes, elections have consequences.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.