Yesterday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, ex-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Mohammad Deif for “alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed in Gaza. Deif, Hamas’s former military chief, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in July. The Netherlands, Canada, and a few other countries have already stated that they will arrest Netanyahu or Gallant if either sets foot on their territory.

The case against Israel is so absurd, the court’s assertion of jurisdiction over this conflict so feeble, and the behavior of the ICC so un-lawlike, that the warrants say more about the institution’s flaws than the war in Gaza. In 2003, shortly after the ratification of the Rome Statute—which created the ICC, and which neither the U.S., nor Israel, nor Hamas signed—the legal scholar Jack Goldsmith diagnosed those flaws:

The ICC can exercise its independent jurisdiction over perpetrators of international crimes if the crimes are committed (a) by a national of a signatory party, or (b) on the territory of a signatory party! Two important consequences follow. The first is territorial liability over non-signatories. The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed by a non-signatory nation in the territory of a signatory nation. The second is the traveling-dictator exception. Leaders of non-signatory nations can commit crimes in their [own] territories without fear of prosecution. Even if human-rights abusers from non-signatory nations vacation in The Hague, they cannot be arrested and tried by the ICC.

The most salient class of human-rights violators during the past century has been oppressive leaders who abuse their own people within national borders.

Goldsmith, thinking of Israel’s use of targeted killings of terrorist leaders to combat the campaign of suicide bombings and massacres launched by Hamas and Fatah, had a prescient sense of how the court would be used:

I am not arguing that the ICC will have no effect whatsoever. Surely it will. As the Palestinian response to Israeli military attacks in July 2002 indicates, it will be a focal point for rhetorical assertions about criminality even in cases in which the ICC clearly lacks jurisdiction.

Moreover, since American military might had proved the only reliable tool for bringing war criminals to justice, Goldsmith concluded that the ICC was not just “self-defeating,” but ultimately “perverse,” since it “exposes the United States, a non-signatory nation, to liability for crimes committed in signatory nations or in non-signatory nations that temporarily invoke” the court’s jurisdiction. It thus punishes good behavior (like American humanitarian interventions that risk collateral civilian deaths), while doing nothing about actual evils (like Bashar al-Assad slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own subjects).

Donald Trump’s recent visit to the Arabian Peninsula, where he was fawned over by Hamas’s patrons in Qatar, made deals with the Saudis but seemingly no progress on diplomatic normalization between Riyadh and Jerusalem, and met with multiple Arab leaders while neglecting Israel—has raised much concern that the president is putting distance between himself and the Jewish state and moreover, that Israel’s regional standing is sliding. These concerns strike me as exaggerated and even overwrought, and in some cases wishful thinking on the part of those who would prefer such outcomes.

To Dan Schueftan too, Jerusalem is in an excellent position both diplomatically, and—as the IDF again ramps up its operations in Gaza—military:

In the regional arena, Israel has already won the war that started on October 7, 2023. While the fighting is not over yet, a confrontation with Iran is potentially dangerous, and there is no sustainable “solution” available in Gaza, the balance of power in the Middle East shifted dramatically in favor of the Jewish state and its de-facto Arab allies.

Since October 7, Israel has devastated in Gaza the only Arab state-like entity controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. The IDF also reduced Hizballah from an intimidating strategic threat, practically in control of Lebanon, to a major nuisance, fighting a rearguard battle for its position in Beirut and in the south. And Israel’s air force exposed the supreme vulnerability of Iran’s most-defended sites.

In Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Rabat, Arab leaders could not afford to infuriate their populaces by openly celebrating the dramatic weakening of their regional deadly enemies and giving Israel the well-deserved credit for inflicting the required blows. However, they know that sustainable Israeli resilience, strategic power, determination, and tenacity in the struggle against common radical enemies are indispensable for their own regional welfare, sometimes even their existence. Whereas America is immeasurably more powerful, Israel, in their experience, is an infinitely more trustworthy and dependable partner in this ongoing struggle.