Why did Hamas think it could win a war against the larger, better trained, and better equipped IDF? In large part because it had spent years embedding its military infrastructure into schools, hospitals, and residential areas. Israeli military operations would be restricted to protect civilians. And when Israel did strike, the damage to the civilian population would be so great that global opinion would step in, saving Hamas from defeat. The editors of National Review observe that, by accusing Israel of war crimes, the International Criminal Court (ICC) “is putting more Palestinian civilians in danger by convincing Hamas that its strategy is working.”

Now that the ICC has turned on an important American ally with a legal case that, even by the court’s own dubious standards, has no basis, the question is what to do about it. National Review has some suggestions:

Egregiously, the ICC had been investigating U.S. servicemembers as part of a broader look into war crimes in Afghanistan until the Trump administration imposed sanctions on ICC officials and the court announced it would be focusing on the conduct of other parties in the conflict.

The U.S. should take a similar approach here. Representative Chip Roy and Senators Jim Risch and Tom Cotton had already drafted the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to impose visa bans and financial restrictions on ICC officials. . . . While this would be a start, the incoming administration should be prepared to issue even harsher sanctions, as well as pressure other countries to announce that they will not allow the warrants to be enforced on their soil.

While the ICC is targeting Israeli leaders today, it could always target American leaders in the future.

In other words, since the ICC has now made it difficult for Israeli leaders to travel in many countries for fear of arrest, it is only fitting that ICC officials should fear the same thing.

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.