One of the lessons of the war that now might be coming to an end—if it were not already clear—is the extent to which international law and its institutions can be wielded as weapons against Israel. Aharon Friedman analyzes the deluded thinking that has created this situation:

International law helps set parameters and settle disputes between lawful countries committed to following the law. [But] World War II and the Holocaust were the result of geostrategic power balances, hatred, tyranny, and appeasement, not inadequacies of international law. . . . International law did not prevent Iran’s proxies from invading Israel on October 7 or Putin from invading Ukraine, and it does not result in “human rights for every person.”

Moreover, Friedman writes, Israel’s efforts to protect itself from the International Criminal Court (ICC) by expanding the power of its judiciary has itself caused problems:

The ICC ignores its own complementarity requirement, the rule that it must defer to countries whose own justice systems are addressing military misconduct. Israel has an extremely strong such system. . . . Led by Aharon Barak, Israel’s judiciary and legal bureaucracy have seized enormous power from elected governments in what Barak himself has described as a “constitutional revolution.” Attempts even partially to restore the authority of elected officials are met with arguments as to how this would cause Israel to fail ICC complementarity.

 In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu pulled out of a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like the IDF’s decision to employ raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—they are offered in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden admin. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.