The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the legality of Israel’s occupation is highly critical but this is, in part, due to its manifest bias against Israel.
Similarly, the equating by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of Hamas and Israel’s military tactics by issuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and others is so outrageous that we are tempted to close ranks behind the prime minister.
The public must resist the easy route of blaming our enemies for Israel’s loss of international legitimacy.
Israel has suffered major reputational damage since the Gaza war started, due in no small measure to Netanyahu’s failure to speak up.
His silence delivered Israel into the hands of enemies who are waging lawfare against the Jewish state.
After October 7, Israel had to target all Hamas fighters, not just the leadership.
Since Hamas embeds its fighters in the civilian population and locates its command and control centers in schools, mosques, and hospitals, civilian casualties would increase exponentially.
Did anyone think that as civilian deaths reached thousands, they would be ignored?
We and our friends should be troubled that the legitimate defense of our state and our lives exacts such a huge toll on the Palestinians.
The only way this legitimate war of self-defense could avoid criticism – even from moderates who are on our side – would be for Israel to acknowledge the problem and deal with it publicly.
On day one, the prime minister should have addressed the issue. He should have said, “We are going into Gaza in self-defense to prevent further massacres and to restore security to our citizens. We deeply regret that Palestinian civilians will die despite our all-out efforts to reduce civilian casualties. Hamas is to blame for placing its soldiers among the civilian population. We ask the world community to condemn Hamas’s war crimes. We ask Arab nations to press Hamas to stop using the Palestinians as human shields.”
Every day after that, the prime minister should have appeared on mass media, saying, “We have learned that an x number of Palestinians died in the war today. We are devastated by the Palestinian losses. We do not fire at civilian targets. We use low scatter munitions. We avoid missions that could result in excessive civilian casualties.
However, Hamas puts the civilians directly in harm’s way.
They want Palestinians harmed so that they can use the losses to turn the world against Israel. Help us. Ask Hamas to lay down their arms and return the kidnapped. This will stop the war and save thousands of lives.”
What Netanyahu should have done
On the next day, the prime minister should have explained: “We have asked the Palestinians to evacuate a certain neighborhood because our army was coming. Evacuation saves countless civilian lives in a battle zone. We ourselves evacuated 150,000 Israelis in the South and North of Israel because we wanted them out of harm’s way from Hezbollah.”
Instead, Minister Avi Dichter proclaimed that this was another nakba – as if Israel were practicing ethnic cleansing.
The prime minister said nothing to contradict Dichter. He should have proclaimed that Israel was acting in self-defense and not out of revenge.
The prime minister should have expressed, day after day, how Israel mourns the deaths of innocents as it defends itself against the murder of Israeli innocents.
Maybe the enemies would be just as implacably hostile, but the rest of the world would understand that Israel values life and tries hard to minimize Palestinian losses.
Why did the prime minister not speak up?
Because he is beholden to ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who want to inflict the maximum number of deaths on the Palestinians. He feared that they would dump him if he dared show sympathy or compassion for Palestinian deaths.
A few days into the war, Hamas damaged the power lines connecting Gaza to Israel. Instead of pointing out that Hamas was deliberately making life miserable for its own people, Foreign Affairs Minister Yisrael Katz announced that Israel would wage war on the Palestinians by cutting off electricity and denying them fuel. The prime minister remained silent.
Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu spoke of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Other ministers used language that sounded genocidal. Instead of repudiating Eliyahu’s words – or, better yet, firing him – Netanyahu merely said that Eliyahu’s words were not Israeli policy.
However, South Africa cited the ferocious quotes to accuse Israel of genocide before the ICJ. The most compelling argument from our enemies was that neither the prime minister nor the government officially condemned these horrible words.
Israel saw the growing food shortage in Gaza.
Two weeks before the United Nations spread a false claim that Israel was practicing a mass starvation policy against the Gazans, the government of Israel had begun sending in substantial food aid. However, to avoid offending Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, it did not announce that it was doing so.
When the UN blasted out the false charges, the prime minister did not reveal Israel’s policy of humanitarian aid.
Instead, he left the impression that American pressure and global condemnation were compelling Israel to permit some food relief to reach Gaza reluctantly.
The claim of mass starvation was particularly damaging. The ICJ specifically cited the threat of starvation as a reason to take the case against Israel.
Eventually, the UN’s own organization admitted that there was no basis for the deliberate starvation charge.
By then, however, most of the world had accepted the false narrative that Israel was waging a war of hunger on women, children, and vulnerable Gazans.
While harming Israel with his silence, the prime minister flagrantly trashed Israel’s moral standing by speaking about the Rafah operation.
The United States repeatedly warned against invading Rafah, claiming it would cause astronomical civilian casualties.
The prime minister should have gone public and said that Israel shared America’s concern about escalating Palestinian casualties.
He should have said, “We will work closely with the United States to find ways to minimize civilian casualties. We believe that we can create safe zones and evacuate civilians out of harm’s way. We can send in special units and break Hamas piecemeal, minimizing civilian losses.”
Instead, he repeatedly proclaimed that Israel would go into Rafah against American advice.
He thought that being perceived as fighting Biden would strengthen his support base.
Thus, the prime minister returned the favor of Biden’s initial all-out support for Israel by making the US president look bad to Netanyahu’s base. He also made Israel look bad, as well as callous and bloodthirsty, to the American people and the world community.
Overall, Israel has done its best to minimize civilian casualties.
But, unavoidably, every war incurs collateral damage and possible infractions of humanitarian law concerning armed conflict.
Instead of defiant dismissal (as with Rafah) or silence (as with Gaza), a policy of acknowledgment, expressions of sorrow, and a commitment to investigate would have served Israel better.
It is Netanyahu’s tragedy – and ours – that, for the sake of holding onto power for a few more months, he has inflicted damage on Israel’s international standing that will last for years.
The writer is an oleh, president of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life, and a senior scholar-in-residence at the Hadar Institute. His most recent book is The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism (Jewish Publication Society).
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