International Court of Justice Has Deemed Zionism a Form of Genocide Elliott Abrams
On November 10, 1975, the United Nations declared, “Zionism is a form of racism.”
The U.S. ambassador, Daniel P. Moynihan, responded, “The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.” Moynihan concluded, “The lie is that Zionism is a form of racism. The overwhelmingly clear truth is that it is not.”
That resolution was the lowest moment in the history of the United Nations — until now. Now, the so-called International Court of Justice has in effect found that Zionism can be a form of genocide. For what the court found is that Israel’s defense against Hamas may violate the genocide convention.
It remains to be seen if the Biden administration can rise to this occasion as Moynihan did in 1975. This ruling is as great a crime. The court relied on “facts” from sickeningly biased U.N. officials, from the irredeemably compromised UNRWA whose complicity with Hamas is crystal clear, and from the Hamas ministry of health in Gaza. With these “facts” in hand, it rolled on to conclude that Israel’s defense of itself and its war to defeat Hamas may amount to the crime of genocide.
This turns justice on its head. Killing Jews is not found to be genocide, but it is a crime for Jews to try to defend themselves. Not since the days of Nazi Germany has such a moral inversion of international law been propounded.
As in 1975, the U.N. system is being weaponized — in fact, is willfully turning itself into a weapon — to delegitimize the Jewish state. It may be attacked, but it may not try to defeat its attackers without facing United Nations’ efforts to tie its hands — just as Jews could be attacked in Nazi Germany but were arrested if they fought back.
It will be said that all the court’s rulings are provisional. More proceedings are to come — years of them. But that is the point: Israel will be in the dock now for years to come. Not China for its mass murder of Uyghurs. Not Syria for massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Not Russia for deliberate bombing of civilians in Ukraine. Only Israel, for its efforts to destroy a terrorist group that killed a thousand civilians in the most brutal ways imaginable on October 7, 2023.
It will also be said that the court did not order Israel to stop fighting and withdraw from Gaza. It did not order a cease-fire. What it did order was described this way by the New York Times: “Israel must take action to prevent acts of genocide by its forces in Gaza and must let more aid into the enclave.” And by doing so, it lends credence to every claim of genocide, to every lie that Israel is trying to starve Gazans, to every effort to stop the IDF from defending Israel’s citizens.
In today’s Israeli press, there is a dispute as to whether Prime Minister Netanyahu alone, or the whole cabinet, recently approved the entry into Gaza of thousands of tons of flour, enough for six months’ supply. So much for the idea that Israel wants to starve Gazans or is making war on civilians. But this fact didn’t make it into the “facts” upon which the court relied.
With this ruling, the United Nations system has emboldened and energized antisemitism around the world and added to the dangers facing the world’s only Jewish state. To use Moynihan’s words, it is an infamous act.
By the way, tomorrow is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This ruling is apparently the ICJ’s way of remembering.
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