The calls this week for the arrest of Israeli President Isaac Herzog on charges of “genocide” suggest that the bad guys are beginning to win in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Not in Gaza, mind you, where Israeli forces continue to obliterate Hamas’ armed infrastructure in response to its massacre on Oct. 7.
But in legal chambers and courts of public opinion across the globe.
You see the bad guys everywhere — hiding, of course, in Gaza, burrowed in their terror tunnels surrounded by the Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages whose lives they regard with such indifference and disdain.
But the bad guys aren’t just limited to the Levant.
They’re right here in the US, sowing the sentiments that would not merely see Israeli officials unjustly detained in Europe — where denying Jews liberty is nothing new — but laying the groundwork for similar anti-Zionist efforts across the globe.
We may not be there yet, but we’re getting close.
What with terror-loving terrors like Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her mutinous Michigan primary charade last week — where she inveighed upon her constituents to vote against their president and party and their own best interests and cast their ballots as “uncommitted” to protest White House support for Israel.
Never mind that Biden’s November rival issued that odious “Muslim ban” just days after his inauguration in 2017.
Who cares that it was Trump who relocated the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv barely a year later — diminishing hopes of the city as an eventual Palestinian capital.
Forget crime or immigration or inflation — a cease-fire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza are the only issues that should really matter to Michigan Democrats right now.
Then there’s Gaza-washing journalists like CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Karen Attiah of The Washington Post — the former this week glorifying the multi-murderer Marwan Barghouthi as the “Palestinian Mandela,” the latter cravenly (and lazily) invoking race and gender in her witless critique of Kamala Harris’ weekend call for a Gaza cease-fire.
True, Mandela did condone selective use of armed struggle to end the Apartheid regime half a century ago.
But Amanpour’s comparison to bad guy Barghouti — the architect of two bloody Intifadahs that killed dozens — is an affront to the mostly nonviolent campaign that ended white rule and brought Mandela to power in 1994.
Of course who can forget about Harris herself, who’s repeatedly broken rank with her boss over Gaza, first calling for Biden to “show more sensitivity to Palestinians” back in December before using the weighty pulpit of Selma, Ala., to demand that cease-fire last week.
An end to Israeli bombing — good stuff for the Hamas crowd, right?
Not according to columnist Attiah, who blasted the Veep for “what she did not say” — namely questioning the transfer of the arms Israel needs to end the Hamas threat and secure its citizenry like any sovereign nation.
Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was also on the receiving end of this dystopian campaign of didn’t-speak when she found herself chased, surreally, through a Brooklyn movie theater Monday by pro-Palestinian activists haranguing her for failing to call Israel’s Gaza effort a “genocide.”
Baffled and bewildered, AOC — clearly shocked by the challenge to her progressive bona fides — insisted she had declared Israel’s actions genocidal before labeling the harassment against her “f–ked up.”
What’s truly f–ked up here isn’t merely the recklessness of folks like Harris and AOC — Amanpour, Tlaib and Attiah — but their weaponizing of identity babble and liberation politics to help Hamas bad guys gain the upper hand.
As one of the highest profile DEI hires in American history, Harris is hardly new to targeted race-play. But in linking the Gaza crisis to one of the bloodiest episodes of America’s civil rights movement, Harris — like Amanpour with Barghouthi and Mandela — attempted to legitimize Palestinian terrorists via the imprimatur of mostly peaceful freedom fighters.
As a black man whose own family was violently targeted during desegregation struggles in the South seven decades ago, Harris’ ploy feels not only ahistorical, but entirely amoral.
Like so many misguided Gaza-watchers out there, Amanpour and Attiah are little more than intersectional movement-moochers mining the media for a version of the war that fits their wokey nihilistic agendas.
It’s bespoke warfare curated via cellphone for maximum personal satisfaction, with scant regard for critique or consequence.
But the consequences are very real, such as the possibility that Biden will prevent US weapons from being used in Israel’s likely Rafah offensive, weakening its Gaza goals and threatening the remaining hostages.
Or the potential for yet another South Africa-led International Court of Justice show-trial against Israel on trumped-up charges of war crimes.
The most serious outcome would be the arrest of President Herzog during his planned trip to Holland this weekend.
Although unlikely, detaining Herzog would open the gates to similar actions against any Israeli perceived to have participated in “genocide” — a particularly ominous prospect for a nation with an army comprised entirely of civilians.
Taken to its most egregious extreme, warrants could be issued for any Israeli who entered basic training — and, as a consequence, to anyone who’s supported Israel’s war effort as third-party accomplices.
Those supporters would, of course, overwhelmingly mean Jews who could see their freedom of movement compromised and safety imperiled across vast swaths of the globe.
Far-fetched, perhaps, but nothing appears out of reach for the relentless global Gaza jihadis.
Unlike Harris’s Alabama photo-op or Tlaib’s Michigan optics play, when it comes to Israel and Jews, the bad guys never disappear once the cameras pack up and go home.
With Ramadan looming next week, Israel’s war against Hamas is entering a perilous new stage — and the bad guys are gearing up for every possible outcome.
