No Self-Defense Allowed

When the United Nations’ International Court of Justice in The Hague agreed to provide a nonbinding advisory opinion on Israel’s security fence, being built roughly along the Green Line separating Israel proper from the West Bank, everyone knew the ruling would go against Israel. The ICJ is stacked with judges from countries hostile to the Jewish state, and because Israel is barred from full membership in all regional UN groups, no Israeli judges are allowed to serve. The Israeli government, fully aware they would not receive anything even resembling a fair hearing, announced in advance that construction would continue anyway.

Now the Court has made its ruling, and to nobody’s surprise, the Jews got all the blame. In its blunt language, the ICJ said that “construction of the wall and its associated régime cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order.” (Presumably, the corpses of hundreds of Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism just aren’t enough.) And in what can only be called chutzpah, the judges blithely added that “construction of the wall [is] not the only means to safeguard Israel’s interests against the peril invoked.” This after the UN condemns Israel with dreary regularity for taking any action at all against terrorism.

So let me get this straight: Not only is Israel not allowed to defend itself by going on the offensive against terrorists with armed force, it is not allowed to defend itself nonviolently by preventing attackers from slaughtering its citizens in the first place.

This is so absurd it would be right at home in the works of Dr. Seuss:

You cannot do it with a wall,
You cannot do it big or small,
You cannot do it post-close call,
You cannot defend yourselves at all!

The ruling was a legal and political farce, plain and simple. The ICJ never made any secret of its political leanings in the case, and made it very clear from the outset which way they would rule. The opinion completely ignored the daily threat of terror under which all Israelis live, relegating it to the footnotes, and took the Palestinian position on every point. It would all be great material for late-night comics were it not so scornfully tragic.

It would be hard to come up with a harsher indictment of the contempt with which the world sees Israel and the Jews. In the eyes of the rest of the world, Israel’s defined role is to be the global whipping boy, the scapegoat for everyone else’s problems. Israel’s only permissible response to bus bombings and restaurant massacres is to do nothing at all. And the only permissible solution to the conflict with the Palestinians is for Israel to destroy itself.

The Palestinians have shown over and over again that they are not interested in a genuine peace with Israel no matter what. Like it or not, the only realistic response to such an intolerable situation is to pull out and let the Palestinians run their own affairs while protecting Israeli citizens against relentless terrorist attacks. That requires a way to block terrorists from entering Israel and wreaking havoc.

And that requires a strong, defensible barrier.

Israel is doing the right thing. If the rest of the world doesn’t like the idea of Jews actually defending themselves instead of meekly letting themselves be slaughtered, too bad.