From Paris to The Hague

“From Paris to the Hague sees the return of the same old plague.”

In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer, was put on trial and convicted of treason. His conviction and subsequent exile to Devil’s Island unleashed a tsunami of Jew hate in France. Mobs of French citizens screaming inciting anti-Jewish slogans rampaged throughout the country, and most of the media whipped up hysteria against Dreyfus and his supporters.

Notwithstanding the heroic efforts of the likes of Emile Zola and others to show that this was a miscarriage of justice, the French legal authorities resisted every attempt to reverse their guilty verdict. In fact, it was only in 1906 that the real truth prevailed, and Dreyfus was exonerated. Of course, by that time, the damage had been done, and the virulent virus of Judeophobia was only temporarily subdued.

Even without the benefit of social media and the internet, the campaign against Jews spread like wildfire with mobs shouting “death to the Jews” and physical attacks breaking out.

It was this spectacle that convinced Theodore Herzl, an assimilated Austrian Jewish journalist, that there was no future for Jews in Europe anymore and that their only salvation lay in re-establishing Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land. He reasoned that only there could the Jewish People regain respect and be able to defend themselves against the plague of hate that permeated the continent of Europe.

Herzl also assumed that once Jews had regained independence in their ancestral homeland antisemitism would disappear and an era of tolerance towards Jews would blossom forth.

If he were alive today, he would surely rue this rash assumption.

Instead of disappearing and being discredited, anti-Jew hate has morphed into anti-Zionism, which in turn has mutated into delegitimisation of the Jewish State. Far from diminishing and waning, the age-old virus has resurfaced with a vengeance and virulence unseen since Dreyfus and the Shoah.

The similarities between what transpired in 1894 and what is unfolding in 2024 are eerily identifiable.

We can see the same legal and judicial kangaroo courts listening to the wildest accusations, which are presented as factual evidence of the guilt of the accused. In 1894 it was a Jew by the name of Dreyfus in the dock. Today it is the Jewish State of Israel in the same dock at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Back then, it was a corrupt, Jew-hating military establishment backed by a virulent anti-Jewish press and Church-sponsored political parties that guaranteed that the guilt of Dreyfus would be determined well before the Court had even begun to decide its verdict.

Today, we have the spectacle of a corrupt and failed state acting as a cheerleader for a genocidal terror group, accusing the Jewish victim of genocide because it has the audacity to fight back.

The ICJ is the United Nations’ highest legal authority. The automatic bias against Israel is guaranteed given that out of 193 members of the General Assembly only 84 are classified as free and democratic. This can be seen in the sheer overwhelming number of resolutions passed annually that condemn the Jewish State.

The fifteen judges of the ICJ are chosen by the UN, which should alert one to potential looming problems. The current judges are citizens of the following nations:

USA (chief judge)

Russia

Slovakia

France

Morocco

Somalia

China

Uganda

India

Jamaica

Lebanon

Japan

Germany

Australia

Brazil

While there is no doubt that these men and women are jurists of the highest integrity, one has to wonder what sort of considerations other than legal will come into play when they consider their rulings. Some of them represent countries where human rights are a fiction and Governments dictate what people must think. Others must surely be mindful that their country is held hostage by terror groups. At least two countries represented have already either attacked their neighbour or are threatening to do so.

Will those judges be prepared to “buck” their Government’s policies and potential consequences in dismissing South Africa’s absurd libel of genocide?

Legal experts maintain that it could take years for a final decision to be forthcoming; in the meantime, however, the Court will issue interim rulings which could very well tar Israel with enough mud so as to brand the country guilty on all counts in the eyes of the immoral majority at the UN.

If this scenario eventuates, it is guaranteed that the mindless mobs and their willing accomplices will be in full cry. Just as the Dreyfus trial unleashed a torrent of bile and murderous intent, this ICJ farce will, thanks to malevolent media and pernicious political double standards, whip up a similar tsunami.

Double standards are the hallmark of those for whom “the penny still hasn’t dropped.”

It certainly has not dropped as far as the Australian Foreign Minister is concerned. She has made a flying visit to Israel, Jordan, the “occupied Palestinian territories” (her description) and the UAE.

One does not need to be a genius to interpret the double-speak articulated during her odyssey in the region. Her frantic efforts at trying to attribute a moral equivalency between Hamas kidnapping Israeli civilians, engaging in rape, torture and decapitation and “illegal settlers” (her definition again) terrorising innocent Arabs will set the tone of her visit. The former pogroms carried out by a terrorist group with a genocidal agenda bears no relationship to a latter small handful of criminals taking the law into their own hands.

The Australian Prime Minister explained that “due to time constraints” the Foreign Minister shamefully would not visit the sites of the Hamas massacres. Instead, her photo opportunities with hostage families and then Arab families allegedly attacked by “settlers” no doubt is intended to “balance” the incidents. A bigger example of double standards would be hard to find. Needless to say, singing the same old discredited chorus about “settlements” being an impediment to peace is a mandatory part of her visit.

Part and parcel of the prevailing double standards include lecturing Israel on civilian deaths in Gaza while ignoring Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields and “graciously” allowing Israel to defend itself while admonishing it for attempting to demolish the terror infrastructures.

The “icing on the cake” is her pilgrimage to Ramallah, where in a meeting with the PA Prime Minister, she “requested” that Australian aid not be used for nefarious purposes. Did she actually demand that the PA/PLO/Fatah stop paying stipends to those who murder Israelis? The annual payment of US$350 million is about to increase because Abbas has determined that terrorists incarcerated in Israel as a result of the Hamas pogroms will be eligible to benefit.

In Jordan, where the authorities blame Israel for every sin under the sun, the Australian Foreign Minister happily agreed that something must be done to restrain the warmongering Israelis.

Australian taxpayers will be delighted to know that their Government will be throwing more of their money into the coffers of UNRWA, whose schools are breeding grounds for poisoning the minds of the next generation of young Muslims against Jews and Israel. Additional money is pledged for Gaza, where previous aid was used to construct terror tunnels. Even more taxpayers’ money is going to flow to the Red Cross, which has done absolutely nothing to safeguard the health and safety of the Israeli hostages.

The bottom line is that headlines will be generated, and the Foreign Minister will be able to return to Australia and prove to the anti-Israel progressives of her party that she has done her bit to further peace.

It is these sorts of delusional gestures that prove that Penny Wong has got it wrong again. In this display of Shakespearean drama, it could very well be described as a case of “Love’s Labor’s Lost.”

Meanwhile, we await the next act in the tempest being enacted on the stage at The Hague.

Michael Kuttner is a Jewish New Zealander who for many years was actively involved with various communal organisations connected to Judaism and Israel. He now lives in Israel and is J-Wire’s correspondent in the region.