Ireland Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

 

“Show me the man, and I will show you the crime,” Soviet prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky was reputed to have said.

 

Vyshinsky would be proud of the state of international law in 2024.

 

Specifically, today he’d be pleased with the state of Ireland, whose government announced publicly what had become pretty obvious, though unstated: that Vyshinsky’s Stalinist principle of “justice” is guiding the international community’s campaign against Israel.

 

Deputy premier Micheal Martin said Ireland will file an intervention with the International Court of Justice in the ongoing show trial against Israel’s military actions in Gaza. (Member states are permitted to submit statements on sub-debates as a trial develops.)

 

What is the purpose of this particular filing? Martin: “By legally intervening in South Africa’s case, Ireland will be asking the ICJ to broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a State.”

 

Amazing. The Irish government is saying that Israel can’t justly be convicted on a genocide charge as the law stands, so the law should be changed in the middle of the trial in order to achieve a predetermined outcome.

 

This is surely among the more corrupt statements ever made regarding due process by a high-ranking elected official in a democracy. Vyshinsky worked for Stalin; Martin works for the prime minister of Ireland. Somehow they ended up in the same place. What a proud day for Western Europe.

 

In fairness to Martin, his terrible idea wasn’t his own. He is simply copying off the recent Amnesty International report on the war, which blew up in the organization’s face. Martin is a guy who sees someone step on a rake and thinks, that looks like fun.

 

As a refresher, the Amnesty report acknowledged that Israel isn’t guilty of genocide by the traditional understanding of international law, so the organization simply changed the definition of genocide. Problem solved!

 

Well, not really. Because in the process, Amnesty had torched whatever credibility it had left: Organization insiders leaked the report ahead of time to try to blunt its impact, its Israel chapter disavowed the report, and the whole thing immediately fell to earth with a thud.

 

But Amnesty isn’t a state; it’s just a pressure group. Its opinion carries influence but not legal weight. Ireland, on the other hand, is a member state of the international “court” currently trying this case. Its intervention is shameless and, if followed, would sink the concept of international law to the bottom of the ocean.

 

Is it worth all that, just to get the Jews?

 

There’s a larger question here, of course. And that is the question of what some states of the free world have allowed themselves to become, either out of their own anti-Zionism or their fear of the anti-Zionist masses, or a combination of the two.

 

Obsessions with Israel are self-defeating, whether or not one cares about the fact that they are also morally deficient. Oct. 7, 2023, seems to have ignited in people throughout the world the belief that Israel really was on the ropes and that this was their chance to contribute to its defeat. Sometimes that contribution was military: Iran activated every one of its proxies and fired at Israel from every front. Sometimes that contribution was diplomatic: Russia notched a win or two at the United Nations by taking Hamas’s side in the war. Sometimes that contribution was mostly symbolic: Britain’s Labour Party, once back in power, announced it was suspending dozens of arms export licenses to Israel.

 

But now all that seems to be slipping away. Iran had its clock thoroughly cleaned, Russia is floundering, and Western diplomatic antagonism toward Israel is looking downright silly. Rational thinking would suggest Ireland’s leadership accept the fact that Israel is going to survive this particular round. But in the throes of obsession, Dublin is going for broke at the ICJ by throwing its lot in with a discredited Amnesty International.

 

The only real value here is in Ireland’s transparency. What was left unsaid has now been said: The purpose of the public campaign against Israel is not to defend international law but to contravene it.