In William Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ the Jewish Shylock, portrayed to seem a villain, is defeated when the play’s heroine, Portia, disguises herself as a male lawyer and proves to the court that while he has the right to fulfill the terms of his contract to take a pound of flesh from the antisemitic Antonio, he does not have the right to do any action to fulfill those terms, meaning that he in reality does not have the right despite being told he does.
This is, in effect, what Israel has been told, not only for the last 14 months, but for much of its existence, that it has a right on paper but not in reality. Only, rather than being prevented from seeking a pound of flesh from someone who acted wrongly towards a Jewish man, Israel is told it cannot prevent the murder of its civilians, that it cannot stop those who seek pounds of flesh from its children.
This is ultimately the crux of the arguments of the International Criminal Court and its Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan in their arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: Yes, the October 7 massacre was an atrocity and Israel has the right to prevent a repeat of this massacre, but only in theory. In practice, that right does not exist.
By fighting at all, by exercising its right to live, Israel is guilty of war crimes. What is expected and legal for all other nations that have been invaded and whose citizens have been slaughtered in unacceptable and illegal for Israel.
Had it been Israel that arrested the three Uzbek men suspected of the brutal murder of Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Zvi Kogan and not the United Arab Emirates, there would be an international outcry in support of the killers, notwithstanding the fact that they could face the death penalty in the UAE and would not in Israel.
The facts do not matter according to Karim Khan, who explicitly asked the ICC not to consider the facts. The evidence does not matter to the ICC, which refuses to even say what evidence it based its decision on, ensuring that it does not give Israel the chance to defend itself against the accusations and not only against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
In the play, Shylock snapped after a lifetime of abuse from an antisemitic world, the final straw being when his daughter marries a Gentile and steals his most cherished possession, a keepsake from his late wife. For all the sympathy elicited by Shylock’s assertions that Jews have the same blood, flesh, and emotions as the rest of humanity, the problem is that he was born Jewish, and the solution is that he stop being Jewish. Only then can he truly join the human race, according to Shakespeare’s fictional world.
In the real world, there remain far too many who share this view that the Jews must cease to be Jews in order to be included in humanity, and especially that Israel must cease to be the Jewish State for its children to deserve the right to live. Unlike the world of Shakespeare, even conversion is not enough to satisfy the antisemitic attackers of Israel, only expulsion or death will satisfy them. They prefer a world in which Jews are executed for fighting back when someone tries to murder them, as recently happened in Iran where a young Jewish man was executed for killing a man who attacked and stabbed him, a world in which Jews have no rights whatsoever.
If only this was limited to the true antisemites. Alas, this copying of Portia’s strategy against Shylock has long been used even by Israel’s friends and allies against the Jewish State.
Time and time again, even those who claim to be Israel’s friends, like US President Joe Biden and especially Vice President Kamala Harris, say that they support Israel’s right to defend itself, but then try to prevent Israel from doing so, whether it be going into Rafah to root out the last Hamas stronghold or stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon with which to murder millions in one fell swoop. Unfortunately for Israel, for America, and for the world, the US has spent the last 11 months attempting to end the current war in a manner that would save Hamas, save Hezbollah, and guarantee more massacres.
This is hardly a new problem. Time and again, Israel is prevented from achieving victory against those who seek to destroy it by the US, whether it be during the 2006 war against Hezbollah during the friendly Bush Administration or the 2014 war against Hamas during the hostile Obama Administration. But it is worse this time because for the last year, the Biden Administration has been attempting to appease the most genocidal antisemites in America with its two-faced approach to Israel.
Why shouldn’t the ICC intervene to save Hamas and Hezbollah if America always intervenes to save those genocidal terrorist organizations anyway?
Give credit to the open antisemites like Francesca Albanese who do not bother with the charade and just argue outright that Israel has no right to self-defense to begin with or like Marc Lamont Hill who say that Israel doesn’t have the right to even shoot down the rockets Hamas fires at its homes and kindergartens. They are at least honest in their attempts to ensure that more Jewish children are butchered, unlike the ICC which tries to pretend it is not on the side of Hamas.
To satisfy its friends such as the US and the UK, Israel has to fulfill a fantasy straight out of a comic book. To have the right to self-defense, Israel has to be like Batman and never kill those who come to kill its children, a standard the nations who demand it of Israel know they are incapable of reaching themselves because it is impossible. Israel’s right to self-defense is conditional on it achieving the impossible.
To satisfy the antisemitic United Nations, even perfection is not enough, as that moral travesty of a Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, proved when he accused Israel of disproportionate force in an operation in 2023 in which not a single civilian was killed. Guterres is in the camp of Francesca Albanese in that the only thing Israelis are legally allowed to do is die.
The truth is that Israel is not Shylock, and should not be treated as such. Those attacking Israel are not merely spitting on Jews, calling them names and encouraging their children to leave the fold, like Antonio did They are seeking to butcher, to slaughter, to murder every Jew, down to the last child. To fight back is not a crime or a sin. It is not seeking a pound of flesh. It is the preservation of life. This is not the 16th Century or the 1930s. Jews have the right to live and can defend themselves if need be.
In their quest to treat Israel like Shylock, Israel’s critics and haters are in fact treating Israel like Antonio by telling Israel its only option, the only thing it is legally allowed to do under international law, is to commit suicide, to lie down and die, to be beheaded, burned in ovens, kidnapped, raped, and slaughtered in the millions. It is these haters of Israel who seek the real pounds of flesh and gallons of blood from innocent Jews.
Peace will come when that right to live and the right to defend Jewish lives is finally acknowledged, when the UN, the ICC, and the Arab and Muslim worlds stop pretending this is the time of Shakespeare, barely a century after the expulsion from Spain and hundreds of years before the concept of emancipation and giving Jews the rights of citizenship. There is no right to kill Jews with impunity as Antonio Guterres, Francesca Albanese, and Karim Khan are attempting to recreate.
Peace will come a lot sooner when Israel’s friends and allies stop treating it with condescension and stop saying “but” every time they acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself.
Peace will come when the world is a place where Jews have rights with no “buts” or lawfare to strip those rights in practice, when the right to live is sanctified over the right of Nazis to kill, when friends and enemies alike stop acting like the world is a stage where the Jews are the eternal villains.
Peace will come when the real Shylocks at the ICC and the UN stop seeking their tons of flesh and oceans of blood from the Jews who they condemn for refusing to be slaughtered again.