Like other international initiatives, which have good intentions but are actually being exploited, the International Criminal Court in The Hague said. This is a political framework that operates under legal cover. It was established after diplomatic discussions that ended in the Rome Convention (1998), and by then it was clear that Israel would become the main target of Arab states and anti-Israeli groups claiming the promotion of international humanitarian law.

Over the past two decades, these political players have led a continuing campaign to drag Israel into the Hague Tribunal, with a huge investment of tens of millions of dollars, euros and pounds. One of the industry's leading organizations is Human Rights Watch, run by Ken Roth, an anti-Israeli obsessive Amnesty International has been operating at the same time, albeit less effectively, in the past decade, joining a series of Palestinian NGOs linked to the PLO's leadership and the Palestinian Popular Liberation Terrorist Organization, alongside the well-known Israeli associations.

Funding from European governments is necessary for them. Four Palestinian organizations - al-Haq, al-Damir, PCHR and al-Mazan - received direct funding from Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark to document "war crimes" and to act in the Hague Tribunal. Other groups are funded by the UK, EU, Belgium, Germany and more. The claims of these organizations are automatically echoed in the UN Human Rights Council and in the global media. We saw this in 2002 when Israel was accused of "Jenin massacre," a Goldstone after-lead report, or a report on the Gaza fence. "This news and other reports are the disregard for Palestinian terrorism, the firing of missiles and the exploitation of children and women, and the prominence of" Israel's war crimes. "The Israeli government too slowly understood the threat. The defensive approach, led by IDF jurists and other bodies, was based on attempts to prove the home The international law that legal proceedings in Israel permits external intervention. But since the tribunal is a political body, this approach was unlikely.

On the other hand, an aggressive political and diplomatic strategy, based on a threat to the budget's small budget cut, can still succeed. The United States, which, like Israel, is not a signatory to the Rome Convention, has already condemned the move, but US pressure alone will not deter plaintiff.

Washington and Jerusalem need to expand the counter-attack along with other democracies that the Hague Court threatens their sovereignty. Support is expected from the UK - whose troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of a similar campaign, and the Australian prime minister has also announced opposition to attempts to investigate Israel. The question remains whether Europe will recover, despite its support for some of the leading organizations. If countries like the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark convey to the tribunal a message that its survival depends on stopping the anti-Israeli witch-hunt, and if they say anti-Semitic, they may be able to repair some of the damage.

Professor Gerald Steinberg is the president of the NGO Monitor Research Institute