The Blogs: The Court of Public Opinion: Defending Israel

For 12 memorable days this summer, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) tried to murder everyone in Israel with ballistic missiles and drones. (FN1) For the first time in Israeli history, people all around the country began to receive an entirely new type of ominous phone alerts from the Israeli Home Command that an air-raid siren was imminent and would mark the beginning of approximately 20 minutes of being involuntarily subjected to ballistic death lottery, where the losing tickets would be delivered at Mach 5 by jihadi warheads.

Although the various layers of Israeli air defenses worked perfectly in most cases, horrifically, some Iranian munitions got through and fulfilled their murderous mission. Among the dead were three generations of a Ukrainian family visiting Israel for cancer treatment for their child. I felt their loss – literally – because I live approximately one kilometer away from where it happened, and the strike that killed them was the largest Iranian warhead that hit Israel during the most intense period of fighting. (FN2)

As a matter of fact, that strike occurred in the middle of the night between a series of other warnings, and the timing of them all caused me enough confusion to think I had a safe window of opportunity to let my dog outside to relieve himself. Standing on the street when two fresh warning sirens sounded on my phone, a rush of clarity hit me about the danger we were actually in, and I tried to grab the dog to rush back into the shelter. However, my body language and intonation were rife with stress and only spooked him more, and he recoiled from my reach and ran into the street. As I desperately moved to grab him and resolve the issue with authority, there was a flash of white light so intense that for a fraction of a second, I could see every pore on my arm in a level of clarity I never experienced before; everything was sheet white for just a flash, despite the night sky being at its depth of darkness. After the blink of that ballistic whiteout, the next instant brought a thunderous explosion that reverberated off all the buildings and made me think a missile hit the end of my street, even though it was really a full kilometer away. At that moment, I couldn’t have known the details of the brutal murders of the Ukrainian family and the others whose lives were instantly obliterated by IRI bloodlust, but the news spread across Bat Yam very quickly. As it did, all the neighbors in the shelter and our extended messaging groups shared a morbid sense of awareness and relief at having literally just dodged not a bullet, but a bomb.

For now, the Ayatollah’s ballistic rage has been beaten into an uneasy submission that still sees Israel subjected to “only” about one spastic reminder per week that Iran or its proxies can subject us to ten minutes of terror anytime they choose. However, as naturally as the ebb and flow of the Mediterranean tide itself, decades of this interminable saga have taught us to expect each round of kinetic warfare will be followed by a familiar coda to the killings, an all-out tsunami of political, public relations (PR), and legal fighting that’s often collectively referred to as “lawfare.”

Legal issues are often more complicated than amateur analysts acknowledge; for example, in criminal law there are usually multiple elements to a given charge or defense, and several possible levels of intent or mental states that can determine guilt or punishment. But the arguments of Palestine, et al v. Israel won’t be limited to actual courts. As the record of the last century thoroughly reflects, the conflict has reached multiple forums, including several iterations of European courts who assert international jurisdiction for certain parties and alleged offenses; the United Nations and its various councils; American courts – primarily but not exclusively federal, because there will be actions in state courts and specialized courts – with cases alleging either criminal or civil actions, or both; and of course, most commonly, the ethereal “Court of Public Opinion,” with those hearings taking place in assorted public squares, educational institutions, editorial pages and social media platforms all over the world.

The loudest and largest charge facing Israel right now is Genocide in Gaza. Of course, the term itself was first coined by a Jew about the Holocaust (Raphael Lemkin, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe” published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944).(FN3) Reviewing his work, we know that Lemkin intended the term “Genocide” to have a broad meaning, as he defined it as a colonial endeavor that consisted of the replacement of the national pattern of the victim with that of the perpetrator (examples include forced changes in local language and culture, imposition of legal and economic exploitation, forced labor, and actual colonialism through ethnic cleansing of a population from their land), followed by importing a different ethnic population to replace the first. He was talking mainly, but not exclusively, about what the Nazis did to the Jews of Europe. That was the level of criminality Lemkin was using as exemplar for the class; arguably the single largest organized crime of mass slaughter of the innocents in all of human history.

The international legal community quickly accepted the essence of Lemkin’s scholarship; just four years later, an official definition of “Genocide” was codified in The UN’s 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. During the more than 75 years since then, additional definitions have been proposed in various jurisdictions, but no less of an authority than the International Criminal Court uses the UN definition word-for-word (The Rome Statute is the applicable law in the ICC).(FN4)

More than just accused, in the court of public opinion Israel has already been resoundingly convicted. Numerous organizations, governments, and individuals with academic credentials have issued their verdict, leaving Israel isolated and vilified with vituperative vigor.(FN5) Israel has tried to defend itself at times, primarily through its one and only true spokesperson, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose rather glib response was less in the nature of serious political discourse and more in the vein of a meme.(FN6) Bibi gets a lot of blame for a lot of things, some more deserved than others, but it’s only being fair to him to acknowledge that he is a very busy man with a lot of things on his plate at any given moment. It’s not entirely his fault that Israel has thus far mounted such a meek response to such monstrous accusations; as most Israelis know quite well, there are several important reasons for Israel’s relative silence, including a combination of religious arrogance, limited English proficiency, a certain realistic pessimism about being vastly outnumbered in both the physical and digital worlds, the need to focus on other priorities, and governmental bureaucratic ineptitude.(FN7)

Tempting as it may be to write off public opinion entirely, since there is an enormous historical record of it being absurdly unfair and persecutorial towards Jews in general and Israel in particular, the current climate has gone far beyond virtue-signaling politicians and celebrities. The chorus of condemnation has grown to the point that now there are real-world consequences for Israelis to pay: Arrest warrants have been issued for Israeli leaders and some soldiers,(FN8) the imposition of sanctions in business and academia,(FN9) and physical violence in the form of individual and mob-style vigilante attacks that have become frighteningly common across Europe(FN10) and the United States.(FN11)

So are the accusers correct? Is Israel guilty of Genocide in Gaza?

Returning to actual legal analysis, to get to the heart of the matter as directly as possible, use the UN definition, which is as follows:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Any honest jurist can see why the charge immediately fails: Israel is defending itself from a terrorist group that was formed for the explicit purpose of committing genocide against Jews and destroying Israel. Hamas entrenched themselves in Gaza, turned it into the ultimate laboratory of urban warfare, used their territory to launch countless rockets indiscriminately into Israel with explicitly murderous intent, then invaded Israel where they slaughtered and abducted thousands of people (including many Muslims and non-Israelis who just happened to be in their path), and they continue to hold hostages (both bodies and the remaining few whom they haven’t murdered) and to attack Israel without surrender. Further, The “Islamic Resistance Movement” is not a “national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,” and Israel has no such intent towards the non-Hamas Gazans, nor towards Palestinians at large, nor towards Arabs or Muslims generally.

When Hamas supporters come back to reality and acknowledge that October 7th happened and is still happening, they dissemble down to “it didn’t start on October 7th,” which may have some merit, but doesn’t change the aggressor calculus at all: If the Hamas vs Israel war didn’t start on October 7th, then it started on the day Hamas was born, per their own Charter.(FN12) All of which is why the charge has now morphed into something along the lines that Israel is simply causing too much death and destruction in the eyes of its accusers. Again, the point of making this allegation in extrajudicial forums is to avoid having to deal with legal realities that Hamas specifically created the conditions of urban warfare using human shields; that Hamas continues to fight and hold hostages in every area being attacked; that Hamas has a greater legal duty to protect the citizens of Gaza than Israel does; and that Hamas cannot legally complain about damages since they are the aggressors in this war. Legally, the instigating party has, by their own actions, consented to a war of destruction and waived any rights to object. Celebrities, politicians, profiteers, and trolls don’t give a shit; only justice does.

All of which begs the question that if Israel’s innocence is so patently obvious, why are there so many voices in the chorus of condemnation?

Simple: propaganda works. The jihadi lawfare pattern that has existed for the entire duration of modern Israel’s existence is to take Jewish victimization, deny it entirely no matter how delusional that is (Mahmoud Abbas and his PhD in Holocaust Denial is just the perfect modern example), and when that fails, hyper-use the terminology to make it meaningless, while simultaneously trying to invert reality to re-appropriate Jewish victimhood for its attackers.

In terms of debate and public-relations rhetoric, it’s called DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.(FN13) Denial techniques include several strategies of “flooding the zone” and “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth,” straight out of the playbook of the disinformation masters of the 20th century, the Nazis and their PR chief Goebbels.(FN14) The jihadi list of DARVO delusions is long and ignominious:

The use of meaningless acronyms and cleansed language for terrorists and their acts of barbarity (see “Hamas” instead of the “Islamic Resistance Movement,” and “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” instead of any form of “attack” or “war”);
The attempt to cast Zionism as a persecutory movement, in stark opposition to the reality that it stands for the idea that the universally-recognized human right of indigenous nations to live in their native lands should apply to Jews as humans too;
The constant allegations of Jews being “occupiers” and “colonialists” in native Jewish lands, which requires accusers to disregard not only centuries of recorded Jewish history and scientific proof, but also the purportedly “holy” books and stories about no less than the two most famous human beings in all of human history (since the Bible is all about a native Jew from Nazareth and Bethlehem, and the Quran is replete with Mohammad’s discussion of the Israelites as well);
Disassociation to simply ignore without denial the indisputable facts that Israel is the sole and only country that speaks Hebrew and has Judaism as the official religion, while there are no less than 25 independent states and territories using Arabic as their official/native language(FN15), and 57 countries using Islam as an official or primary religion.(FN16)
And of course the big one at the moment, trying to repurpose Genocide away from the Holocaust and onto an attack against Israel as it fights a totally defensive war that has seen approximately 3% of Gazans killed while Israel uses layer upon layer of military techniques and legal review to minimize civilian casualties.

Given the absolutely indisputable math that Israel is NOT guilty of the absurd allegations, and also the simple fact that Israel can never win a popularity contest in a world full of bigots and liars, the next question crystallizes for Israel and its defenders: Can Israel win the legal and PR fights? And if so, how?

Fortunately, the Jewish nation is full of lawyers, and this is where we shine. Since I spent most of my legal career in criminal defense litigation in the USA before making Aliyah at age 37, and since I was a public defender in America’s busiest felony courts, I have litigated hundreds of major trials. The sheer volume and nature of public defender caseloads in Chicago means there is a very high chance that among everyone currently living in Israel, I am both the single most experienced winner and loser of trials in Western courts.

If losing is inevitable, here is what you do: make a record. Create a crystal-clear record of every single bit of evidence you have, and every single argument you have to make. There are many kangaroo courts in the world where righteousness does not matter. We may wish that judges are always impartial and fair, but reality has proven overwhelmingly that is not the case. The point of making a record is to preserve your case for future review by higher authorities who will be less biased than whatever despot you are stuck with at trial. It may take a century or more, but if that is the only path to justice, dedication requires patience.

If winning can be achieved, then do this: prosecute your case. Burdens and standards of proof are legal and academic niceties, but the reality is that if you want to persuade a judge or jury, you have to present a winning case. In the case of Palestine, et al v. Israel, so much has been spoken and written already that it is impossible to stand above the noise using speech or briefs; in the world of PR, what wins is pictures. Israel needs to take a page from popular news outlets and use graphics of Hamas locations throughout Gaza to illustrate the density of legitimate targets there. The website that comes to mind first is the UK’s Daily Mail, which is absolutely great at creating diagrams together with maps and pictures. Israel can and must be at least as good as they are at creating visual images that instantly convey what thousands of words cannot. The court of public opinion is real and powerful, and Israel can and must begin to win there too.

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Footnotes:

https://www.britannica.com/technology/ballistic-missile
https://www.timesofisrael.com/authorities-identify-body-found-in-bat-yam-rubble-as-mother-of-slain-ukrainian-girl/
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-if-we-wanted-to-commit-genocide-it-would-have-taken-exactly-one-afternoon/
If there’s one hobby Israel and its supporters love to engage in, it’s complaining that Israel’s public diplomacy (hasbara in Hebrew), is horrible. And they certainly won’t be encouraged by @DaphnaLiel’s latest report that amidst Hamas’ Gaza famine campaign, one of Israel’s… pic.twitter.com/1U6bj5IGcA
— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) August 25, 2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_arrest_warrants_for_Israeli_leaders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sanctions_involving_Israel
https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/antisemitism_and_antizionsm_in_europe_since_october_7/en/mashlat_Antisemitism%20&%20Anti-Zionism%20in%20Europe%20since%20october%207.pdf
https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2024
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-is-darvo#protection
https://csmeyns.github.io/propaganda-everyday/pdf/doob-1950-goebbels-principles-of-propaganda.pdf
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/arabic-speaking-countries
https://www.mfa.gov.tr/OIC.en.mfa#:~:text=Afghanistan%2C%20Albania%2C%20Azerbaijan%2C%20Bahrain,Kyrgyzstan%2C%20the%20Comoros%2C%20Kuwait%2C