The weaponization of international law by extremist anti-Israel agitators is nothing new, but it has reached a fever pitch since the invasion of southern Israel by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023.

Since then, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) have been transformed into the weapons of despotic regimes, eager to use them as a cudgel against Israel.

While the actions of regimes like South Africa are hardly unexpected (given Pretoria’s coziness with the Islamic Republic of Iran and Palestinian terrorist groups), the eagerness with which some commentators have embraced this disinformation campaign is truly notable.

Two recent commentaries in The Hill Times illustrate this tendency.

Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa professor of law, in his May 22 opinion column entitled: “What’s happening in Gaza could well be regarded as the graveyard of international law,” recognized the genocidal nature of Hamas’ invasion of Israel nearly 20 months ago, but then complained that if Israel’s operations in Gaza, “if carried out with proportionate actions against Hamas, are justified,” but that “starving a population can’t be regarded as disproportionate.”

Unfortunately, Mendes did not define what he would term “proportionate.” Should Israel have invaded Gaza, and engaged in a wanton massacre with rape, murder, beheadings, torture and kidnappings?

Under international law, proportionality does not mean a 1:1 ratio of deaths. As articulated by expert Natasha Hausdorff, “the proportionality principle applies according to what the army expects and anticipates in terms of a strike against an individual target.” And in this respect, Israel has conducted its war according to that metric, having employed efforts aimed at minimizing civilian casualties, and indeed has achieved among the lowest – if not the lowest – such proportion in modern armed conflict.

Yet even this is not proportionate according to some critics.

What such positions demand of Israel is not just inconsistent with international law, but are also illogical, and effectively call for Israel to, in Hausdorff’s words, “afford immunity to Hamas.”

As to Mendes’ claim that Israel is apparently “starving a population,” this is simply without merit. There has never been starvation in Gaza over the last 20 months, and even during the two-month period where external aid was suspended, there was enough food inside the territory to last its residents for months.

Days later, in a May 26 opinion column entitled: “As the world turns and burns, war is everywhere,” author Michael Harris, a regular detractor of Israel who has demonstrated a childlike trust in the International Criminal Court’s credibility and has spread false information regarding food aid in Gaza, lamented the continuing Hamas-Israel war.

Harris wrote that if only US President Donald Trump were to have “curtailed military aid to Israel…the war would be over the next day.” Apparently unaware that Hamas exists with the stated aim of destroying Israel, Harris’ supposedly thoughtful plan would leave Hamas in control of Gaza, the 58 hostages kidnapped from Israel would remain in Gaza, and the countdown to another Hamas massacre in Israel would begin anew.

Of course, the war could certainly end instantly if Hamas surrendered and released the hostages, but that solution is either too complex or too objectionable for Harris to entertain.

These two commentators offered no new evidence nor arguments, but simply rehashed the same claims made by scores of other columnists over the last year-and-a-half, which fail to stand up to critical scrutiny.