Yes, argues Robert Nicholson. The fact that the International Criminal Court is unlikely to succeed in prosecuting imagined Israeli crimes is irrelevant. The Palestinian lawfare campaign can achieve its ends even without achieving its desired verdicts. Nicholson writes:

Form is more important than substance in the lawfare strategy. It’s not necessary that litigants present strong arguments or even win cases. What’s important is that they appear outnumbered and heroic, adhere to lofty vocabulary, and use the court’s noble reputation to delegitimize their opponent in the eyes of the world. . . .

If everyone in the global audience appreciated the cynicism behind this strategy, lawfare would not be so worrisome. But well-meaning people are easily fooled by headlines of “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing” and don’t have the time or legal training to investigate the facts. Shaking their heads in disbelief, they walk away with just one thought: Israel is a flagrant human-rights abuser that needs to be punished—international law says so. And here lies the crux of the problem: lawfare uses a façade of morality to conceal and advance a subversive political agenda. Worst of all, good people can’t see past the façade.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.