I’ve studied Alfred Dreyfus, he was a moral prophet — Benjamin Netanyahu, you are no Alfred Dreyfus
Comparing himself to a persecuted leader, Netanyahu displays an astounding chutzpah
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, departs after speaking during the United Nations General Assembly in Sept, 2024. Photo by Getty Images
Robert Zaretsky November 25, 2024
There are two kinds of chutzpah: One is an act of heroic audacity that spurs our admiration, the other is an instance of appalling arrogance that stirs our indignation. Both one and the other were evoked last week when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, charging both men with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
Let’s first take the toxic kind of chutzpah. The response in Israel to the news from the Hague was as predictable as it was lamentable, with leaders across the political spectrum denouncing the warrants and decrying the supposed antisemitism behind the court’s action. Not surprisingly, Netanyahu took the same tack in his response. Speaking on behalf of the nation, he declared that “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions and charges against it by the International Criminal Court, which is a biased and discriminatory political body.” Not only was the decision driven by the court’s antisemitism, he claimed, but this event was the “equivalent to the modern Dreyfus trial.”
No one can say whether Netanyahu will answer for these charges one day in a court of law, but historians can say with confidence that the prime minister’s conviction that he is another Captain Alfred Dreyfus is as historically and morally sound as Donald Trump’s declaration that he is another (but better) Abraham Lincoln. These same historians would also remind us that, 130 years ago, this French military officer, born into a Jewish family of Alsatian descent, was accused of handing military secrets to Germany. Found guilty of treason by a military tribunal, Dreyfus was packed off to Devil Island to spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement.
They would remind us that, while Dreyfus remained imprisoned on a malaria-ridden rock halfway across the globe, France became the stage for battles over not just whether Dreyfus was guilty, but also over whether France was the revolutionary nation founded on the ideals of justice and truth, as the Dreyfusards believed, or a reactionary nation rooted in notions of ethnic purity, as the anti-Dreyfusards insisted. By 1898, the anti-Dreyfusards were in the ascendant, while the Dreyfusards tended to despair.
They would remind us that, at that pivotal moment, a very different instance of chutzpah turned the tide. On Jab. 11, 1898, the republican newspaper L’Aurore published an open letter written by the novelist Émile Zola. Titled “J’Accuse” and addressed to the French government, Zola’s letter tore apart the tissue of lies, woven by the country’s military leaders, that had led to Dreyfus’ wrongful conviction of treason.
With the cadence and courage of a biblical prophet, Zola accuses — a verb he uses with the force of a gavel — a half-dozen high-ranking military officers of complicity in this crime. Aware that he would be charged with the crime of defaming the army, Zola announces that this hardly matters. All that does matter, instead, is that the “act I am doing here is just a revolutionary way to hasten the explosion of truth and justice…in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and which has the right to happiness.”
Finally, they would remind us that, most immediately, the open letter sparked the bloodlust of antisemitic mobs and vindictive generals, forcing Zola to flee across the Channel for safety. Yet the letter’s impact proved epochal. Not only did its revelations force a new trial and eventually result in Dreyfus’ liberation, but its rhetoric remains a source of inspiration for those who, as Zola declared, believe that “truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.”
For now, this claim smacks of chutzpah in Israel, a country where truth appears less on the march than under death watch. The government continues to forbid Israeli journalists to enter Gaza independently and mostly forbids foreign journalists to enter. Period. As for their Palestinian counterparts, the organization Reporters Sans Frontières states that of the more than 130 journalists killed since last October in Gaza, at least 32 were targeted while at work.
This is shocking, but not surprising; at times of war, after all, truth is always the first casualty. More shocking, though, is that this is not the only casualty. According to Palestinian health authorities in Gaza, more than 44,000 civilians have been killed over the past year. While Israel states that more than 17,000 Hamas militants are among the dead, Palestinian and international organization note that children and women account for much of the rest. At the same time, Israel continues to halt or hinder humanitarian missions delivering vital food and medicine shipments to Gaza, where famine stalks a population deprived of homes and hope.
Truths concerning events in Gaza are precisely what the ICC is determined to establish. The court issued its warrants only after concluding that the policy of complementarity — namely, when a country can depend upon its own judiciary to pursue such cases — does not apply in Israel. This is because the man who would be Dreyfus — a patriot who always insisted on a trial to prove his innocence — is, instead, the man who refuses to authorize a commission of inquiry into the horrors of Hamas’ attack in Israel last October and the train of horrors now multiplying in Gaza.
As for the man who was Dreyfus, none of this would be unusual. In his own account of his harrowing experience, Dreyfus noted, not without bitterness, that for certain men, little else matters apart from selfish interests. “Justice is a good thing,” he sighed, “when there is plenty of time and nobody is inconvenienced!” This is a time the ICC is determined to prevent.
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