Israel needs to understand that victory must come both on front line and courtroom – editorial

Mar26

Israel needs to understand that victory must come both on front line and courtroom – editorial

JPOST EDITORIAL

A coalition of groups come together behind banners to march from Westminster to the US embassy holding signs and flags during the ‘Stop The War’ rally against the strikes on Iran in London, England, March 7, 2026 / (photo credit: Martin Pope/Getty Images)

From the opening hours of the war with Iran on February 28, the fighting spread far beyond launch sites, air defenses, and nuclear facilities. Reuters reported that the campaign began with joint US-Israeli strikes and quickly drew Iranian missile fire at Israeli population centers. On Saturday night alone, Iranian missiles hit Arad and Dimona, wounding scores of civilians, including children.

At the same time, a legal and political campaign was already taking shape around the war. NGO Monitor’s March 8 report cataloged statements from international NGOs and Israel-based advocacy groups that framed the conflict as unlawful aggression while, in its account, giving scant attention to Iran’s nuclear violations, its arming of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and its missile attacks on Israeli civilians.

The examples are not abstract. NGO Monitor quoted B’Tselem as warning on February 28 that Israel would use the Iran campaign to expand “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank and intensify its “genocidal assault” in Gaza. It cited Breaking the Silence urging the public not to let the bombing of Iran distract from Gaza and the West Bank. It cited Human Rights Watch statements accusing Israel and the US of unlawful attacks and possible war crimes.

Reuters then reported on March 16 that the chair of a UN fact-finding mission told the Human Rights Council that an Israeli strike on Evin prison amounted to a war crime, while Israel said the target was being used for intelligence operations against it.

Israel has also seen how wartime decisions are pushed into rapid legal review at home. Reuters and The Jerusalem Post reported in late February that 17 NGOs and the Association of International Development Agencies petitioned the High Court of Justice against new Israeli rules requiring organizations operating in Gaza and the West Bank to provide staff details. The court issued a temporary injunction while it considered the case.

Emergency workers gather in the early hours of March 22, 2026 at the site of an Iranian missile strike hours earlier in Arad, Israel. Dozens were wounded in the strike, which Israel’s air-defence system failed to intercept. (credit: Erik Marmor/Getty Images)

Lawfare is a strategic arena

Whatever one thinks of that petition, it showed how policy made during war can be rerouted almost immediately into judicial and diplomatic pressure.

The Post believes Israel should preserve dissent, judicial review, and a free civic sphere even during war.

Those are strengths of a democracy at war. They are also openings that hostile actors and aligned advocacy networks can use.

That is the point Israel has resisted stating plainly. Lawfare is a strategic arena. A report drafted in Tel Aviv, London, or New York can travel quickly into a UN chamber, an international legal filing, a sanctions campaign, or a media narrative that hardens before the battlefield picture is even clear.

Israel’s enemies do not operate under similar constraints. Hezbollah does not answer to Israel’s High Court. Hamas does not submit its targeting choices for judicial scrutiny. Iran does not revise doctrine because an NGO issues a press release. Israel does because it is a democracy.

A serious country can acknowledge that reality without trying to silence criticism. Every petition is not sabotage.

Every NGO report is not malicious. Israel benefits from scrutiny, and honest criticism has often improved public policy. Still, a state at war has every right to ask when oversight remains oversight and when it begins functioning, deliberately or otherwise, as part of an external pressure system that narrows its freedom to act.

The Iran war sharpened that distinction. The same period that produced fresh Iranian strikes on Israeli towns also produced international legal rhetoric that moved with remarkable speed toward charges of aggression and war crimes. That pattern deserves public and governmental attention. It deserves more than ritual praise for democracy followed by strategic passivity.

The Post supports stronger disclosure rules for foreign governmental funding, fuller transparency around advocacy networks operating during wartime, and a careful examination of whether some groups are serving as domestic watchdogs, international litigators, or both. Israel should approach that work with precision and restraint. It should refrain from using harsh methods and engaging in political scheming. It should also stop behaving as though legal and diplomatic warfare sit outside the conflict.

Israel needs a democracy that understands the war it is fighting. Military strength remains essential. So do legal and political self-defense. If a country achieves victory in the air but fails in the courtroom, the UN, and the court of public opinion, it will realize too late that these fronts are interconnected.

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