Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Washington DC tomorrow to discuss the future of the Middle East and Israel's war to destroy Hamas. Will Netanyahu convince Donald Trump to stand fast on ending the terror threat in Gaza via military means? Or will he take a page out of Joe Biden's playbook?

 With Trump applying pressure to end the hostage crisis via the cease-fire agreement, the Israeli PM has to look for other options to undermine Hamas' control of Gaza. According to the Jerusalem Post, Bibi may sic a battalion of lawyers on them instead:

A new proposal to create a coordinated total lawfare campaign between the Israeli government, global diaspora civil society, and pro-Israel allies against Hamas was submitted to the Prime Minister's Office last week.

The plan by Anu Museum of the Jewish People and former Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi to systematically target Hamas worldwide through tort claims and other legal infrastructure to damage its funding capacity and public legitimacy is being considered by the relevant authorities, the PMO reportedly told Revivi. ...

Corresponding legislation, based off of the 1950 Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law, would allow the persecution [sic] of Hamas operatives and terrorist affiliates abroad.

Israel would appeal to elected officials, community leaders, and public figures asking that they push to outlaw the terrorist organization if their country has not already done so. Other legislation could ban fundraising, and public relations on behalf of Hamas. A spokesman said that there are many dual-citizen Hamas members that could be targeted in other countries.

I believe the JPost meant to write prosecution instead of persecution in that excerpt. One gets the gist anyway, of course. The idea would be to tie up Hamas resources in court defending against a nearly unlimited amount of charges and lawsuits, aimed at the terror network itself and its supporters at all levels. The resulting chaos would at least sap Hamas' effectiveness, or so the idea goes, as well as make Hamas a "pariah."

Ahem.

First off, Hamas is already a pariah. (Just ask Democrats who cozied up to them in 2024 here in the US.) Hamas has been listed as a terror network for decades by the US State Department. The problem for Israel is that most of the fundraising is done in the name of Gaza rather than Hamas, and most of the ruling cliques in the West insist that the two are not the same thing. There's a reason why the useful idiots in the West march with the PLO keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag rather than Hamas iconography. 

Second and more substantively, lawfare only really works when the target has to operate within the law. Joe Biden's lawfare against Donald Trump and the Department of Justice's jeremiads against pro-life activists and parents protesting at school board meetings are cases in point. Trump managed to overcome it because of his vast resources, but he was vulnerable to it because he needs to rely on the law, both in business and in politics. 

That simply doesn't work with terrorists. They operate outside the law, which is why we call them terrorists. You can sue them, and you can win, but good luck collecting. In fact, good luck in convincing them even to put resources on the lawfare battlefield. In the normal use of lawfare, the process becomes the punishment for the target, but in this case that will reverse to the Israelis. They may score some points on the edges and disincentivize some of the more mainstream terror-symp orgs, but Hamas will put their resources into lethal attacks on Israel and Jews everywhere rather than courtrooms. 

Even attempts to seize financial resources will likely prove difficult, although that's one area that Israel should pursue with zeal anyway. Hezbollah, for instance, had a dark-web system for moving their capital and income from Iran and their drug-cartel operations, and Hamas likely moves its money in similar ways. To the extent that lawsuits can interrupt that, it's a good investment, but one would assume that Hamas and other Iranian proxies will leave very little of those transfers exposed to that kind of enforcement. 

Israel has already begun to complain that Tehran is sending couriers with suitcases full of cash to Hezbollah leaders in order to restart their operations -- which is actually a good sign that Israel has "debanked" Hezbollah pretty effectively. They did that by bombing the banks into oblivion, though, not by dropping lawyers onto the ATMs. You can't use lawfare to stop suitcase drops, either.

Part of this plan apparently involves funding for a public-relations campaign, presumably aimed at the West:

An [sic] coordinated online campaign delegitimizing Hamas would also be pursued through the coordination of Israeli government, civil society, and Israel supporters. According to the plan the state would appeal to influencers to speak out against Hamas's crimes, cruelty, and the suffering it brings to the Middle East.

"It's more or less obvious but it hasn't been implemented," said Revive.

While there were many NGOs and agencies around the world that targeted Hamas in such a fashion, Revivi contented they did so in a largely uncoordinated manner and without the intelligence that the government is privy to.

Sixteen months after the October 7 massacres, and the Israelis are only now thinking about this? I find that difficult to believe, but this is an obvious first step. And this isn't lawfare, either, but the kind of strategic PR response that should have been started the day after the massacres. Instead, as the report notes, pro-Israel and counter-terror orgs had to do it all themselves, and some did a pretty good job, but ... come on, man. 

If this is what Israel is considering as Netanyahu makes his way to DC, it shows how poor this latest cease-fire agreement with Hamas actually is. The politics in Israel as well as the West forced Netanyahu into a bad deal that allows Hamas to escape yet again to start a new war when they sense an advantage, and everyone knows it. If lawfare is all the Israelis can use, we may as well mark down 2029 for the next Gaza war/hostaging if the White House changes hands again. Let's hope that Trump and Netanyahu can come up with a better option this week.