Can a Political Spectacle Make a Horror More Real?

The elephant in the room will be impossible to ignore when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addresses Congress on Wednesday, turning attention to the bloody spectacle that both major parties have been taking pains not to mention: the ongoing death and destruction in Gaza.

That U.S. politicians from both major parties invited Mr. Netanyahu to Washington at all — let alone to lecture our lawmakers in the people’s house — is a disgrace. Mr. Netanyahu’s war on Gaza has already killed at least 39,000 Palestinians (many of them women and children), according to the health ministry in Gaza, displaced some 1.9 million people and spread what experts describe as a famine across the besieged enclave.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor has applied for a warrant to charge Mr. Netanyahu with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Court of Justice has taken up the question of whether the Israeli attack on Gaza constitutes a genocide — a classification the court deemed “plausible.” Israel has for months behaved as if a range of orders from the world’s highest court simply didn’t exist, including to prevent the destruction of human life in Gaza, rush humanitarian aid into the territory and preserve evidence needed by investigators to determine whether genocide is taking place.

History will cast Mr. Netanyahu’s visit in deservedly ugly tones. He’s not a guest we should aspire to host, but he is a visitor we deserve. Gaza is our war, too, thanks to the indispensable military aid and political cover the U.S. government has lavished on Israel as the death toll climbs.

The current war on Gaza began Oct. 7, after bands of Hamas gunmen broke from Gaza into southern Israel and carried out a devastating spree of killing and hostage-taking. Mr. Netanyahu vowed vengeance, and then delivered it beyond imagination. What exploded as a war of retribution against Hamas has looked increasingly like a broader campaign of annihilation — the slaughter of trapped civilians; the excruciating deaths of thousands of children; the destruction of hospitals, schools and much of the civilian infrastructure.

The American people have not been broadly supportive of Israel’s harsh tactics. Polls have shown for months that more Americans disapprove than approve of the onslaught in Gaza. Antiwar demonstrations roiled U.S. campuses; significant numbers of Democrats voiced dissent by voting “uncommitted” in the primary; a string of Biden administration officials have quit in protest of what some of them describe as an unsalvageable disregard for Palestinian life.