Love of the Land: Israel and the illusion of international justice

Israel and the illusion of international justice

Gerald Steinberg/Anne Herzberg
Haaretz
15 January '10
Posted before Shabbat

Speaking at a legal conference on January 4, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak suggested that Israel would benefit from participation in bodies such as the International Criminal Court in order to fight for "its positions and justice." In endorsing Barak's recommendation, a Haaretz editorial ("Join the Court," January 6) contended that such participation would "place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations." Similarly, the argument goes, Israel erred in refusing to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council's Goldstone Commission and the International Court of Justice proceedings on the security barrier.

While surely well-intentioned, in practice this line of thinking is pure folly. The dominance of nondemocratic and Islamic nations in international organs, and the increasing politicization of these bodies, virtually guarantees that no justice will be done when it comes to Israel or even NATO countries. In such morally corrupt frameworks, international law and human rights have become political weapons, disconnected from legitimate judicial processes and legal systems in democratic societies.

The ICJ's handling of the 2004 case regarding Israel's security barrier is a telling example. The suit was initiated by the UN General Assembly at the behest of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. European-funded advocacy groups such as B'Tselem, aided by NGO superpowers Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were central to this effort. Legal scholars sharply criticized the court for accepting a predetermined political mandate from the UN and for its breach of procedural protocols in deliberations on the matter.

The ICJ's resulting advisory opinion negated Israel's right of self-defense and displayed an utter lack of sympathy for terror victims. Its simplistic and troubling legal analysis clearly reflected the influence of the Arab League and politicized NGOs. Hardly an independent judicial inquiry, this distorted proceeding encouraged subversion of the rule of law, rather than its enforcement, by allowing for political manipulation of the judicial process.

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Gerald Steinberg is a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor; Anne Herzberg is NGO Monitor's legal advisor
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Love of the Land: Israel and the illusion of international justice

Love of the Land: The Goldstone Report - Using Terminology in Service of Deception

The Goldstone Report - Using Terminology in Service of Deception

Eli E. Hertz
Hudson New York
27 October 09

Justice Richard Goldstone and the United Nations Human Rights Council, sought to rewrite history by labeling Judea and Samaria (Known as the West Bank) "Occupied Palestinian Territories" [Paragraph 11], calling Israeli Arabs "Palestinian citizens of Israel" [Paragraph 111], referring to Israeli Arab villages as "Palestinian Israeli communities" [Paragraph 110] and calling Arab inhabitants of Gaza "Palestinian People in the Gaza strip" [Paragraph 1859]. Essentially Goldstone is endowing Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza with an aura of bogus peoplehood and statehood, as well as a false history as if title or ownership could be assigned out of thin air.

No legal binding authority has empowered Goldstone or any UN organ, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the Human Rights Council to decide that the territories of the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, and Gaza could be transformed into "Occupied Palestinian Territories" or "Palestine." Goldstone's use of these dishonest, loaded terms empowers terrorism and the Palestinians with the right to use all measures to expel Israel.

Palestine is a Geographical Area, Not a Nationality

Arabs, the UN and its organs, and lately the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as well, have repeatedly claimed that the Palestinians are a native people - so much so that almost everyone takes it for granted. The problem is that a stateless Palestinian People is a fabrication. The word Palestine is not even Arabic.

Palestine was never an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian People distinct from other Arabs appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule. During that rule, local Arabs were actually considered part of, and subject to, the authority of Greater Syria (Suriyya al-Kubra).

Historically, before the Arabs fabricated the concept of Palestinian peoplehood as an exclusively Arab phenomenon, no such group existed. This is substantiated in countless official British Mandate-vintage documents that speak of the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine - not Jews and Palestinians.

In fact, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (when the name "Israel" was chosen for the newly-established Jewish State), the term "Palestine" applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before the state's independence.

Some examples include:

· The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post until 1948.

· Bank Leumi L'Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the "Anglo-Palestine Company" until 1948.

· The Jewish Agency - an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 - was initially called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

· Today's Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was originally called the "Palestine Symphony Orchestra," composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.

· The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.

There Has Never Been a Sovereign Arab State in Palestine

The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arabs who never established a Palestinian state or advocated one prior to the Six-Day War in 1967.

Only twice in Jerusalem's history has it served as a national capital. The first time was as the capital of the two Jewish Commonwealths during the First and Second Temple periods, as described in the Bible, reinforced by archaeological evidence and numerous ancient documents. The second time is in modern times as the capital of the State of Israel. It has never served as an Arab capital for the simple reason that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state.

The rhetoric by Arab leaders on behalf of the Palestinians rings hollow. Arabs never established a Palestinian state when the UN in 1947 recommended to partition Palestine, and to establish "an Arab and a Jewish state" (not a Palestinian state, it should be noted). Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian state during the two decades prior to the Six-Day War when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control; nor did the Palestinian Arabs clamor for autonomy or independence during those years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule.

So much for facts and accuracy.

Love of the Land: The Goldstone Report - Using Terminology in Service of Deception

Love of the Land: A License to Kill

A License to Kill

Moshe Arens
Haaretz
06 October 09

While the Goldstone report is being eagerly read in Israel and in capitals around the world, it is also being intensively studied by terrorists bent on destroying the State of Israel - and they must be breathing a sigh of relief.

This is not only because the Hamas terrorists in Gaza are in effect getting off scot-free in the report - they, in any case, did not have to be concerned about being brought before the International Court of Justice.

They can also interpret the report as international approbation for carrying out military operations from civilian population centers - schools, hospitals, refugee camps, etc. - as they did in the years when they were launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages in the south of Israel, and as they continued to do during the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.

From the report it is clear to them that establishing military units and rocket launchers in civilian population centers will from now on be an effective military tactic that they can hope to apply with impunity, enjoying at least partial immunity from an Israeli response. That response is likely to be withheld out of concern that it will lead to Israel being charged with committing a war crime.

The report is in effect a license to kill - for Hamas, for Hezbollah, and for terrorists all over the world. No less.

"The bastards have changed the rules," Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's vice president, supposedly said when his wrong-doings caught up with him. He resigned on October 10, 1973. That was 36 years ago, during the Yom Kippur War, a conventional battlefield war, tanks against tanks and soldiers against soldiers, with no civilians in the vicinity. And also no war crime inquiries.

But since that Israeli victory, things have changed. Faced by the overpowering force of the Israel Defense Forces, terror attacks against civilians have become the weapon of choice for Israel's enemies. And here the Goldstone report is changing the rules of warfare so as to favor the terrorists. As long as they operate in civilian surroundings, they should have nothing to worry about.

Hezbollah pioneered this tactic in Southern Lebanon, and put it into practice very effectively during the Second Lebanon War. Hamas in Gaza, tutored by Hezbollah, followed suit. And the Goldstone report has now enshrined it with international legalese, which may very well serve as a precedent in future encounters with terrorists.

This will have far-reaching effects on the war against terror, wherever it is being waged, and it will empower the terrorists, whether Justice Richard Goldstone realizes it or not. It will be especially damaging for Israel, whose civilians are under almost constant threat from terrorists.

During Operation Defensive Shield the IDF showed that the commonly held wisdom that terrorism could not be defeated by military means was dead wrong.

Whereas Palestinian terrorism could not be deterred, it could be physically eliminated by military means. The terrorists could be pursued into their lairs and destroyed, or brought to justice. Since then, terrorism from Judea and Samaria against Israeli civilians has essentially ceased. Now, after the Goldstone report, that kind of operation is going to be difficult to repeat.

The report is a blow to the war on terror everywhere and for all nations engaged in fighting terrorism. Hopefully, the nations of the world will have the strength and political will to reject the report, and make it clear to all that terror operations carried out from civilian areas are the war crime, and not the attempt to eliminate these attacks. That using civilians as a shield is a war crime.

If that does not happen, we can expect that areas densely populated by civilians will become the base for terrorist activities in many parts of the world - with the expectation that "international law" will provide them with immunity from counterattacks.

Israel, knowing that its existence is at stake, will find a way to defend itself even under these changed circumstances. But the peace process is bound to be set back. This will not be the time to take big risks.

Thank you Justice Goldstone. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Love of the Land: A License to Kill