Love of the Land: Britain to announce no early remedy for universal jurisdiction procedures used against Israelis

Britain to announce no early remedy for universal jurisdiction procedures used against Israelis

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
04 March '10

According to a report from the Times of London this morning, the British government is “in no hurry” to change the legal procedures under which Israelis have been targeted for “war crimes” using universal jurisdiction laws.

Several Israeli officials including former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have in recent months cancelled visits to Britain after pro-Palestinian groups used the universal jurisdiction laws to get courts to issue arrest warrants against them. Universal jurisdiction means that warrants can be issued for alleged transgressions anywhere in the world and not just in the country over which the court would usually have jurisdiction.

According to the Times report, which was drawn from unnamed sources, the government will later today announce a consultation period on the subject, meaning that long delays to any remedy are highly likely:

“Today’s announcement…means that the issue will not be resolved until well after the election, expected in May… The delay is a victory for Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, who has argued that the legal point at stake is too important to rush.

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Love of the Land: Britain to announce no early remedy for universal jurisdiction procedures used against Israelis

Love of the Land: No, Goldstone Is Not a Threat to the Democracies

No, Goldstone Is Not a Threat to the Democracies

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
11 February '10

Peter Berkowitz, a commentator I admire greatly, has a piece at NRO that criticizes the “astonishing attempt to shift power from sovereign states to international institutions” being undertaken by the NGO/international-law community. It’s an excellent analysis, and Berkowitz has been doing important work on the subject, but I have one quibble:

It would be a mistake to think that Israel’s lawyerly self-defense is of purely legal interest. This battle reflects a continuation of war and politics by other means. Indeed, the battle is fraught with weighty implications for all liberal democracies struggling against transnational terrorists.

This point has been made by many people, including the Israeli government itself, and it is a form of the old adage that “first they came for Israel, and I did not speak out because I am not an Israeli.” But I don’t think it’s true in this case. If “lawfare,” as it’s known, were truly a danger to powerful democratic nations, there would be more done to push back against it. Instead, what we see today is democratic nations that pay lip service to its tenets, safe in the knowledge that, while carrying few downsides, endorsing the abstract concepts of international law wins approval from the self-appointed arbiters of international virtue.

This is a war that probably will never spread to the great powers or even to the medium powers. For lawfare to work, several conditions have to be met. The target of lawfare must be: 1) a small and diplomatically weak nation; 2) a democracy whose citizens desire international acceptance; 3) a country surrounded by enemies that force it to fight frequent and indecisive wars, providing a constant supply of fresh “evidence” of criminality.

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Love of the Land: No, Goldstone Is Not a Threat to the Democracies

Love of the Land: NGO Monitor Calls on New Israel Fund to Draw “Red Lines”

NGO Monitor Calls on New Israel Fund to Draw “Red Lines”

NGO Monitor
11 February '10

JERUSALEM – The research and watchdog group NGO Monitor today called on the New Israel Fund (NIF) to implement clear “red lines” regarding the activities and rhetoric of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that it funds. NIF has been widely criticized for supporting advocacy groups that contribute centrally to demonization through allegations of “war crimes” and intense lobbying on behalf of the Goldstone Report.

“Instead of using its relationship with NGOs to advance constructive agendas, NIF has been supporting and defending campaigns that demonize and delegitimize Israel,” charged Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “In many cases, it appears that NIF donors are unaware of the activities of these groups and their damaging impact. It is essential that powerful organizations like NIF establish clear guidelines and implement them in a unequivocal and transparent manner.”NGO Monitor proposes that NIF adopt “red lines” that prevent funding for organizations that support activities designed to promote the NGO “Durban strategy” to isolate Israel:

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Love of the Land: NGO Monitor Calls on New Israel Fund to Draw “Red Lines”

Love of the Land: Curbing the Manipulation of Universal Jurisdiction

Curbing the Manipulation of Universal Jurisdiction

Diane Morrison/Justus Reid Weiner
Global Law Forum
20 January '10

In the past decade Israeli officials have been bombarded by both criminal and civil lawsuits for their political activities in the Israeli government and/or their military activities in the Israel Defense Forces. Examples of this are the criminal complaints that were filed in Belgium in 2001 against former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and in the United Kingdom in August 2005 against Major General (res.) Doron Almog, as well as the arrest warrant that was issued in New Zealand in 2006 against former Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon. The most recent instance was the arrest warrant issued in the United Kingdom against Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s Gaza Operation when she was Israel’s foreign minister. Similar civil suits have also been launched in the U.S. against, for example, Avi Dichter, the former Director of the Israel Security Agency.

Israel’s supporters have pointed to these legal acrobatics as a clear abuse of the principle of universal jurisdiction, a new tool in the toolbox of Israel’s detractors and critics. Advocates of the Jewish state have coined the term “lawfare” to describe this situation. They define lawfare as “a strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives.”

While sounding far-fetched to the neutral observer and hysterical to those wary of claims of international anti-Semitism masked as anti-Israel sentiment, warnings of the possible abuse of the principle of universal jurisdiction pre-date these Israeli claims. For instance, in an article published in Foreign Affairs in 2001 entitled “The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction: Risking Judicial Tyranny,” former U.S. Secretary of State and Nobel Laureate Henry Kissinger commended advocates of universal jurisdiction for their commitment to bringing to justice human rights violators, but warned of “pushing the effort to extremes” and risking “substituting the tyranny of judges for that of governments.”

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Love of the Land: Curbing the Manipulation of Universal Jurisdiction

Love of the Land: Thoughts on Lawyer Behind Much Lawfare Against Israel

Thoughts on Lawyer Behind Much Lawfare Against Israel

Charlie Ettison
thoughts: a buck each
06 January '10

Daniel Machover, a lawyer from London and founder of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, has published a salvo against "die-hard supporters of Israeli policies" who he argues have co-opted the term "lawfare" on the Huffington Post blog. His comments have prompted some thoughts.

Mr. Machover begins by suggesting that applying the term lawfare is meant to discredit non-violent resistance as politically motivated efforts with no legal merit. What Mr. Machover ignores is that these claims, while indeed non-violent, are politically motivated on their face and they often have no legal merit, as evidenced by them being thrown out of court by judges in reputable, western jurisdictions. Consider, further to this argument, that Palestinian Lawyers for Human Rights has as it's goal the furthering of a political aim, that being achieving Palestinian self determination. Mr. Machover as well has represented the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights who have launched an extensive legal fishing expedition in the hopes of finding just a single case with which they can point to a legal decision branding an Israeli as a war criminal.

More compelling, however, is the fact that courts in the west have been considering and throwing out these lawfare style cases that Mr. Machover suggests are legitimate. Cases in Canada, the Netherlands and Spain, have all been thrown out because the courts determined that there were no legal grounds to pursue them. Mr. Machover, as a person who seems to speak with true conviction, and as a lawyer being paid by a client, naturally disagrees with these courts and may think that the law should be otherwise, but the courts of liberal democracies disagree with him. His response to these legal victories is to suggest that these cases were decided the way they were because "It is arguable that Israeli legal successes abroad have had nothing to do with the core merits of the cases concerned." Mr. Machover, however, does not make this argument.

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Love of the Land: Thoughts on Lawyer Behind Much Lawfare Against Israel

Love of the Land: Universal jurisdiction — a really bad idea

Universal jurisdiction — a really bad idea

FresnoZionism
24 December 09

Universal Jurisdiction sounds like such a great idea (well, to some people, anyway). One moral nation, acting for a moral world, can bring war criminals to justice, even when crimes are committed outside of its territory. You can understand why in principle this could be a good idea, especially if said war criminals are powerful enough in their own countries as to be untouchable. The concept has been supported by those watchdogs of international morality, the ‘human rights’ NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc.

Anybody that lives in the real world must know that the facts of international politics make the just application of this principle impossible. It would seem to me that anyone who has finished elementary school and read at least one history book would understand this, but apparently the people at the NGOs either don’t meet this standard or are dishonest. Judging by what they did with the war in Gaza, I vote for the latter.

The fatal defect of this idea is that it is based on analogy to criminal law inside a jurisdiction, where there is, at least in the best circumstances, a disinterested justice system and rules of evidence and of judgment intended to ensure fairness. For example, in our courts hearsay is not admitted as evidence, and juries are selected in ways designed to produce impartiality. Even rules for determining probable cause for an arrest are stringent. But this is exactly what isn’t the case in the international arena.

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Love of the Land: Universal jurisdiction — a really bad idea

Love of the Land: Until the very last Jew

Until the very last Jew

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut
03 Tevet 5770
20 December 09

"It is important to understand," I said to television interviewer Dan Margalit, "I am just the canary in the coal mine. More politicians will be receiving this letter." That television interview took place close to two years ago. I was reminded of it last week when Tzippy Livni had a close brush with arrest in England. I had the dubious distinction of being the first Israeli politician since Menachem Begin to be classified as a persona non grata by her majesty's government. The only other Israelis to receive this classification have been IDF officers whose war against Arab terror has turned them into war criminals in British eyes.

I had the privilege to be inducted into this exclusive club because of an article that I had written years ago. The article included a sentence that read "The Arab is not the son of the desert, but rather, its father." Interestingly, this sentence was penned by none other than the first British Commissioner of Sinai, Sir Claude Jarvis, in 1938 in his book, The Desert Yesterday and Today. In other words, my entry to Britain was forbidden because I quoted an important British official. No matter. What is clear is that the British, who allow terror chiefs to enter England and lecture as they please, have bowed before the Islamic offensive that has conquered their land - and they do not like people who remind them to whom they have surrendered.

As Divine Providence would have it, Israel's Foreign Minister at the time that I was barred from England was Tzippy Livni. Livni was no longer a member of the Likud and had completely abandoned the ideology of her patriotic parents, but it would still have been reasonable to expect that an official letter such as the one I, an Israeli citizen, received from the British government would draw some sort of response from the Foreign Ministry.

There is no dearth of professors and politicians in England who attack Israel as a matter of course. Livni could have announced to her majesty's government that if it would continue to interfere with the freedom of expression of Israel's citizens, Israel would also bar a long list of publicists and professors from entering its own gates. At the time I didn't ask Livni to fight my cause. But if she had done her job, she wouldn't have to fight her own cause today. Now Livni finds herself – perish the thought – in the same boat as Moshe Feiglin.

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Love of the Land: Until the very last Jew

Love of the Land: Asymmetric Warfare: Hamas and the Livni Warrant

Asymmetric Warfare: Hamas and the Livni Warrant

Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens
Standpoint Magazine
22 December 09

The Times reported yesterday that Hamas is "masterminding efforts to have senior Israeli leaders arrested for alleged war crimes when the visit European countries." The recent arrest warrant issued for Tzipi Livni by a British Court is certainly tied to this, and it is no surprise that the UK is the first port of call in this latest act of Hamas asymmetric warfare.

Although Hamas were not directly involved, it seems that they have acted as key facilitators, and claim to have provided lawyers with evidence of Israeli war crimes. This has been done through a Hamas initiative founded by Ismail Haniyeh called "the central committee for documentation and prosecuting Israeli war criminals," also known as Al-Tawthiq. According to its chairman, the commission's mission is to document and gather "evidence connected with Israel war crimes, tracking war criminals and prosecuting them in international, national and local courts."

Over the years, Hamas have been exceptionally successful at waging (and winning) an antisemitic propaganda war against Israel. So successful in fact, that in this country professing support for Hamas - a proscribed Islamist terrorist group - is now considered a mainstream position, which is held by some prominent politicians and high profile thinkers. Israeli officials have not yet come to terms with the effect that Hamas asymmetric warfare in Europe has on their ability to completely neutralise the terrorist threat they face at home. This Israeli underestimation of Hamas' capabilities outside of Gaza is no better illustrated than by the almost successful attempt to have one of their leading politicians put on trial for war crimes.

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Love of the Land: Asymmetric Warfare: Hamas and the Livni Warrant

Love of the Land: Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Gerald Steinberg
NGO Monitor
17 December 09

Trends in the Delegitimization of Israel in the International Arena, Global Forum on Antisemitism

Two days ago, a British judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, who served as Foreign Minister and is now the Israeli opposition leader, on charges of “war crimes”. Many Israelis responded by stating that “We are all Tzipi Livni” – in our democratic state with a citizens army, we share responsibility for defense. Israeli and British leaders correctly condemned such actions, speaking about the negative impact on the peace process and restating the importance bilateral relations.

These dimensions are significant, the main reason for rejecting such examples of lawfare is moral. This judicial theater exploits the principles, language and institutions, including courts, of international law in promote exactly the opposite -- denying the Jewish people the basic rights of self-defense and sovereign equality. This is grossly immoral.

The new antisemitism – directed at the Jewish collective rather than Jews as individuals –is most virulent precisely where the language of morality is used most frequently and stridently. When university professors and students promote this agenda through “Israeli apartheid week”, and refer to Israel as a “Nazi state” while seeking to dismantle the Jewish nation-state, this is immoral.

When “progressive” journalists and media publish cartoons with Israeli leaders, including Tzipi Livni, and that echo the images of der Sturmer, this is immoral. And when NGOs claiming to promote universal human rights and morality are silent as Gilad Shalit is held for more than three years in Gaza, but they join Libya and Iran in the Durban process and the United Nations Human Rights Council, to lead the campaigns using labels like “war crimes” and apartheid”, this is immoral.

Recently, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Helsinki Watch, now Human Rights Watch – an NGO superpower with a $42 million budget, wrote a very painful oped in the New York Times denouncing his own organization for its contribution in helping turn Israel into a pariah state.

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Love of the Land: Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Love of the Land: Judicial jihad: Engaging a new battlefront

Judicial jihad: Engaging a new battlefront

Shimon Samuels
Columns/JPost
14 December 09

On December 6, 2001, three months after the Durban hatefest, I attended the last meeting of its NGO Forum International Steering Committee in Geneva.

Though I had been successively elected and expelled, I now became privy to an eight-point plan attacking Israel as the last bastion of apartheid. It included educational, economic, cultural, diplomatic and legal campaigns to demonize, boycott, embargo and isolate the Jewish state.

Legal measures began with sporadic and - so far unsuccessful - attempts to arrest IDF reserve officers in countries of universal jurisprudence.

In 2005, I was charged with criminal defamation by a Franco-Palestinian charity, designated by the US as a terrorist organization. My sentence was one symbolic euro, which was politically too expensive. I won on appeal, and was taken to the French Supreme Court, where, this July, I was finally acquitted.

This long, agonizing and costly experience was emblematic of an epidemic of such suits designed to intimidate and silence pro-Jewish/Zionist activity. The charges against me were replicated against seven other targets - journalists, authors and a Christian Website. Parallel were the suits and countersuits relating to Muhammad al-Dura - the Palestinian child presented by French television as an IDF victim, in terms redolent of ritual murder.

Some denote such cases as "lawfare." Perhaps more appropriate would be "juridical jihad," due to the clearly Islamist context of the most litigious plaintiffs.

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Love of the Land: Judicial jihad: Engaging a new battlefront

Love of the Land: Lawfare Update: Al Haq Canada case dismissed with partial costs

Lawfare Update: Al Haq Canada case dismissed with partial costs

NGO Monitor
September 2009 Digest: Vol. 8, No. 1
29 October 09

(Another one for the good guys!)

On September 18, 2009, a Montreal court dismissed a lawfare case brought by the Bil’in Village Council, with the assistance of the Palestinian NGO “Al Haq” (funded by Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Sweden [via Diakonia], Ford Foundation, Christian Aid, Norway) and Israeli attorney Michael Sfard. The case was filed in June 2008 against three Canadian corporations involved in construction projects in the town of Kiryat Sefer (Modi’in Ilit). The village council and Al Haq claimed that these corporations were “aiding, abetting, assisting and conspiring with Israel, the Occupying Power in the West Bank, in carrying out an illegal act” and acting in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The Court found that the plaintiffs had “select[ed] a forum having little connection to the Action in order to inappropriately gain a juridical advantage,” and that there was no basis to plaintiffs’ claim that it was impossible to obtain a remedy in the Israeli court system. It further noted that plaintiffs had relied on judicial statutes that require the consent of the Canadian Attorney General – consent the plaintiffs never obtained. In addition to dismissing the case, the Canadian judge awarded the defendants partial costs (part of the defendant’s legal fees), underlining the particularly frivolous nature of the case.

This dismissal is the latest rejection of Al Haq’s strategy to exploit Western courts for political goals (“lawfare”). Its two suits (2006 and 2009) filed against British government officials to stop weapons sales to Israel were also rejected.

Love of the Land: Lawfare Update: Al Haq Canada case dismissed with partial costs