Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: International Matters

International Matters

Two items which have been lying around on my desk for a while.

First: what constitutes a sovereign state? How many countries are there in the world? The answer, it turns out, is not at all simple. More than 200, fewer than 300, depending on whom you ask (and when).

Second: Can international law morph into something less seemly? Read this description, about how the ICC is being manipulated by various Kenyan parties, and tell me if there's any discernible difference between this and standard politics, any faint resemblance between the process and, say, justice. Except the hi-falutin grandstanding, of course.

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: International Matters

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Never Use Violence Except When You Should

Never Use Violence Except When You Should

Mohamed elBaradei has been in the international public eye for many years, as the boss of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In that capacity he has always been a moderating voice, sometimes perhaps even too moderate for the successful securing of international interests.

Now he's seeking a new job, president of Egypt, and he's singing a new tune:

Former IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who is considering contending in Egypt's presidential elections next year, expressed his support for the "Palestinian resistance" while slamming Israel. In a report published Tuesday, the experienced diplomat said that Palestinian violence was the only path open to the Palestinian people, because "the Israeli occupation only understands the language of violence."

Nice.

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Never Use Violence Except When You Should

Arrest Me if You Dare

Arrest Me if You Dare

The London Times speculates that Tzippi Livni is mulling a trip to the UK to provoke her arrest on war crimes charges.

How long would she sit in the clinker - a day? 6 hours? Her popularity would go stratospheric (due disclosure: I voted for her), the UK leaders presiding over the war in Aghanistan in which civilians are tragically being killed would be shamed to change their silly rules, Netanyahu would be forced to praise her (hee hee), and she'd still be home before Shabbat.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

HRW Attacks Israel (Gasp)

HRW Attacks Israel (Gasp)

A commenter linked to Noah Pollak's post yesterday, wherein Human Rights Watch castigates Israel for being mean to the NIF. You should read Noah's post, which is short but entertaining; if you're in that sort of mood, you can also read the HRW press release.

"What we're seeing in Israel is a greater official intolerance of dissent," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "One of Israel's outstanding strengths has been its vibrant civil society and its flourishing public debate, so these developments are particularly worrying."

This is, how to put it, cattle secretion. Note how Whitson suddenly compliments us for having had such spirited public debate... now that it's slipping away. No indication that perhaps what's happening is precisely what she admits is positive about Israel: that we're engaging in a public debate. In Whitson's book, public debate means law professors and 20-something self described anarchists castigating Israeli policies and actions. Bus drivers, bank clerks or students kvetching about the law professors and anarchists: that's proof of Israel's disappearing democracy and freedom.

Why is it the business of HRW to have an opinion on the matter at all, I cannot tell you. Even more mystifying, they've gone to the effort of posting a Hebrew language version of their press release. Bets, anyone, on who did the translation for them?

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

The Return of Sovereignty

The Return of Sovereignty

As we slowly gain perspective (we don't have it yet), it may one day become clear that the 1990s were the apogee of the multilateral moment. The end of the Cold War gave the EU a tremendous boost. International institutions and internationalist concepts forged in a radically different post-war context in the late 1940s seemed poised to acquire Utopian goals such as the end of particularism, or the ascendancy of universal values such as human rights over such outdated concepts such as national sovereignty. In our own small corner of the world, those were the days when people such as myself earnestly explained to incredulous folks with lesser education that what with sovereignty on its way to the dustbin of history, we could afford to relinquish parts of it in order to achieve peace with our Palestinian neighbors. (Yossie Beilin and Shlomo Ben Ami, being prominent politicians and also interesting intellectuals, were the top two purveyors of this line of reasoning).

Part of the fury directed at George Bush had to do, I have no doubt, with how he seemed to be harking back to an earlier age, one that should have been on its way out were it not for his obstructionism. Some of the acrimony surrounding the definition of the enemy facing humanity after 9/11 had to do with the degree people were willing to admit that the emerging new world order was perhaps not realistic after all.

Last November, when I added the "multilateral sovereignty" tag to this blog, it was in response to the audacity of the Goldstone Report in admonishing Israel for minor issue with no bearing on its mandate, and the insistence of a law professor that yes, the Report is fortunately the face of the future.

Probably not. A major weakness of the entire philosophical edifice is that it's based on Europe - the rich but declining former center of the world - and assumes everyone else is interested in following. What if they aren't, all the rest? What if lots of people are actually enjoying their national sovereignty, and have no intention of whittling it away anytime soon? What if this camp is headed by the rising power: China?

In Brussels it is hard to overestimate the shock caused by the EU’s failure to achieve its goals at December’s climate-change summit in Copenhagen. In the EU hard problems are fixed like this: call a summit of leaders, set out public goals for action, declare a final deadline and then thrash out a compromise behind closed doors. Deals are done with a judicious blend of appeals to principle, arm-twisting and redistribution towards less wealthy nations. That model failed utterly in Copenhagen...
China was amazingly rude at Copenhagen, sending a deputy minister to shout at with Mr Obama, for instance. Such assertiveness punctures happy Euro-dreams of a multipolar world. It turns out that the only thing that alarms Europeans more than a swaggering American president is one who seems weak. And Copenhagen popped yet another bubble—the idea that leading by example can be used to coerce others. Europe’s strategy was to press others to match its own concessions on carbon emissions. But the EU barely existed at the talks.

Much that China does is regrettable; many of the particular values of the post-sovereignty brigade are appealing. That's life; that's human history. It's not about to change. Live with it.

(PS. If they'd ever get their act together, the real rising power could be India, which would be a more appealing proposition; and the US isn't going anywhere, and will likely stay at the top for this century, at least - so democracy and its fine attributes aren't on their way out. But that's a matter for another day).

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

US Administration: Politics, not Lawfare

US Administration: Politics, not Lawfare

The Obama administration, just like the Bush administration before it, isn't interested in allowing a damages case against the Palestinian Authority for the murder of an American citizen, Esh Kodesh Gilmore, in 2000. Of course, the government shouldn't be the one to decide that sort of thing, you'd think, but the reality is that it does, even in the United States.

There's also the ironic twist, not mentioned in the news item, that Gilmore was murdered by Palestinians while guarding the East Jerusalem office of Bituach Leumi, the Israeli equivalent of Social Security - i.e, the place that pays large sums of money to Palestinians in East Jerusalem who aren't even Israeli citizens, as has been mentioned here in the past. Makes you wonder who the Palestinian murderer thought he was attacking.

Personally, I support the administration's position. Gilmore's murder was part of a political struggle, not a bank robbery, and the trial is intended to impinge upon a political process. The American government - a political entity through and through, by definition - wishes to keep the lawfare part out of the politics part. So long as they do so consistently, they're right. It would be pleasant for once to see our enemies squirming on the lawfare defendant's bench, but it wouldn't make the world a better place. Lawfare is a bad thing, no matter which side is doing it.

Originally poste by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

The Primacy of Politics

The Primacy of Politics

I honestly appreciate the many thoughtful comments people have been writing here the past few days, including over the weekend where I disappeared from the blogosphere. Thanks for the interesting perspectives.

I see the time has come to write a few basic posts about long-term matters such as what my position is on the potential outcome of peace negotiations, Jerusalem, settlements and such matters, so that readers can understand if they agree with me or not at all. I take pride in the fact that not all of you will agree: this blog has a mildly eclectic readership

OK, I've noted the need.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

In the meantime, one fundamental position which seemingly wasn't clear enough in my post about human rights in Hebron. Although there's much about the matter I still need to study, for the time being my position is that politics are superior both to international law and to human rights. I expect some of you may cringe, and there are millions of folks out there who'll never read this blog who would respond with abysmal derision, but that's life. As JRR Tokien once wrote, I don't expect I'd much like what they write, either.

Human rights and international law are not the same thing, though people who unthinkingly bandy the terms around as magic charms to ward off reality don't always recognize this. That post I just mentioned wasn't very well written, I see, but its point was to say that since human rights are separate from matters of international law, you'd expect its champions to be able to recognize that the current desolateness that is central Hebron is better - from the narrow perspective of human rights - than its preceding alternatives in which lots of people were dying. Yet they can't recognize that, and one of the reasons they can't is that they aren't truly champions of human rights. They're bearing the mantle of human rights in vain, while actually talking politics.

The reason they engage in this charade isn't hard to understand. Human rights are noble (really!), and we'd all like them to exist, and be respected, on a higher plane than mundane and unseemly politics. Moreover, using the terminology of human rights in a political discussion is like playing poker with only the strongest cards: the other side can't win. If one side is noble and the other is mundane and the best it can offer is the cynicism of politics, clearly the noble side wins automatically. My point was to poke a hole in the intellectual pretension. B'tselem and their like are framing their view of human rights in Hebron (and everywhere else) in the terms of their political position, not in terms of some universal context as they ought in order to be intellectually consistent.

The other point I made, but mostly in order to set up the main argument, was that international law and human rights aren't the same, and at times can even contradict each other. It may be that international law frowns on Jews living in Hebron (which is a reason to have reservations about international law), but human rights can't have an opinion on the matter. A champion of international law may feel comfortable in saying there should be no Jews in Hebron; a champion of human rights must say the international law is irrelevant for the matter of the rights of the Jews who are there, irrespective of how they got there.

Having hopefully clarified that, let me add that in my humble opinion, politics trumps them all, human rights and international law. Yes, at first glance politics is messy, cynical, full of backhanded deals between tired and jaded negotiators with all matter of hidden agendas, while international law and human rights, both, profess to be clean systems of orderly thinking and finest principles. How nice, and what is there not to like.

Politics, like them or not, are the space where societies work out how they're going to get things done, and then change their mind when reality intervenes; they're also the space where different societies work out how to live with each other, or fight with each other, or fight and live. A society which is contained within one political unit will hopefully have a healthy balance of law, rights, needs, agenda and so on, and its political discussion may take place within the limits of its accepted consensus. Separate societies which don't share a basic set of assumptions, don't. Pretending they do won't change that. Suggesting they ought to is.... politics. It's legitimate, but as part of the political discussion, not as some divine set of aces which over-ride the political process.

Coming down from the heavenly spheres, this means that Israelis and their neighbors need to find accommodations that work. Human rights, international law, emotional drives, history, economics, clashing religions, global warming, hummus and tabuleh, American politics, European politics, South American politics, swine flu, military power, water tables, and zillions of other things are all relevant if they are. It all gets worked out - resolved, or unresolved - in the space where societies work these things out.

Politics.

PS. In democracies, at least, politics are where the will of the people expresses itself. Can't get any nobler than that, can you?

Jewish American-Israeli Issues

Lawfare vs. Diplomacy

There's a loophole in the British legal system that allows Palestinians in the UK to have local courts order the arrest of Israeli politicians for imaginary violations of international law according to their very peculiar interpretation of it. The most recent case was of Tzipi Livni. The problem for the law-warriors is that Israel, being a sovereign state, plays on the field of sovereign states, or diplomacy in normal parlance. Diplomacy is a fine art of many delicate balances, and it doesn't like rude interferences.

This is to explain why it seems the British government is now scrambling to find a solution. If they don't, no Israeli politicians, statesmen of diplomats will visit London anymore, and the British will be cut out of the diplomatic scene of the Mideast - an unpleasant thought for British diplomats...

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

A Court Rules About A Country - Or Not

A Court Rules About A Country - Or Not

Kossovo is a strange place. It's an independent country, or not, depending on whom you ask; and whomever you ask will give you a reason that has much to do with power politics of one sort or another, and little to do with international law. So now, when someone has decided to break the impasse by going to the International Court of Justice, the general feeling seems to be that the court won't rule clearly one way or the other - because the court itself is political, and its decisions are political, not legal. Assuming there's such a thing as a purely legal decision, which of course there isn't, never was and never can be. Just as no legal system ever operates beyond the cultural, moral or political context in which its legislation was enacted.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Legality of a War

Legality of a War

The Guardian is unhappy that a commission appointed by its own government to look into how the UK went to war in Iraq (the Chilcot inquiry) may not look carefully enough at the legal aspects.

There have been repeated calls from influential legal and judicial figures for an investigation into whether the invasion of Iraq was illegal, including the former senior law lord Lord Bingham, who last year reiterated that it was "a serious violation of international law".

International law, you see, is above the sovereign decisions of a democratically elected government.

"Some of the debates around the legality of the war are quite sophisticated – it is not all clear-cut," the senior legal figure said. "It's going to be very difficult to deal with someone like Blair without a panel experienced in cross-examination."

And the legal experts know better than the citizens and their elected representatives.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Multilateral Sovereignty

Multilateral Sovereignty

Ten days ago, after I posted my reflections on the Goldstone Report, I found myself deep in an interesting e-mail correspondence with a law professor from Tel Aviv University who is a vocal supporter of abolishing national sovereignty and replacing it with an international human rights brigade. I'm not certain he would have chosen those precise words, but he was quite clear about the underlying principles. Actually, it was even worse, because his definition of what goes under "human rights" is breathtakingly wide, far beyond anything ever conceived of back in the late 1940s, when this fad got seriously underway.

He also rebuked me for not agreeing with him, given how by training I'm an historian of Nazism; I, of all people, should be better informed, he said.

Well. Maybe that explains why I've changed career tracks, I suppose.

Anyway, while I've been aware of this subject for quite a while, this correspondence, along with my reading of the Goldstone Report which preceded it, has alerted me to the seriousness of the issue. There really are many millions of people out there who are eager to whittle away democracy, i.e the responsibility of the electorate to make decisions, so as to replace it with teams of unelected specialists who are confident in their ability to know better what needs to be done, and what is unacceptable. The professor even called my type of democracy, the outmoded type, "technical democracy", while the type he advocates he called "fundamental democracy" or some such term (democratia mahutit).

So I've inaugurated a new tag (see below), called multilateral sovereignty, which I'll use to mark posts about this. Perhaps some day I'll write a book about it, who knows. If you're not interested in this newish interest of mine, feel free to skip those posts, or if I'm really annoying you, you may cancel your subscription.

The Economist last week had a thoughtful column on the fiscal aspects of this subject and their hazards.

Israel's Supreme Court just this week gave a dramatic demonstration, too. Five years after the Knesset passed a law enabling the careful privatization of prisons, the justices threw out the law. Haaretz has the story here, and two columns about it, one in favor of the decision, one critical.

I'm not convinced one way or the other myself. I'm uncomfortable with the ability of five unelected judges to throw out a law. I think it's ridiulous it took them five years, years in which the private businessmen spent a very large sum to build a prison and hire and train its staff. The fact that American, British and French legislators have passed similar laws, which haven't been struck down, indicates to me that it's not obvious that privately-run prisons must obviously be transgressors against the human rights of prisoners. On the other hand, I like the ability of Israel to decide for itself, irrespective of what others decide: that's the very essence of sovereignty. As for the prison itself, it seems the prisoners in the privately-run prison might actually have been treated better than those in the state run one - highly ironic, that - but on the other hand, I can see the sense of contending that the state must preserve it's monopoly of the use of force.

It's complicated. All the more reason not to take it out of the hands of the elected legislators, no?

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations