Brodie - A message for Abbas regarding his plans for September 2011: be careful what you wish for

Tuvia Brodie
Guest Post
05 July '11


Wading today through the howls of protest against Shurat HaDin/The Israel Law Center, and the damage caused to the "Flotilla", and Melanie Phillips advocating Israel going to the offensive, including lawfare, this piece by Tuvia Brodie arrived in a most timely fashion. Not the only way to go, but with adequate preparation ... Yosef


Almost two months ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas published an op-ed essay in the New York Times entitled, ‘The Long Overdue Palestinian State’.

While many readers were justifiably outraged by two untruths-- that Muslims in Israel are denied access to their Holy places, and that Arab armies in 1948 attacked (“intervened”) only after Jews expelled Arabs at Israel’s birth in order “to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel”-- the overlooked news story here was the legal twist Abbas suggested in that essay-- to internationalize the Arab-Israel conflict “as a legal matter.”

Such a suggestion contains both good news and bad news. The bad news is, this announcement reminds an observer of the malodorous 2009 UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (known as the Goldstone Report, after head-of-Mission Richard Goldstone): the Goldstone Report could serve as the foundation for legal attacks against Israel.

The good news is, If Abbas looks at Goldstone, so can Israel.

Goldstone?

The backround: for decades, the Left has tried to label Israel as guilty of human rights violations, violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity; but they didn’t get much traction. The Goldstone Report changed that because it not only appeared to validate their general claims, it gave those claims specificity and legal punch.

Just weeks before the election, British Conservative Party leader sets out pro-Israeli platform, or does he?

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
12 March '10

In an exclusive interview with Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, David Cameron — leader of the Conservative Party and a man who could be prime minister in eight weeks time — has set out an agenda which suggests he would take a much more pro-Israeli line than the current government should he come to power.

Cameron described as “feeble” the government’s handling of the universal jurisdiction procedures which have been used against senior Israelis saying, “We will keep pressing the government to make this right - and if they don’t, we will.” Islamist groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir — which openly calls for an Islamic state in Britain — would be banned and Islamist leaders would be prevented from coming to the UK. Cameron also said that Britain under his leadership would have voted against the Goldstone Report. The current government voted in favour.

The notion that the Conservatives would put Britain on a more pro-Israeli track is probably reasonable, but the devil lies in the detail. Consider, for example, Cameron’s explanation of his position on the Goldstone Report:

“The detailed allegations of human rights abuses… are serious and they do need to be fully investigated,” the Jewish Chronicle quoted him as saying. The Conservatives would have voted against the report because it “didn’t mention Hamas’s role in starting the conflict”.

(Read full post)
.

Smoke and mirrors over 'lawfare'

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
04 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

The Israeli paper Ha’aretz , along with the Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, appear to have been taken in by Gordon Brown’s noisy but misleading announcement in today’s Daily Telegraph that he will change the law to prevent the abuse of ‘universal jurisdiction’ through threats to arrest visiting Israeli dignatories for ‘war crimes’, an abuse which has caused the cancellation of a number of high-profile visits by Israelis to the UK of which the latest was the planned visit by Livni. Brown wrote:

There is a case now, therefore, for the evidential basis on which arrest warrants can be allowed to be tougher and for restricting the right to prosecute the narrow range of crimes falling under universal jurisdiction to the Crown Prosecution Service alone.

Livni and Ha’aretz naively take this at face value to assume that the UK is to change the law. But this is not so. Brown has merely said he intends to change the law and will consult on the best way to do this. But with a general election to be held by June at the very latest, and with no legislation actually being tabled, there is clearly no time for any such change in the law to occur.

(Read full post)

Related: 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.

(Read full post)
.

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.”

(Read full report)

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.

(Read full article)
.