The legal way the to get rid of Israel is through International Humanitarian Law. Humanitarian Law is not applicable when Israel is attacked, only when it defends itself.
The time-honored role of the exiled Jew was to be downtrodden, bearded and bookish. Then Zionist dreamers pulled a mini state out of the hat, and went on to win war after war. Even non-belligerents were bamboozled. The idea of military “Yids”, even without the victorious part, was a travesty. To put the clock back offended powers cloned a phony law to neuter the juggernaut. Afterwards, they hoped and trusted, mortal enemies would do what mortal enemies always did when Jews were downtrodden in exile.
To the cognoscenti the funny law is known as IHL – International Humanitarian Law. Calls to indict Israel for war crimes rely on it implicitly, as well they might. IHL is an anti-Semite’s dream. Applied with careful malice it holds the means to transform Israel from a light unto the nations into a Lucifer with killing power. I devote a full chapter in my book, Hadrian’s Echo to the liberties that Israel ‘critics’ take with IHL, and what a ready weapon it can be to make Jews pay for being strong. If the Chosen won’t succumb to physical onslaught, let them deal with morale-sapping verbal onslaught. Curse the life out of Israel!
The vindictive onslaught, under the half-hidden banner, Make war with law, breaks down into four elements that chill the heart.
The agenda: To bring the offensive nation to its knees by expelling it as a pariah from the world community.
The design: to hamstring the IDF, so making the work of terror groups that much easier.
The trap: To set the legal bar high enough (far higher than elsewhere on earth) to ensure that Israel fails to clear it.
The looked-for result: To blow the whistle, then to haul Israel and its leaders before the UN, the media, the court of public opinion and the International Criminal Court.
Together the elements amount to denying Israel the right to defend itself. For that purpose IHL is a God-send.
If the Chosen won’t succumb to physical onslaught, let them deal with morale-sapping verbal onslaught.
Without a class of effective ‘Jew-prosecutors’ the project would be dead in the water. The UN Human Rights Council appoints them from a shortlist of law professors. The type has long been among the worst of anti-Semites. Recall that the Einsatzgruppen, Nazi execution squads that roamed Russia to eradicate Jews, town by town, had law academics in the ranks. One commander, Otto Ohlendorf, had degrees from three universities and a doctorate in jurisprudence.
Today, law academics, at the UN’s bidding, make use of IHL to criminalize Jews. Some, like John Dugard and Richard Falk, are given the title, ‘Rapporteur’ with a brief to drum up crimes that turn Israeli leaders into a criminal class. Others, like Richard Goldstone and Mary McGowan Davis, head up commissions tasked by the Human Rights Council to find Israel guilty after every mini war with Gaza. For these hired ‘hitmen’ malleable, Jew-trapping IHL is the perfect weapon.
How deftly they employ it. While conceding to Israel the universal right to defend its people, the hitmen in legal attire lay down conditions that amount to the following: the IDF may not kill the enemy, injure the enemy, or damage property belonging to the enemy. It takes only one of the above to happen for the whistle to blow. Needless to say the demand to wage war safely so that that no one gets hurt and nothing gets damaged applies to Israel and only to Israel. That’s one red light.
“The aspiration of every legal system,” says Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz “is to be governed by the objective rule of law rather than the ad hoc decisions of biased human beings.” Dershowitz compares this foundation principle to the modus operandi of appointed, and self-appointed, IHL implementers, the latter being people who make a living (a good one) by keeping UN-hirelings supplied with Israeli offences. They work, Dershowitz observes, in reverse order. Back to front, they begin with Israeli actions rather than with neutral law that governs the acts of all other states. They then proceed to measure acts of the IDF “against unrealistic, anachronistic and abstract principles that could not be, and have never been, applied to (other militaries.)”
In this way a constant supply of crimes is guaranteed. One Israeli outfit, B’Tselem, actually boasts about its productive rate. “The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, AP, CNN, NBC, and many other news channels used our essential data. The UN report on the 2014 Gaza Conflict cited our figures and findings more than those of any other (NGO).” So wrote Oded Diner of B’Tselem, appealing to donors to open their wallets.
Abstract law was one red light. A second red light is that concern for Palestinian lives does not drive the demand on Israel to wage war safely. Assad the butcher of Syria starved to death hundreds of Palestinians, and the human rights apparatus was caught studying its toenails. Here were the same Palestinians that Israel is forbidden to harm, but that Syria may slaughter with impunity. No IHL policemen and prosecutors scrambled for IHL when Assad did his dirty deeds.
The word ‘disproportionate’ sets off another red light, ticks a third box. UN-hired hands rely heavily on that word, never stopping to explain how and why IDF acts are disproportionate. Some don’t even wait to gather evidence. Christine Chinkin, law professor at the London School of Economics, simply can’t suppress the impulse to demonize weapon-wielding Jews. “Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defense – it’s a war crime. Israel’s (disproportionate) actions amount to aggression, not self-defense.” When delivering her verdict Chinkin had yet to set foot in Gaza; had not weighed a shred of evidence for herself.
Professor Dugard, another hitman, is better at keeping up a professional front. “It is not possible to adopt an armchair attitude in assessing Israel’s response to suicide bombings and Palestinian violence. Israel is entitled to a wide margin of appreciation in its response. But, even allowing for this, it is suggested, on the basis of evidence provided, that Israel’s response to terror is disproportionate.”
That word again. Has it a dimension that can be measured? Probably not when even a law professor takes disproportionate to mean what he considers to be excessive force – force that offends him. But how much weight to give the feelings of an investigator whose brief it was to hear no evil, speak no evil, report no evil about crimes that Palestinians commit? Hired hitmen indict Israel without legal argument. Jews kill indiscriminately. Period.
The International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia long ago confessed: there are no hard and fast rules for disproportionate force, or for targeting civilians. War crimes have to be proven one by one, case by case. The Jew prosecutor not only fails to do that, he applies no objective yardstick whatever. One terrorist victim of Israel is a victim too many. An Israeli attack is simply an attack that MacGowan Davis and her ilk don’t like – or an attack by people they don’t like.
Concerning all of this, Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer posed the right question. Charles Krauthammer
“If no military tactic is permissible for Israel, what’s left? Ah, but that’s the point. What’s left? Nothing. The whole point is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million, refusing every invitation to national suicide.”
It’s right there, in the small print of the phony law: “No right to live.”
@ din rodef:
I agree. A little fear goes a long way. The French phrase – “Pour encourager les autres” – comes to mind…
Mr.Apfel is 100% correct! These international organizations are criminal operations themselves. Let them set up courts in Gaza and try terrorists one after another before Gazan juries. Any volunteers, your honors?
the ongoing treatment of the UN, UNHRC and ICC tactics as serious actions deserving of serious consideration with serious arguments of law and with serious whining about the unfairness of it all is now WAY past the time of taking their actions as sincere but misled. This is the nail in the coffin, there is no way that this “re-consideration” of mavi marmara is anything other than a corrupt manipulation of a corrupted system by corrupt individuals manipulating corrupt and willing collaborators.
All efforts to engage them is an adventure in wonderland.. any engagement should be made only as a deception to sabotage, destroy or liquidate the participants. One does not reason with, try to convince, seek fairness from hitler.
Unless one begins to view the europeans, the BDS churches, the UN, the obama admin as hitler then one is doomed to be deceived into suicide or murder. Only the most devious and merciless strategies can work at this late date. Any appeal to working with the antagonists as if they are sincere or even human beings is a mistake. Jews need to see these folks as the attempted murderers of their children and it is in this light that realistic perspectives and realistic solutions can emerge.
Continuing self deception, like the ludicrous foolishness of the Israeli left that if only BB had dealt in a more supplicant manner with the foreigners there would have been a deal with Iran, is folly. The same folks who manipulated the ICC into the latest events also manipulate all the other orgs and events behind the scenes. I see the hand of Obama, the EU and the BDS churches in the latest situation.
The question is what is BB doing about it other than whining? after all he seemd to have done nothing about the eu govs building arab housing in area c in contravention of israeli law, which I find both astounding and revealing. We have a number of foreign threats in the gov and diplomatic arena which appeared orchestrated. There was quite a bit of talk about after the iran talks the pressure would ratchet up, so what did BB do with all that advance notice, which actually goes back years?
OR, perhaps BB welcomes the pressure to allow him to capitulate while being a warrior of rhetoric thus maintaining leadership of the phantom right wing that he sent to siberia?
Those that engage in lawfare bear the same relation to those that wish to kill us as Goebbels bore to Eichmann. They deserve the same punishment. The government of Israel should pick a few of the most prominent and deal with them in the same manner that Gerald Bull was reportedly dealt with. I doubt if anyone is going to be willing to replace them.
Most of these Jew-haters are similar to the thugs that beat Jews up in Czarist Russia. They perceive a weak enemy whom it is fashionable to bully. If the consequences of their actions include forfeiting their lives, they may find other amusement.
Its not law and the Jew should not be bound it.
How is this any different from the Russian Czarist creation of The Pale, the Nazi Nuremberg Laws or the American Jim Crow laws that once prevailed in the American South?
It isn’t. Its oppression and injustice that proclaims itself as law. It has nothing in common with the law.
That’s exactly the point. Anti-Semites and Israel haters are subverting international law in order to destroy the Jewish State. Everything else is essentially commentary.
As the late Rudolf Hilberg once observed of anti-Semitic actions throughout the ages, it began with: “you have no right to live as Jews, then you have no right to live among us and finally to, you have no right to live.”
This is where we are today.