T. Belman. I find this article very problematic and ask, when did it every live? For the last hundred years Israel has been abused by the law’.
It’s not too late to make amends for this historical injustice. T. Belman (May 29/22)
The 100 year betrayal of Israel by the West T. Belman (Mar 2017)
In addition, the UN and the ICC both single out Israel for abuse.. Despots have always done what they want. The biggest despots of them all, the US, Russia and China constantly defy the law and besides have a veto to protect them from the UN.
Beyond that the author said a few things I totally disagree with and have marked in red.
In law school, I learned the quip, “INTERNATIONAL LAW” is not law and its not international.
What are the implications of a return to a world order in which despots do what they will and small nations suffer what they must?
By Clifford D. May, FDD 16.6.22
“Do you think that the time of international law has passed?” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked that of the UN Security Council last month. It’s a serious question.
Consider that both Russia, ruled by Vladimir Putin, and China, ruled by Xi Jinping, are permanent, veto-wielding members of the UNSC. The former is waging unprovoked war against Ukraine. The latter, according to the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, is committing genocide in Xinjiang.
These are, self-evidently, egregious violations of international law. But despots with nukes know they can commit crimes with virtual impunity.
Iran’s rulers comprehend this, which is why they are working so hard to acquire nuclear weapons capability.(Nonsense. They are doing so to make them immune from the law.) President Biden’s diplomats have been attempting to strike a deal – a shorter and weaker version of former President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that they claim will keep Tehran out of the nuclear weapons club. If you believe that, there’s a bridge over the Persian Gulf I can sell you at a discount.
The International Atomic Energy Agency found traces of uranium at three of Tehran’s undeclared nuclear sites. The IAEA asked for an explanation. It found the one Tehran provided utterly incredible.
That led to an American-sponsored resolution expressing “concerns” and calling on Tehran “to act on an urgent basis to fulfill its legal obligations.” The resolution was passed by a majority of the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors.
Were Iran’s rulers shamed? No, they were angered. To retaliate, they have shut down IAEA cameras at their nuclear facilities.
Concerns about the capabilities of Iran’s rulers are especially intense here in Israel. That’s because Israelis know how extreme those intentions are – more so than even those of Putin and Xi.
The former is using military force to compel his neighbors to think of themselves as Russians rather than Ukrainians. The latter is using “reeducation camps” to compel Uyghurs to think of themselves as Chinese Communists rather than Turkic Muslims.
But Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei doesn’t want Israelis to think of themselves as anything – he wants them dead.
Do you think I exaggerate? Israel is a “cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut,” Khamenei has said. And: “It is a ‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”
In April, an article on the front page of Kayhan, a newspaper that reflects Khamenei’s thinking, opined that Hitler was “smarter and more courageous” than current European leaders because he “expelled” the Jews from Germany.
And last week, Khamenei tweeted: “Zionism is an obvious plague for the world of Islam.”
I could go on, but you get the idea.
What are the United Nations and its international lawyers doing in response to these genocidal threats? Encouraging them, of course! (It has always been thus.)
Most recently, the UN Human Rights Council established what it calls a Commission of Inquiry. It’s empowered to investigate alleged Israeli “law of armed conflict” violations. The COI’s chair, Navi Pillay, has a long record of anti-Israel bias. She will act as prosecutor, judge and jury.
Israelis expect this “inquiry” to be reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition, only updated to target the world’s largest (surviving) Jewish community rather than individual Jews (or those suspected of secretly being Jews).
The COI presented its first report to the UNHRC on Monday. To no one’s surprise, it accused/found Israel guilty of “fueling an endless cycle of violence.”
To be fair, the report did urge “all parties” to respect international law, and it noted the “indiscriminate” firing of rockets at Israeli population centers. But it neglected to mention that the rockets are fired by Hamas, the Tehran-backed and U.S.-designated terrorist organization that rules Gaza. Hamas has stated repeatedly that its goal is Israel’s extermination, and that peacefully coexisting with the Jewish state is out of the question.
According to the United Nations, Gaza remains “occupied territory” even though every Israeli soldier, farmer, synagogue and cemetery was withdrawn in 2005.
Hamas’s subsequent takeover of Gaza in 2007 following a civil war against the Palestinian Authority, and the multiple wars that it’s launched since, have led most Israelis to conclude that relinquishing more land without a peace agreement in place may not be a great idea.
Future COI reports will attempt to build the false and libelous case that Israel is an “apartheid state” committing “crimes against humanity” and that the “root cause” of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is – can you guess? – Israel’s very existence.
It will follow that taking steps to terminate Israel’s existence is justifiable. That message will resonate – not least in Tehran.
Could that lead to a repeat of what happened in Europe in the 1940s (genocide) or in the Middle East over the years that followed (expulsion of Jews from Iraq, Egypt and other Muslim lands)? Were that to happen, would the COI shed salty tears? Or would it say the Israelis had it coming? Would it matter?
Here in Jerusalem, I had a long conversation about these issues with a prominent international lawyer.
“What we’re seeing in regard to Israel,” she told me, “is not really the application of international law. It’s ‘lawfare’ ” – the use of tendentious and politicized interpretations of international law as weapons of war.
Combined with the inability or unwillingness of the “international community” to hold the world’s most brutal tyrants accountable for their ongoing crimes, we may have the answer to Zelensky’s question.
If we are returning to a world order in which, to paraphrase the Athenians to the Melians, despots do what they will and small nations suffer what they must, the consequences are enormous. Western leaders – if they are leaders – will give this possibility serious consideration.
@Ted In paralegal school – in the 80’s, I can’t imagine this now – The instructor quipped that “Mexican economy” was an example of an oxymoron. He could have thrown in “International Law” as another.
Ted, consider yourself nominated to the US Supreme Court 🙂
It has existed on paper only. It has not existed in practice.. Like any law, international law must be applied equally and without bias. When double standards are applied to Israel, it is not law, When Israel is accused on violating International law, when no such law exists, it is not law.
Ted,
In a way, I agree with you, and in a way, I don’t. “International Law” has existed and not existed, both at the same time; because it is a concept that only has meaning when it is believed and acted upon. It is binding, when people in positions of power believe it is binding.
The biggest warfare happening today, is a battle for people’s faith; and a major weapon in that war is mass formation psychosis.
https://marypatriotnews.com/2022/06/17/mattias-desmet-mass-formation-hypnosis-and-the-rise-of-technocratic-totalitarianism-teaser-video/
I cannot comment on the strictly legal aspects of so-called “international law”, because I do not, like you, have a background in Law.
@ Michael
The title to this article implies that international law once lived, then died. The author makes no attempt to prove that it once lived. He assumes it. My comment made the case that it is only a pretense or a tool of oppression. Rather than it being used to protect Israel, it has always been used to persecute Israel.
Ted,
Seymour studied International Law under a professor; and I believe you are a lawyer yourself; so the two of you live in a world beyond my ken. I stopped reading May’s article after a quick scan. I can’t argue with any of you about the details, for obvious reasons.
From an amateur study of history, I note that until the end of the Thirty Years’ War (with the signing of the Westphaelian Treaties) in 1648, the Holy Roman Emperor claimed an authority over the principalities and duchies of the HRE, over matters such as religion.The treaties abruptly ended those pretenses, and also recognized the absolute independence of former HRE states such as Switzerland and the Netherlands.
This began the modern notion of fully independent, sovereign states. Since that time, international order among the European states has been maintained by various multilateral arrangements such as Congress Europe, The Eight-Nation Alliance, the League of Nations, the UN and its associated groups, NATO and other multilateral treaties and the EU, etc. Since George H. W. Bush’s declaration of a “New World Order” in 1991, there has been an accelerating push towards a new “Unholy Western Empire”, to revive and even surpass the old HRE.
Communist China, of course, is not a committed partner in this new “Empire” scheme. they have their own imperial tradition, in which China is the “Middle Kingdom”, and everyone else is a tributary. They are currently trying to vie with the West for a new Imperial Bloc (nominally based in Shanghai). I suspect countries like Turkey to switch from their alliance with the Western Empire to the “Middle Kingdom”, to invade Israel and to fail. Then I expect the West to take its turn.
@Seymour
Excellent comment. Thanks for backing me up.
My professor referred to international law as quasi law. Even that description is too kind. So called international law has metastasized from a modest legal backwater to politics by other means. Worst of all it is used selectively. The public is constantly misled to believe that actions taken by a state in their own interests are somehow “illegal” and accordingly the perpetrators should be jailed.
I tried to read this article but got instantly sick. The world has not changed, we are not returning to the bad old world, we never left and that is perfectly obvious to anyone whose eyes are not closed and live in a fantasy world. It is called the human condition. The utopians by attempting to create institutions that defy the human condition, the Davos bunch, the NATO bunch will, in the fullness of time which may very well be the shortness of time cause Armegeddon. We are being led by the stupidest people in history.