Last night I did a post on a March conference in New York that seems poised to bash Goldstone and the idea of international law. Chaired by Columbia Law School dean David Schizer, the conference on the "use of law as a weapon of war" to delegitimize democratic nations has been organized by the "Lawfare Project." But the Lawfare Project is mute about who it is. I said the group has a hidden agenda, Israel. (You call me conspiratorial. Alas, it’s true; I went into therapy for it and they couldn’t cure me.)
Well the assiduous Peter Belmont went to whois.net and determined that the website for the Lawfare Project was set up in January by Roslyn Singer of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a lead organization of the Israel lobby. You’d think they might tell you that when they stage a conference? No.
About Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
I think this link to ynet.co.il
is where it started.
Slapp suits and anti-Slapp legislation. Definitely a deep threat to the First Amendment free speech. Another way to keep the public dumb on issues they
need to know about.
link to en.wikipedia.org
i think it started before that potsherd. the use of lawfare was instrumental in developing the dahiya doctrine. they are accusing their enemies of practicing that in which they specialize. this excellent link Lawfare in Gaza: legislative attack‘ by Eyal Weizman describes how the process of warning civilians of an impending attack was by design an escape from consequences of war crimes.
there is lots in this link..
Thanks for this, annie. Great link. I am also disturbed by the “humanitarian” phone call, which Israel is using to justify massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, as if it is somehow homes, schools, shops and hospitals are legitimate targets as long as a prior warning is being given.
Weizman, an architect, has penned many insightful analyses of Israel’s Occupation.
i bookmarked it when i first read it (possibly on this site) because i suspected we were going to be reading more about lawfare in the near future, i just didn’t expect to hear it used by israel supporters claiming more israeli victimhood (silly me).
i went to hear Huwaida Arraf speak recently. i knew she taught Humanitarian Law at Al Quds University at one time and because of this i asked her if she was familiar w/this new ‘lawfare’ as it was employed against civilians in gaza but she had not heard of it.
this upcoming conference is a farce. i hope activists get the word out on this lawfare and who it’s true victims are.
So, Israel can threaten to sue, using UK libel laws, and writers (even in the US !) had best be careful.
Here’s a wonderful article about a guy making money telling people he can STOP federal (US) prosecutions. Sort of similar topic! Holding people up by threat of lawsuits (real or imagined).
link to richardsilverstein.com
The interesting thing about the Conference is it’s location (visible in the Whois query, 633 New York Avenue. This is the very same address as the World Zionist Organization – American Section (An Israeli foreign agent that spends around $10 million a year in the US).
The WZO in Jerusalem was revealed by Israeli prosecutor Thalia Sasson in 2005 as being at the very center of illegal Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank. Shimon Peres estimated that up to $50 billion was laundered into illegal settlement construction. In the United States, the WZO/Conference of Presidents run “education” initiatives include organizing rabbis to effectively campaign for war on Iran (as reported on Tikkun Olam).
It is a mystery why the Conference/WZO are running clandestine propaganda ops about law in the United States instead of facing warranted criminal charges over illegal settlements and the US funds laundered into them.
Press TV’s journalist Amina Taylor, searches for the truth behind the headlines of the most in the UK. This time it’ is the Jewish Lobby. Watch four videos including one showing UK Jewish MP, Gerald Kaufman, saying: “Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza”.
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Ironic, no, elements of the Israel lobby want to use the very harsh libel laws of the UK to harass legally critics of Israel?
But wasn’t it just last year that we heard such a hue and cry over poor little Rachel Ehrenfeld being sued for libel, by a Saudi citizen she claims is linked to the financial support of terrorist activities? And the US Senate debated a law which would bar UAS courts from enforcing the judgements of foreign courts in cases of libel and slander if those foreign judical systems did not afford the same level of protection as does the US judicial system?
You see, it’s not a double-standard on behalf of Israel: it’s an ever-changing multiple standard on behalf of Israel, and it changes, with alacrity, to meet the exegencies of whatever crisis du jour is troubling the giddy minds of Israel and it’s supporters in the USA.
from their website
what a farce. we all know who is misapplying human rights laws to justify killing civilians. phil you should send them an email and tell them you are on to them.
from the section called The elastic limits of law (same Eyal Weizman link)
they are trying to get out in front of the term lawfare to associate it w/israel’s victims. what scum.
this is the same thing jeff halper is writing about in Israel’s undermining of International Law .
In 1994, investigative journalist Ilana Dalan did an expose of the killing of Iman Dareesh Al-Ham, the young girl killed by a member(s) of the Gavati Brigade Reconnaisance Unit along the Philadelphi Route. A Captain A. R. was charged after on tape he “confirmed the kill” and then justified the killing by stating that anyone moving in this area needed to be killed, even a three year old. Per news reports,Ilana ran that tape as part of her story. Captain A. R. was found innocent by the military court of the Southern Command because his officers were judged to have altered their testimony against him. He and his family sued Ilana and the news organization for her reporting and won a judgement. In addition, the IDF investigators who did the original investigation and recommended the complaint against this soldier be brought have been reprimanded for sloppy work. link to haaretz.com
FYI:
Iman’s death occurred along the Philadelphi Route which is where Rachel Corrie was killed. Note that in Rachel’s case she was killed about 150 meters from the Philadelphi Road and in Iman’s case over 100 meters from the road. Under Oslo, the Israelis were given the “Road” which is just a narrow thing – about 10 meters in order to patrol the Gaza- Egypt border. The IDF kept bulldozing Palestinian homes and they converted the terminology, expanding the concept of the road into an “area.” They then called this Philadelphi Route (or pink line) their Military Installations Area. A very short distant from the original Philadelphi Route the city streets of Rafah began. (Remember Rafah was divided in two – the Egyptian side and the Gazan side and the Philadelphi Road ran right next to this international border that divided the city.) The Israelis bulldozed the homes, changed the terminology and justified their bulldozing in this area by saying that nothing of value was in this expanded Philadelphi Route transformed into the Miliatary Installations Area.
It gives me a headache thinking about all they accomplish. Too bad Iman and Rachel got in their way and delegitamized their activities.
link to haaretz.com
Rachel’s case comes before the Israeli courts beginning in several weeks.
cheryl, thanks for the link. did you perhaps mean 2004 instead of 1994?
Yes, 2004 was Iman’s murder/Ilana’s investigative piece. The appeal to the Supreme Court has just occurred. Thanks, Annie.
A bit off subject but this is an interesting direction for legal action from Palestine Think Tank.
“The Al Haq case consists of a claim for judicial review before the high court of England & Wales challenging the government of the UK over its failure to fulfil its obligations under international law with respect to Israel’s activities in the Occupied Palestinian territories.”
link to palestinethinktank.com
Suppose the UK is found by its courts to have failed obligations under international law;what then? Where would that leave Israel? It would be a whole different ball game if the UK (and others) were held responsible for upholding international law.
I wonder if Phil has ever been threatened with a lawsuit for the things he (and others) post here regarding Israel and its dual-loyalty supporters?
I might as well repeat myself here –
I see all of these mechanization’s talking about the “rule of law,” when in reality there is no rule of law, only the “law of rule.” That is because unless law is equally applicable to all, there is no “rule” in the sense of reign taking place. What you have is a group that thinks they are above law, because they have reached a supposed apex in society. The “rule of law” farce (in reality) is a strange thing, because it is merely the next phase to the divine right of Kings, when men believed that kings were bequeathed with no restraint because they represented some deity. The rule of law concept has not changed any of the players, it has merely masked them behind a supposed “objective” law, like a rule of nature – and anyone who knows the “workings of law” understands that this is ridiculous.
All that is occurring here is the chickens have come home to roost. They, the new cadre of elite, just assume it is their turn to twist everything to their design. So, once again, this goes much deeper than merely some rogue element in the ruling class.
Well, VR, in legal jurisprudential principle there is a difference between the rule of law and the divine right of kings, but reality is another story. The window of oppourtunity is framed by socio-economic elites around the world, whether they be
Saudi monarch tribe or the current US elite, which once upon a time were WASPS. There’s new kids on the block. The tune remains the same–even Truman knew it as it was unfolding.
spelling: opportunity
We hear the phrase all the time “Law and Order,” but what does it mean? I submit that it is deceptively reversed, it should not be called law and order, but instead “Order and Law.” So even the appearance of the phrase, how the words are positioned, is meant to deceive.
The word “order” in the phrase has classically been present as “order as opposed to chaos,” that is, keeping things under control. However, this is not the true meaning of the word “order” in the phrase, “order” = the way society is structured. The word “law” is meant to mean some neutral standard or set of rules applied to all. However, even a cursory perusal of the law (see the previous post on the rule of law) means a legal system set up to the benefit of the few, which hide behind the phrase the “rule of law” in order to work their will with impunity.
This brings us to the specifics of how society is structured, that is how the United States has in the past and presently functions. We not only have a paternalistic order, but a hierarchical order, one that is separated by a moneyed and propertied class which uses the so-called law to preserve this present order. It is an order which uses all of societies instruments, both forensic and implied, by education which deeply influences definitions, giving it a color of authenticity – legitimacy.
As I have said in many other postings, one of the most pervasive legal instruments used to maintain the “order” is the corporation, which has been given person-hood (by stealing the use of the 14th Amendment, through the “law”). In fact, I think that most would agree that corporations have risen above the status of mere person-hood – they are super-persons.
They have been given power, opportunity, and the sovereignty that should only be the province of organic persons. In fact, organic people are on their way out, corporations are the new “we the people.”
Corporations are merely the housing and protection unit of the elite propertied and moneyed class, which has become the predominant means of employing the people so that we are mired in a conflict of interest, how can we fight that which has been made our master? It is so twisted that we endow a good portion of destructive corporations with the success which will ensure our own demise.
We are forced to participate in this corporate monstrosity, that legally preserves the present order, and we suffer from a lack of resources, which are equally withheld by embedded financial institutions in the service of this same elite order.
The law is merely the whore which is at the beck and call of the established elite order. This is why the enforcers of the law, police action, in any confrontation between people and the corporation is ALWAYS used to suppress the people. The present order could not exist without the jackbooted thugs (it has been that way even before police forces), and the sell-out of the legal structure. Essentially police and other various agencies are here to preserve the present “order,” and the legal system serves the present order from top to bottom.
The present order, and the law which preserves it , cannot co-exist with democracy – they are mutually exclusive. It is failure to understand this that causes untold frustration and grief for the people. You cannot merely ADJUST the present order, because the moneyed and propertied elite will never step down – it will only INCREASE and spread all over the world, as is presently taking place. The global agenda that is occurring now is nothing but the extension of this same order reproducing itself all over the world.
It has to be overthrown, there is no other way – it cannot be negotiated away, it cannot be protested away, and it cannot be reformed away. So it is in the peoples interest to find new and more powerful ways to undo the present order.
This is again part of the extreme danger of a downwards slide in values, driven by the belief that since we are ‘good’, representative democracies and not autocracies, therefore what we do _must_ be good.
This happened to Athens in antiquity. It is happening now. Once we accept that ‘we’ can murder others outside our state who oppose our actions, how long is before any opposition should be killed?
You don’t need to kill them, just cast a MSM spell on them. US average citizens won’t even blink. Marginalize them. Gotta remember that that the USA MSM is owned by private citizens, as is the Federal Reserve. When you hold the keys to both the pronounced message (and suppression of speech dissent) and the central bank, what’s not to like? Let’s keep Joe the Plumber ignorant; it’s the American way, no matter what he in his confusion blurts out. His job is to fix our kitchen sink problem. Like
Rahm’s daddy’s vision of arab’s to wipe are floors.
Frank Herbert has a line in his book Dune that went something like “Control the coinage and the courts, and let the rabble have the rest.”
Wasn’t there a passage in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian Wars where an Athenian force invades some little island city-state where the residents’ protests were met with the words “Quote not the law; we come with swords!”. IIRC it was a colony of one of the major powers Athens was fighting, and even though the tiny colony was neutral, Athens preemptively attacked them (sound familiar?) to ensure that it never became a threat.
The Athenians, after their unconditional surrender terms had been rejected, attacked and put all the men to death and sold the women and children into slavery. The notion that democracies cannot commit atrocities or start wars is infantile, and only fools and liars say otherwise.
Melos
link to shsu.edu
spelling error: “our floors”
Dear Colin and Potherd, this is one of the precise horrible incidents that I was thinking of. The other was the invasion of Sicily, which was a disaster for the Athenians. Some members of the city administration tried to stop it by increasing the cost, but the public were too inflamed with ‘upholding democracy’ to stop.
Tell me what the difference is between this quote, and what is occurring today –
“What the unification of Italy did to places like Sicily,
Naples, and Sardinia was to arrest and distort, then
to isolate them in their lopsided social, economic,
and certainly political actualities. To Gramsci, then, the
south appears, he says memorably, like a vast social
disintegration: a large mass of destitute and oppressed
peasants are preyed on by a class of parasitic
intermediaries (priests, teachers, tax collectors) on
behalf of a small group of land owners. With unusal
insight Gramsci shows how the presence as well of
large publishing houses (Laterza, for example) and
massice cultural figures (the greatest of whom is
Benedetto Croce) exist alongside, and curiously
unconnected to, the crumbling, indeed worsening
economic situation of the peasantry.”
Dr, Edward W. Said, On Late Style, pg. 101
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