As the anti-Goldstone, human rights-bashing Lawfare Project’s opening event on March 11 wrapped up, I asked its chairman, Columbia University Law School Dean David Schizer, for an interview. Schizer, who had just attacked the Goldstone Report from the podium, pointedly refused to speak to me and looked for the exit. As Schizer was leaving, he was politely confronted by Columbia Law School Professor Katherine Franke, who heads the school’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Law.
"Why didn’t you invite any speakers with an alternative perspective?" Franke asked Schizer.
His reply was curt. "We invited one or two but they couldn’t make it," Schizer claimed before hurrying away.
Schizer was understandably nervous about his exposure. After all, he had just presided over a day-long conference during which Israeli human rights workers were labeled as traitors while Judge Richard Goldstone and human rights groups were compared to "anti-Semitic street gangs." After several speakers had harshly condemned legal efforts against the construction of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Schizer appeared beside them to lend his credibility to their views.
Schizer attacks Goldstone
Held in the ornate NY County Lawyers Association meeting room in downtown Manhattan, where the walls were adorned with portraits of the pioneers of international jurisprudence, the Lawfare Project’s conference had the look of a non-partisan academic conference. However, the event was organized by a network of American Zionist groups and conservative operatives with apparent encouragement from the Israeli government.
As Scott Horton noticed at Harper’s, the Lawfare Project’s rollout event followed a remarkably similar conference in Jerusalem two weeks earlier. Both conferences followed legislation in the Knesset designed to force NGO’s to disclose their foreign donors so they can be more easily branded as a fifth column and to strangle human rights groups in Israel and occupied Palestine.
The presence of high-level Israeli officials like UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev at the Lawfare Project conference suggested that the Netanyahu administration was the hidden hand behind the event. If so, the Israeli government has deployed its American Jewish allies to take the fight across the Atlantic to groups like Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Both groups were attacked at the event as anti-Israeli and anti-American.
I arrived late in the day but just in time for a panel moderated by Pat Robertson’s longtime legal counsel, Jay Sekulow. Sekulow, a convert from Judaism to evangelical Christianity who has spent his career representing anti-gay and anti-abortion clients, appears to be playing a key role in the Lawfare Project.
Through his American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Sekulow reaps millions of dollars each year from Christian conservative donors. He uses that money to pay himself upwards of $600,000, provide a lavish lifestyle for his family, and procure the services of the PR firm, 5WPR, which represents other upstanding clients like Girls Gone Wild and the pro-settler Hebron Fund.
5WPR was handling the press list for the Lawfare Project and shuttling its speakers to and from media appearances. 5W Senior Account Executive Maggie Davis told me that through the firm’s relationship with Sekulow, she was arranging media appearances for Brooke Goldstein, founder of the Children’s Rights Institute, which happens to share a domain address with the Lawfare Project. Both websites were registered by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which played a direct role in planning the conference. Gladstone is now the lead spokesperson for the Lawfare Project, according to 5W’s Davis.
NGO Monitor legal advisor Anne Herzberg was featured prominently at the conference. During a panel discussion, she accused the European Union of "pouring hundreds of millions into these NGO’s…that are actually in favor of a one-state solution." Without naming those NGO’s or explaining why accepting foreign money was such a crime, Herzberg boasted of suing human rights groups to force them disclose their donors. She accused Israeli NGO’s like B’tselem of causing "a breach of sovereignty" against Israel by contributing data to the Goldstone Report — an insinuation that Israeli human rights workers were traitors.
An NGO Monitor report was distributed to conference attendees identifying groups supposedly promoting "post-colonial ideology" as "anti-state," "anti-democracy" and "anti-American." The report identified NGO Monitor’s top targets: the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and Al-Haq. Al-Haq was singled out because, along with a staffer from the Israeli group B’Tselem, it filed an expert opinion in the case to move a section of the separation wall annexing thousands of acres of farmland from the Palestinian town of Bil’in to a nearby Jewish settlement.
The attack on Al Haq highlights part of NGO’s Monitor’s not-so-hidden agenda: to allow the settler movement to usurp land in the West Bank without limitations. As Didi Remez reported, NGO Monitor has partnered with the Institute for Zionist Strategies, led by Yisrael Harel, who helped to found the Gush Emunim settler movement and lives in the religious nationalist settlement of Ofra. Remez also pointed out that NGO Monitor has made no demand for financial transparency from pro-settler organizations which are also engaged in what it would call "lawfare."
NGO Monitor has also targeted US-based human rights group. It has gone after Human Rights Watch on the basis of the group’s contribution of reporting to the Goldstone Report and because Goldstone was at one point a HRW board member. The Center for Constitutional Rights was singled out because its founder, Michael Ratner, went on the recent Gaza Freedom March with Code Pink. None of the factual documentation these groups released was challenged by the NGO Monitor report or in Herzberg’s presentation. Instead, the groups and their leadership are being targeted with a scattershot of accusations that recall McCarthyism in its crudest form.
As a consequence of his zeal, NGO Monitor director Gerald Steinberg was hauled into an Israeli court this month and forced to apologize for claiming a Palestinian human rights group "justified violence." Yossi Alpher, a former advisor to Ehud Barak, has condemned Steinberg’s activities, writing that NGO Monitor "seems dead set on eliminating human rights monitoring of Israel entirely and smearing anyone who supports this vital activity."
The NGO Monitor report and the speakers at the Lawfare Project event expressed alarm about the effectiveness of the global BDS movement and its success in exposing apartheid practices in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Speaker Richard Heidemann, the Honorary Chairman of B’nai Brith, said that the fight against BDS was essential to the Lawfare Project. "We have to stand up against slander, we have to stand up against boycott," he proclaimed. "If you were accused of apartheid, wouldn’t you consider taking action?" However, he proposed no specific measures or tactics other than making vehement statements.
Francois-Henri Briard, a conservative French attorney, voiced his outrage that the BDS movement had successfully pressured the French company Veolia to pull out of an Israeli light rail project that would have connected illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank to Jerusalem. He called the initiative against the rail line "an attack on Israeli sovereignty" even though it specifically targeted the settlement enterprise across the Green Line.
Jeremy Rabkin, an outspoken neoconservative law professor, echoed Herzberg’s smearing of human rights groups as treasonous. "These human rights groups we keep hearing about are not loyal to their country or to democracy, but to some strange world order," he declared.
Not to be outdone, David Matas, the senior legal counsel to B’nai Brith Canada, maintained that because the International Criminal Court represented the legacy of the Holocaust, it should always side with Israel. He went on to compare the Goldstone Report and efforts to invoke international law to prosecute Israeli officials to "anti-Semitism by gangs in the street."
Matas’s invective against international law was ironic in light of the fact that his most notable court case called upon international legal bodies to prosecute China for supposedly harvesting the organs of Falun Gong practitioners. In September 2009, Matas hailed a Spanish court (the concept of "forum shopping" in Spanish courts was attacked repeatedly during the conference) for indicting former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Chinese officials for what he called "genocide and torture."
Matas has defined genocide as merely stating "the intent to kill" a group of people. What’s more, he has justified prosecuting Zemin by invoking International Criminal Court statutes governing the prosecution of high government officials who did not directly commit crimes against humanity but may have allowed them to occur through specific administrative measures. Couldn’t these statutes also be applied against the Israeli government officials who oversaw the assault on Gaza?
Matas’s invocation of international law to prosecute Chinese officials while attacking it to protect Israeli officials highlighted the underlying cynicism of the Lawfare Project. Indeed, the project has nothing to do with combatting the abuse of international law per se; it is an ideologically-driven effort to intimidate anyone who stands in the way of Israel’s human rights abuses.
According to 5W’s Davis, the Lawfare Project’s opening event was a strategy session designed to "raise awareness." Though it is still unclear what actions the project will take, the demonization that human rights groups and other democratic elements in Israel have weathered foreshadows the attacks their American allies may soon face.
Great work, Max!
Terrific piece. I spent many years at Columbia as an undergrad and grad student, and am pretty shocked that a man like Schizer could rise so high in its administration. It doesn’t seem like Columbia, which at those levels is liberal establishment in tone. Someone who was neoconnish–and of course there would be several–would tend to be restrained and a bit wry about, as befits a someone knowing they represented a minority view.
Great report.
Trivia buffs will note that the program’s NYCLA host was Nicholas Rostow, nephew of Walt Rostow (Kennedy and then Johnson’s national security advisor, and a leading architect of the Vietnam War who championed aerial bombardment of North Vietnam) and son of Eugene Rostow, former dean of Yale Law who served in LBJ’s state department was a major force behind the the second iteration of the Committee on the Present Danger. Walt was named after Walt Whitman and Gene after Eugene Debs. A good pulpy history of this family needs to be written.
ps: I believe it’s Brooke Goldstein, not Brooke Gladstone.
McGeorge “Mac” Bundy was United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 through 1966, Walt Rostow
Correction: Rostow followed Bundy as National Security Advisor
excellent report max!
i highly recommend Lawfare in Gaza: legislative attack by Eyal Weizman circa 1 – 03 – 2009 . a vital read covering The technologies of destruction, The technologies of warning, and The elastic limits of law, all designed to circumvent international law.
Expect Witty to be leading the charge here.
I sorta doubt it. He’s been pretty picky about which thread he ruins. And as usual, he shot his wad in another thread, and declared that it was all about Palestinian revenge, about “sticking it to” the Israelis.
And Witty seems very intent, these days, in proving to us that he is not as bad as the worst of the Israelis. Say, what’s grey and carries a trunk? That’s irrelevant, like Witty’s argument.
See, now I would have thought this thread would have been too resonant for him to pass up. I mean, look at what Lawfare is saying — Witty was a shill for these faulty arguments long before any of us had heard “Lawfare.”
Maybe he’s had a burst of self-consciousness, realized how utterly naked he’d be on this thread, and is desperately trying to ignore it the same way he ignores any thread that documents Israeli crimes against humanity?
Thanks for the fabulous report, Max.
What would Americans think if Britain, France, or Germany sought to undermine US ivy-league law schools with jingoistic prejudicial judgments of human rights groups in their countries by asking American institutions to not only support their evil, but demonizing those, here, who dont go along with it?
I know what Great Britain thinks about this sort of activity. The calls for academic boycott there continue to gain steam.
Inevitably Israel will have to make the whole world its “enemy,” because its atrocities are so transparent, and to defend them is so repugnant. The US has decided to stand in the corner with Israel (officially), it blends nicely with our concept that we “answer to no one,” and inevitably leads to the delusion that “we own the world.” Which is just another way of saying that might makes right, and that we are lawless even though we call together a meeting named “Lawfare,” it is merely a a meeting of rogue elements proclaiming that they are law unto themselves. I am reminded of the interview that Norman Finkelstein had with Alan Dershowitz on Democracy Now about his book “The Case For Israel” (which has large portions plagiarizing Peters From Time Immemorial), these elements have merely become a fallacious collective Dershowitz.
RE: Conference on Lawfare (March 11, 2010) – This program has been approved in accordance with the requirements of the New York State Continuing Legal Education Board for a maximum of 6.5 Transitional and Non-Transitional MCLE credits: 1 Ethics and 5,5 Professional Practice.
MY COMMENT: It is difficult for me to believe that attorneys were given ‘continuing legal education’ (CLE) credits for attending this “seminar”. This makes a complete mockery of the mandatory continuing legal education requirement for attorneys. What’s next, a “seminar” on how to use law in furtherance of Scientology (starring Tom Cruise)?
Yes, Dickerson, as a member of the Illinois and NY bar, I am equally appalled. Why don’t we great circle of lawyers also register for Hagee class work in the Crystal Dome as a part of our mandated continuing education offerings?
Ethics????
(That’s all I want to say but the software rejected my comment as ‘too short.’)
Excellent article Max, just goes to show you what old fashioned muckraking can do. What is good about this is that we become aware at the outset of what these asses are trying to accomplish, not being surprised in the aftermath. The broad brush of fighting “terrorism” grows larger still, and Israel tries to hide beneath the its stroke hiding its murderous occupation (of course, the so-called “war on terror” is nothing but the persecution and oppression of the weak and poor, so Israel fits nicely).
I thought you might appreciate another website that you might call the second wing on your bird of human rights abuses, and appreciate the highlighting in your article of the attack on Al-Haq. The short name is the Arab HRA (I have used it before for those questioning Palestinian human rights abuses inside of Israel), it has many useful articles, in-depth reports about what goes on “inside” Israel –
THE ARAB ASSOCIATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: ASSOCIATION IN SERVICE OF THE PALESTINIAN ARAB MINORITY IN ISRAEL
VR, a vital organization inside israel fighting for arab rights is ADALAH based out og haifa. adahal is “The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel” and they are the ones handling all these cases pro bono against the ejections in EJ, the developements in amaji yaffa
including accountability for gaza and a whole slew of issues. i’ve donated to them in the past and they really need money. so DONATE. these people regularily end up representing palestinian interestes in front of the israeli supreme court (bil’in).
interests ! sorry, i was on the phone..multitasking unsuccessfully.
Yes they are also an excellent organization Annie, it is good to bring attention to their activity.
Columbia used to have a quota on Schizers.
The queen of hearts is dead, long live that queen. Truman, the American Zionist President, had something to say about that in his diary aprops his authorizing the new state of Israel (He crossed out “the Jewish state” but that was weak–even for the flattered Cyrus the Great II)–check out the Truman Archives online. Just look at how
the Zionists milked Truman’s sense of historical justice and personal friendship with his jewish business partner–gag me with a spoon. And how can Jews claim superior
guilt genes when we have Truman and prodigy legion that are all Christian guilt dwellers? Does Israel feel any guilt towards the Pals? LOL. Something obvious here, played out for many decades, waiting to be pointed out to the USA masses.
Has Israel learned anything from Germany? Yes, none of the good, all of the bad; it sees its task as being the new Germany post-Nuremberg–and the Germans? They
kiss Israel’s feet; Germany after all has learned nothing in principle from its own moral and ethical mistake. Germany funds an ethnocratic and murderous state, the
state of Israel.
Citizen, the expert and shamless Zionist personal minipulation techniques used on Albert Einstein are detailed in Ronald W. Clark’s biography of the great physicist (and then political niaf), Avon Books, ISBN: 0-380-01159-X. See the chapter “The Call of Zion”.
After Weizman got through to Einstein, the un-Bar Mitzvahed, un-religiously instructed, physicist was bemoaning the fate of Jewish mysticism if Israel didn’t prevail!
Great reporting. Thanks, Max. I was particularly struck by the irony of a bunch of Americans and a Frenchman sitting around and obsessing about “breaches of Israeli sovereignty” and “attacks on Israeli sovereignty”. That and the surreal lunatics-running- the-asylum thing.
It was v. frustrating that this conference had such little Q&A… I was dying to ask any of the panels what they thought about one recent instance of lawfare , one which was mysteriously not mentioned, even tho’ it has done grave damage to America’s legitimacy in the world… the manipulation of the Geneva Conventions by Yoo & Bybee to authorize torture! I mean, if that isn’t lawfare, then what is? Ditto for efforts by some neocon lawyers (like the redoubtable Ken Anderson) to fashion a legal rationale for our drone strikes.
‘Cause when it comes to “using or misusing international law to gain political or military advantage”–the definition of lawfare recited numerous times at the conference–then the US government is and has been the world leader in the field. A couple of the panelists had just enough intellectual honesty to admit this, and that the supposedly newfangled trick of lawfare is actually older than Sun Tzu. (This was then speedily denied by other panelists, like the ghastly Jeremy Rabkin, the giggly Glen Beck of international law.)
Also, please note one of the 6.5 CLEs offered at the confab was a hard-to-come-by “ethics” credit. Ethics! They were teaching us ethics!
Yes, the mandated continuing education classes for US attorneys are amazing–the ethics courses are the most ridiculous. Especially when they center on the I-P situation. Oh well, that’s what we are dealing with–here’s a tidbit on Coteret.com for the hasabara scribblers, the Dick Wittys of this woreld:
“When we discuss peace, we say that the two state solution is the only acceptable one, since that’s how you make peace – between states. If it’s a human or civil rights problem, on the other hand, there are other solutions – such as a confederation, or “one person, one vote.” Since this idea is totally unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis, by choosing the “peace process” the world is actually choosing the Israeli narrative over that of the Palestinians.”
Dick know this is so. He’s secure, protected in his gated community by goy cops, firemen, and the US military here and abroad. He won’t go live in Israel, but he
paints a romantic portrait of Israel for the US suckers. And, just check out his son.
They have about as much chance of stopping the forward movement of BDS and the continual coverage of human rights organizations, as a fly does attempting to stop and elephant. The convergence of the eye of humanity is upon these atrocities that are committed by Israel, they cannot stop the momentum.
THE VOICE OF REASON
I guess you aren’t aware of how reality has been excluded for Israel by the USA MSM and government for oh, say a half century. No sign of the blindness really curing itself–let’s see what Hillary says at the impending next annual AIPAC meeting, OK?
Oh I am aware of it Citizen, I am speaking in the ultimate sense. It is just time to stop whining about what they do and start to proclaim and act what we know is just and true. If you do not have that in the forefront you merely become a spectator, and you can read and complain about it till the day you die. There better be some overall vision for combating this and defeating it, and if it is not voiced there is a slight chance to zero chance of stopping this process.
And Cheney and his five by-passes (one for each draft deferral?) notwithstanding, the bastards will die off. So let’s not immortalise them, Citizen, until we have to.
Remember, the Zionists plans were only made possible by the brutal and disruptive 2nd WW and Holacaust. But not even that can brutalise people vacariously forever.
CORRECTION: I think that Max Blumenthal means Brooke Goldstein, not Brooke Gladstone (of NPR’s On the Media).
Schizer’s statement at 5:05 about Goldstone’s report is absolutely repellent.
Shizer, indeed.
Yes MRW, it is equally repugnant that he tries to frame his talk with “terrorism,” and what democracies will do to avert such – and than proceeds.
Shizer’s scheisse, huh.
Yes Chaos4700, and than he goes on repeatedly to talk about the “rule of law,” when the only subject under discussion is the law of rule.
For those who don’t know, the Children’s Rights Institute is a nice-sounding name for an organization dedicated to sweeping attacks on the entire Arab world based on cases of abuses of children’s rights in Arab countries. A survey of publications available on its web site reveals an exclusive focus on children’s issues in Arab countries — mostly occupied Palestine. No mention of issues like Israel’s repeated violations of the rights of children in the Occupied Territories or Lebanon. No mention of issues of child labor anywhere in the world. No mention of the treatment of children as adults in the US criminal justice system. . . . Just attacks on Arabs.
Yes hughsansom, I have often said Israel is committed to the rights of Palestinian women and children, and will attack them with the weapons of war to ensure those rights repeatedly, so that their liberation declaration will be written on their tombstones…
Forcing NGO’s and other political activists to simply disclose foreign donors seems only fair. Most countries do that. Many countries forbid foreign donations totally. Truth-in-packaging seems like a good idea all around.
Here is a British dust-up on foreign donations. And here’s a similar issue being argued in India.
Do you think that Americans have the right to know if a pressure-group is funded by China? How about Israelis right to know if a pressure-group is funded by Saudi Arabia?
Hiding funding sources permits manipulation by the super-wealthy and foreign governments.
Oh! I’m glad you believe that.
I assume, then, you’re perfectly happy with cracking wiiiide open, the funding disclosures for Zionist “charities” too?
I mean, because Israel is a foreign government too, right? We should crack that hornet’s nest wiiiide open, AreaMan. Oh yes indeed.
I should like to know the amount of money given to Israeli causes via tax free charities coming from the US.
You should be aware of what the bill NGO Monitor is pushing in the Israeli Knesset actually does. From Jeremiah Haber of the Magnes Zionist:
“That seems to be the thinking behind the Israeli government’s endorsement of legislation that will require human rights NGOs in Israel (e.g., B’Tselem, Machsomwatch, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, etc.) to publicize contributions from foreign governments, not only in an annual report (they all do that anyway), but every single time they host an event, have a meeting, publish a report, issue a news release, whether they have received outside funding for that particular occasion or not.
And what’s particularly odious about the proposed legislation is that if these groups receive such funding, they groups will lose their tax status as public institutions, but will be defined as “political entities” that have to register and report to the Registrar of Political Parties. ”
link to themagneszionist.blogspot.com
MMM, maybe the US should adopt the same rule, instead of going after Arab American NGOs and greasing Jewish American NGOs funding Israeli settlements (indirectly of course, but sammo sammo–the Arab American NGOs continually
indicted here in the USA for indirectly funding “terroists”).
1. It’s a great thing that “Lawfare” has come to American. “Why?”, you may ask. Well, at the very least, the conversation about Israel’s occupation and crimes is starting to make it into mainstream USA. It’s not as taboo as it used to be.
2. Girls Gone Wild and the pro-settler Hebron Fund.
Is there a difference between the two?
“Getting stoned” in the former is a drastically different activity than in the latter, for starters.
Not quite. While the girls are getting stoned, the settlers are the ones doing the stoning.
That’s what I mean. The former doesn’t require that full grown adults attack Palestinian children.
Just check out the main guy behind GGW. Imagine a Gentile doing the same thing with the Jewish American girl-next-door? LOL. Or in Israel? LOL. Actually, Brand Israel has tried to enlist these Israeli girls-next-door, e.g., in various US men’s magazines.
“…if a pressure-group is funded by China…if a pressure-group is funded by Saudi Arabia…”
What HUMAN RIGHTS group are you talking about AreaMan? We are talking about human rights groups with long neutral track records, not advocacy. I can understand how that is confusing for you, every post you have made so far here is definitively challenged, that is because you are an ideologue and a sycophant for Israel. Zionism makes individuals terminally stupid.
link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com
VR, is AreaMan’s an attempt at #2, or #4? I can’t tell.
AreaMan is not only definitively challenged Chaos4700, he is numerically challenged, I fear the hasbara formula is too complicated for him…lol
Interesting article, reads like a memo to Schizer.
Thoughts On America’s Jewish Ruling Class And Noblesse Oblige
By Steve Sailer
link to vdare.com
On the one hand America First I appreciate the candor and honesty that this article has in the fact that there is an elite which is produced systemically in this country, and yet on the other it is so full of pie in the sky nonsense of how “good” they were (and how great things were) that it makes me laugh. It places the current elite in such a position that there is something inherently wrong with them, as opposed to the make-believe cadre in the past. What one fails to realize is that the old fashioned polyarchy always throughout history has turned into the insatiable oligarchy without failure – this is why kingdoms rose and fell so swiftly.
I have said it before, and I will probably say it again – whether one looks at the kingdoms of yore, feudalism, or capitalism (because they have evolved in such a fashion) there is always a core – a wealthy moneyed elite. Each of them deserving to be unseated and never to rise again. None of them revered the people, they always used them as so much fodder (depending on how much they were needed), and they always donned a few as a shield or like fat around their midsection to insulate them from the greater masses that came to commiseration.
There are no questions of where they came from, and how they built their fiefdoms, at what cost to humanity. This is the chief chink in the armor of the nations throughout the ages, it is best for the people to throw out the old armor and stand on their own – not only here, but throughout the world. If my own father were part of this I would have not thought twice of seeing him undone for the sake of the people.
Two issues here, VR. One is hierarchy. That’s true of capitalism, communism, social democracy, etc. etc. The second is what the group at the top does with its power. Sailer’s point is not that things were so great then, only that they weren’t as bad as now. FDR was one of the most evil men in history, but even he could distinguish between US and British interests. That’s not true of Schizers re: Israel: they wield vast power in the US but are fully loyal to International Jewry. They also have utter contempt for the traditional culture of the US and its majority religion. The WASP’s had their faults, but they weren’t like that.
VR, let me give you a shorter America Fust-Cless:
The Jews ruined everything! And if we could get rid of the Jews, we could all go back to Country-Western music and oom-pah martial bands, and everything would be dandy.
And damn that FDR! “One of the most evil men in history”? Ho-Kay! Gosh America, maybe you could undo most of that damage by repealing Social Security, huh?
Hey, America First, you just pointed out what distinguishes the current much more hybrid US Establishment from the old WASP Establishment. This difference is exactly what Phil tries to get at on this web site so often. Phil, a Jewish American, actually has a sense of non-tribal Noblesse Oblige in the tradition of the best of the old WASP culture; in comparison, Richard Witty, his childhood companion, and regular commenter on this blog, does not. Maybe its just the difference in who Phil married, and who Richard married? That would make a difference, sort of like
as revealed on who the NYT has its reporters at the Israel post.
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Just as a note, I have noticed this tendency to say that everything is coming from “over there.” No, it is over there and it is “here.” I suppose the tendency to push it away to “over there” is because people do not want to face up to what was systemically (as always) produced over here. Can we dispense with this nonsense?
You mean like the song the doughboys use to sing when the US sent the Marines
to fight the Gemans in the woods?
Somewhat off topic, but I was shocked when Brooke Gladstone of NPR was mentioned by Max (in error now it seems) to be a spokesperson for Lawfare. I googled her and found this interesting interview she did with Ethan Bronner regarding the infamous Ahmadinejad “wiping Israel off the map” speech. Bronner is in fine “we may have the nukes, but Iran is looking sideways at us” form. link to onthemedia.org
Brooke seems like a run of the mill MSM reporter. She accepts what the NYTimes “authority” tells her.
Yeah, she’s the Brook Shields of US foreign policy in the Middle East?
Schizer’s speech implies but two conclusions. He is either moronic or evil.
I suspect the latter because the major fallacies in his argument are too obvious even for such a soft-brain as he to ignore.
There is nothing new about terrorism. The term itself was first coined in the eighteenth century and acts of terrorism are as old as warfare itself.
No-one saw fit to challenge International Law during the terrorism campaigns of the IRA, ANC, Zionists, Anarchists, Bader-Meinhof, etc. etc. The subject states saw no need to question the rule of law in these cases and in fact, the rule of law is a priori, without it there is no law.
He further contends that “terrorists” have only recently taken to “hiding among civilians”. Again this is nonsense. Resistance groups have always done this. His arguments would overturn Nuremberg and many of the decisions handed down at the Hague.
This leaves his contention that Israel has been in breach of International Law so often that the law must be at fault. I won’t even bother to go there except to suggest that certain Churchmen might like to take the same view of the laws against pederasty.
Seekers of Justice in the Middle East fight for many reasons. My primary motivation is the damage that is being done to civil society by the likes of Schizer and my abhorrence of the dangerous and dreadful World that is the only possible outcome should they prevail.
This is the major matter. As a non-American I can assure you that much of the civilized World is gazing in disbelief at the espousal of such overtly totalitarian philosophies being entertained within American academic discourse.
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law.
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the last law was down–and the Devil turned round on you–where would you hide?
Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
Robert Bolt : A Man for All Seasons
“The subject states saw no need to question the rule of law in these cases and in fact, the rule of law is a priori, without it there is no law.”
There is no rule of law, the idea of a rule of law is merely the divine right of kings in cloak. The concept of the rule of law was supposed to communicate that no one is above the law, which is patently false. You have the same (types, men) behind the rule of law that upheld the divine right of kings. However, since there is no rule of law than it is a two way street, there is no law higher than that of the will of the people, when pressed it will prevail above the few.
I hope you will pardon the brevity of my response Mr. Brewer, but if we cannot think beyond the prattling of elite ideas we are subservient forever to a never ending chain of impositions meant to make us ineffective and useless. The reason why the word “rule” is used in the rule of law, is that it is supposed to be in contradistinction to the “rule” of men. However, since the same few men (in kind) prevail and hide themselves behind the phrase, the “rule of law,” law is supposed to be raised to the level of a rule of lets say nature – unbending, etc. However, since we see not only different rulings on the same principle of a given law, we know that it is malleable as the case may impose. In the “application” of the law if there is no rule, than there is no rule of law, and so on.
It is like the phrase “law and order,” it is deceptively reversed. It should rather be “order and law.” Not order in the sense of other than chaos, but order in the sense of the prevailing place that all are brought to in the hierarchical order imposed upon us. The law is meant to preserve this order, of everyone and thing in its place so that the few may rule and prosper. A case in example would be, when there is unrest in the workplace and the workers go on strike, if unrest begins to increase, who does the jack booted ones come to protect? Do they protect the workers or the corporate structure? You need not answer because the truth is evident to all, so does the entire system function, no matter what level we ascend to.
There is nothing “elite” or “prattling” about the Rule of Law which has been recognized as the underlying principle of civil society since before Aristotle’s time and is nothing like the phrase “law and order”. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with it. This would not surprise me as it appears that many Americans see nothing wrong with torture and extra-judicial killing, provided some government agency or functionary first applies the label “terrorist”.
Sophists may well nitpick the application but the principle is very basic and easy to understand. Here are a few descriptions:
Han Fei Zi (3rd century BCE): “laws, rather than rulers, run the state, and further that laws be written and public”.
Aristotle (3rd century BCE): “law should govern”, and those in power should be “servants of the laws.”
Lord Chief Justice Coke (1610): “The King himself ought not to be subject to man, but subject to God and the law, because the law makes him King”.
Brewer (just now): The protection and sanctions of the law shall apply equally to all – without exception.
The Rule of Law says nothing about individual laws ie. the justice or fitness of them, only that they be applied equally.
Whilst it is true that the application of individual laws is often uneven and the Rule of Law is a rarely attained ideal, it is altogether a different matter to create laws that do not conform to it as Schizer proposes.
I would love to answer you Mr. Brewer, but the system insists on calling my response “spammy,” perhaps this is a way of telling me that my posts are not welcome – who knows.
Maybe if I attempt to be brief –
Mr. Brewer, it is a hard thing to go from pronouncement to production – and it is impossible when this was never the aim of those in power. Therefore you can trace it back to Han Fei Zi (it was actually announced prior to this) the philosopher, yet what was produced was highly elite familial dynasties. As long as one preserves the form of an elite the pronouncement of the rule of law can have gone on from the beginning to the present, yet nothing changes – all the way down to the present where Schizer can pronounce it several times by way of introduction but what is produced is entirely different from the pronouncement. Just because a concept has an ancient pedigree means absolutely nothing in comparison to what has been produced, repeatedly, in all places and times to the present.
Not to be pedantic, but those qualities are by no means mutually exclusive.
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I would venture to say that quite a few here cannot bring themselves to this truth, it is traumatic (as I explained in response to America First and Brewer). That is because this is what you have been taught all of your lives, however you are no longer children (at least in age, some more than others along that path we call life – but if I can see these things, so can you). What we need to understand is our minds, out thoughts, and what we conceive reality to be – whether we choose to fall in line, or resist – shape us and our contribution to humanity. Where do you stand? In awe of these buffoons who we are are talking about and hence this sense of helplessness, or as a person who can be part of a group which will take on these usurpers of what belongs to the people?
KEEPING IN LINE?
You can understand how desperately they want to keep you in line by what they feed you from childhood. Do you remember the story about George Washington and how he could not lie to his father about chopping down the cherry tree? Well, it is a well know fact that the story is a complete lie. However, they will use a lie to impress upon you, that you should not lie to their “authority.” I don’t know about you, but I find that troubling.
Yeah, and all those lies they told us about FDR, “one of the most evil men in history”!
What gets me is in that article the person states ‘post-colonial’ as though it were a sin, as though colonizing is somehow a good thing.
Sorry, but no colony is worth attacking Palestinian children over. If God himself told me to do it, I would refuse.
Gee, how can we make a financially successful B horror movie out of your POV, Sunyata? Party pooper.
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Israel’s stance: Human Rights are now by definition anti-Semitic.
1. The Lawfare Project defines lawfare as “the abuse of the law and legal systems for strategic or military ends.” Translated into honest, this means “the purposeful use of law or legal systems for ends that I don’t approve of.” There is no intellectual merit to such an approach. One can only assume that a generous donation was made to Columbia Law School to leverage this conference.
2. I noticed Dean Schizer praised Columbia as the source of much jurisprudence on public international law, and listed off a bunch of names. He seems to have missed one pretty prominent Columbia Law School grad: William Kunstler, who went on to found the Center for Constitutional Rights, which according to Max was attacked at the conference.