World

NEWS ANALYSIS

Demonizing Israel

"War crimes" law suits are part of long-term campaign against the Jewish state.

Stewart Ain
The Jewish Week

War-crimes
law suits are
part of the
Arab campaign
against Israel.
Governments are
now modifying
the laws that
allow such suits.

New York

T

he decision this month of Israeli
cabinet minister Moshe Yaalon
not to fly to Britain for fear of
being tried for an alleged seven-year-old
war crime is seen as just the latest in a
series of attempts to demonize Israel in
the eyes of the world.
And with the release Sept. 15 of a
United Nations report written by Richard
Goldstone that alleged Israel took
"actions amounting to war crimes, pos-
sibly crimes against humanity" during
its 22-day military offensive in the Gaza
Strip last winter, it is feared that thou-
sands of Israeli soldiers could now face
similar charges.
Alarmed by this prospect, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed
his justice, defense and foreign ministers
to come up with a series of recommenda-
tions on how to confront the problem.
Two such cases were brought in the
United States against senior Israeli offi-
cials, and the U.S. Supreme Court this
month agreed to review a different case
that could put an end to such cases here.
At issue before the High Court is an
appeals court ruling that allows Somalis
to sue Mohamed Ali Samantar of Fairfax,
Va., for overseeing killings, torture and
rape while he served as defense min-
ister and prime minister of Somalia in
the 1980s and early '90s. The court will
consider whether the Foreign Sovereign
Immunities Act grants him immunity
from the lawsuit; the appellate court
ruled that the law applies only to foreign
states and their agencies, not individuals.
Marc Stern, acting co-executive direc-
tor of the American Jewish Congress,
pointed out in a memo to his leadership:
"Given the effort to pursue legal action
against Israel, its officials and soldiers
in foreign courts, in the wake of the
Goldstone Report, Israel has much riding
on the outcome of the case — though
saying so means aligning oneself with a
rather disreputable Somali official in this
case, and many serial human rights vio-
lators in others!"
In an interview, Stern said that should
the U.S. Supreme Court side with the

22

October 29 • 2009

Moshe Yaalon

Somali citizens, "it makes a lot of Israeli
officials open to suits here
Yaalon termed the efforts to charge
him in Britain a "campaign to dele-
gitimize Israel!' And Netanyahu report-
edly called this "trend of demonizing
Israel" something that is "bigger than
Goldstone."
Barak Seener, Greater Middle East
section director of the Henry Jackson
Society, pointed out in the fall issue
of the Middle East Quarterly that the
U.N.'s Durban Conference on Racism in
2001 added fuel to this tactic when it
labeled Israel's anti-terrorist actions "war
crimes" and labeled the Jewish state an
"apartheid state" responsible for ethnic
cleansing.
Gerald Steinberg, a professor of
political science at Bar-Ilan University in
Ramat Gan, said Palestinians are behind
this campaign and that since Durban
they have alleged that Israel is guilty
of violations of international law and
human rights abuses and should be com-
pletely isolated as an apartheid state.
"These groups took the issue of the
separation barrier to the International
Court of Justice, and there have been
calls for academic boycotts of Israel
around the same theme — that Israel is
a serial violator of international law and
human rights and should be punished

just as South Africa was: Steinberg said.
"That means that every Israeli response
to an attack by Hamas or Hezbollah is a
violation of international law and that
Israel is not allowed to defend itself."
In their attempt to demonize Israel,
these activists in the last 10 years or
so have "tried to apply legal jurisdic-
tion beyond borders: according to Brett
Schaefer, a fellow working on interna-
tional regulatory policy at the Heritage
Foundation in Washington, D.C.
"In some cases, they will claim viola-
tions of international law or linkages to
their own citizens;' he saidAnd they
argue that the universal jurisdiction stan-
dard should be applied. But for the most
part, it has not been very successful!'
The first attempt to summon an Israeli
official before a foreign court came in
Belgium three months before the start of
the Durban Conference.
A civil indictment was filed in
Brussels against Ariel Sharon for his
role in enabling the 1982 massacres at
Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. Twenty-
three survivors and five eyewitnesses
filed it along with several non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs), includ-
ing the Belgian Centre for Palestinian
Development, Documentation and
Information.
Seener noted that other Israeli officials,

including Yaalon and former Internal
Security Minister Avi Dichter, had cases
brought against them in such countries
as Britain and the United States.
The charges, which were dismissed
and included allegations of crimes
against humanity, were "clearly manu-
factured in order to portray Israel as the
constant villain: he said.
However, in 2005 the former Israeli
chief of the Southern Command, Maj.
Gen. Doron Almog, was nearly arrested
by British authorities when he landed
at London's Heathrow Airport. But he
was tipped off that the police were wait-
ing outside with a warrant based on his
troops' demolition of Palestinian homes
in a combat zone. He remained on the
plane until it flew him back home.
Two years later, Dichter turned down
an invitation to visit Britain after being
advised that he would be arrested for his
involvement in the July 2002 assassina-
tion of Selah Shehadeh, the head of the
armed wing of llamas. When an Israeli
warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on
Shehadeh's home in Gaza City, it also
killed 14 civilians, including his wife and
nine children.
This is the same incident that this
month kept Yaalon from flying to Britain.
At the time of the assassination, Yaalon
was serving as the military's chief of staff.
A Spanish court rejected earlier this
year an investigation by Spanish Judge
Fernando Andreu of this same incident.
Spanish legislators have since voted to
change the law that allows judges to
indict foreigners, limiting it to cases in
which there is a clear Spanish tie.
Lawmakers in Belgium also changed
the universal jurisdiction principle after
the U.S. threatened to move NATO head-
quarters from Brussels, Schaefer noted.
Daniel Derby, a professor of law at
Touro Law Center on Long Island, N.Y.,
said, "One of the biggest questions now
is how many countries will end up going
the route of Belgium.
"It had a vigorous universal jurisdic-
tion rule that allowed for no compro-
mise," he said. "But after a couple of mis-
steps," he said, "the legislature modified
it to limit jurisdiction to where Belgium
has a significant interest in the case."
Steinberg expects the Israeli Foreign
Ministry to take the lead in pressing

