NGO Monitor's "Lawfare" study examines at least 10 cases of int'l lawsuits against Israeli officials.
By SHELLY PAZdoron almog aj 224 88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Non-governmental organizations exploit the international justice system to further their campaign against Israel and officials who operate on the state's behalf, a new study claims.
NGO Monitor, an Israeli organization established to promote accountability and to advance discussion on NGOs' human rights reports and activities in the framework of the Arab-Israeli conflict, held a press conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday to present their third study, "Lawfare."
The Lawfare research examines at least 10 cases of lawsuits against Israeli officials filed at international courts between 2001 and 2008 - nine of which, the research reveals, were dismissed by the international court judges.
The 10th case, filed at the International Court of Law in Spain by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) against National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, is still pending.
The lawsuit against Ben-Eliezer deals with Israel's "selective assassination" of Salah Shehade, the leader of Hamas's military wing, Izzadin Kassam, in 2002. In the operation, the IAF bombed Shehade's apartment, killing Shehade, his assistant and 11 children. From 2004 until 2008, PCHR filed different lawsuits against six different Israeli officials who were allegedly involved in the assassination, in different international courts. The cases against Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, former IDF chiefs of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon and Lt.-Gen. (res.) Dan Halutz , Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, and former OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. (Res) Doron Almog were dismissed.
In 2005, Almog - against whom three lawsuits have been filed to the UK and the Spanish international courts - learned upon arriving in London for a fundraising trip that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. He was accused of violating the Geneva Conventions in connection with the destruction of homes in Gaza. Almog did not leave the plane and flew back to Israel. The arrest warrant was canceled a few days later.
"In the years 2002 to 2003, as the OC Southern Command, I was responsible for thwarting more than 12,000 terror attacks that tried to get out of the Gaza Strip. This period was busy and stormy, and every day we had intelligence on 30 plans for different terror attacks. During this time, not a single attack managed to make it into Israel's territory, while at the same time, about 100 terror attacks made their way from Judea and Samaria to Israel and hundreds of innocent civilians were killed," Almog said at a press conference on Tuesday.
"This fight - which has not been defined as a war, but was one - was very violent. We had two tools to handle the situation. [The first was] defensive operations such as the electronic fence and exposing a strip between Israel and the Gaza Strip that included tearing down what was claimed to be 59 houses but really was 59 roofless warehouses that were not inhabited by anyone. The second tool was 'selective assassination,' a term representing the moral perspective of the Israeli government as having no intentions to kill innocent people. All operations were legal and were conducted following a scrutinized consultation with the attorney-general and the unit's legal adviser," Almog recalled.
Almog added that in some cases mistakes were made and innocent people paid with their lives.
"We apologized in these cases, and the IDF in many cases compensated the innocent victims' families, but all we did was protect human beings' lives while considering the principle of proportionality. It was all defense, defense, defense," Almog said.
Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political studies at Bar Ilan University and the executive director of NGO Monitor, said that these NGOs' strategy was an exploitation of the international law system, which was founded to bring real war criminals to trial.
"This publication exposes the NGOs bombardment of the world's courts with bogus claims against Israel. Given that not one court has upheld their complaints, it is clear that NGOs continue to manipulate judicial systems, not out of concern for human rights, but as part of the campaign to demonize Israel," Steinberg said.
Advocate Irit Kohn - the former director of the International Affairs Department at the Justice Ministry as well as one of the three litigators who represented former prime minister Ariel Sharon in the Belgium International Court of law for the Sabra and Shatila incidents - said that democratic states have agreed that war criminals be put on trial.
"The international law determines that a human being will be put on trial [in an international court] if the country where he or she committed the crime cannot or does not want to try him or her. Bringing a man to trial in an international court demands the question of whether the system was being exploited," she said.
Kohn added that after the Sabra and Shatila affair, Israel had formed the Kahan committee to investigate the massacre of civilian Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen, who received IDF permission to enter the two refugee camps. The committee, headed by Supreme Court Judge Yitzhak Kahan, argued that the Israelis should have known that a massacre could occur considering the assassination of Phalangist leader and prospective president Bachir Gemayel the day before, and given the long history of bad blood between the Palestinians and the Phalangists.
"Clearly Israel is not a country that cannot or does not want to bring its officials to trial, and therefore the trial in Belgium International Court was not necessary - not to mention the fact that the petitioning NGOs waited for Sharon to become prime minister before they filed their lawsuit," Kohn said.
Kohn added that the problems of universal jurisdiction become more pronounced when unsubstantiated evidence is submitted by various parties, including NGOs, with the goal of influencing public opinion for the sake of their own agenda.
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