In January 2009, six men and one woman broke into an EDO MBM arms factory in Sussex and caused 180,000-worth of damage as a ‘protest’ against the Israeli counter-terrorist operation in the Gaza Strip known as Cast Lead. Despite the violent nature of the action, all seven were acquitted, because the targeted company provided arms to Israel, after the presiding judge sounded more like a defense attorney than a jurist, reportedly telling the jury that “you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time.”
This outcome is not only an alarming miscarriage of justice, it is a perfect case example of lawfare, the use of the law as a weapon of war, or more specifically, the abuse of the law and legal systems for strategic political or military ends. Writing for the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick put it succinctly, “As we see today in the wholesale perversion of law in the service of Israel’s destruction in countries around the Western world, law is but a tool. Depending on who wields it, it can be a force for injustice just as easily as it can be a tool for pursuing justice.”
The same principle was elucidated in a June 30th Electronic Intifada article that, after alleging war crimes and apartheid, stated that Israel is “very vulnerable to financial retaliation,” and called for “a credible civil society organization amongst the Palestinian diaspora” to lead a campaign aimed at crippling Israel’s economy through sanctions to be imposed by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), headquartered in Belgium. Here too, the crucial tool would be a court order, in this case by a Belgian court operating, presumably, under its universal jurisdiction law. In fact, the contention that “Belgium is now the pressure point” is dangerously apt in a much broader sense.
On June 24th, a war crimes complaint was submitted to the Belgian Federal Prosecutor over its 2009 incursion into the Gaza Strip, an operation known as “Cast Lead.” In order for a Belgian court to hear the case, at least one of the parties had to be Belgian. Sure enough, Belgian citizen Dr. Anouar El Okka alleged that his Gaza olive grove was bombarded and then set afire by white phosphorous. This claim was surrounded by a host of allegations from 13 other non-Belgian Palestinians asserting war crimes and crimes against humanity against 14 former Israeli officials, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And while Dr. El Okka’s claims seem far better suited as tort claims against Israel for damage to his property, that would not serve as a legal attack on the State of Israel, hence the ‘human rights’ complaint.
Principles of international human rights law are not being weaponized against Israel merely as a result from one-sided and politicized documents like the oft-cited Goldstone Report and anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGOs), weaponization is occurring because international law lacks any sort of uniform standard of due process and often relies upon nebulous standards that lend themselves to exploitation.
Lawfare is inherently strategic in nature – and cannot be effectively counteracted until there is an appropriately strategic response. The creation of a functional international system of procedural due process would greatly assist in removing international human rights law from lawfare’s arsenal, even as it would provide additional mechanisms with which to investigate and act against very real human rights abuses around the world.
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