5 June 2022
“No one should overreact to one incident with respect to the University’s website.”
Lawrence Summers, “Harvard, Israel, and Academic Freedom”, The Harvard Crimson, 3 February 2015.
“Where then does BDS cross the line? By singling out the world’s only Jewish state for opprobrium in a way totally disproportionate to its deficiencies.”
Lawrence Summers, “Anti-Semitism Comes to Harvard, in Both Intent and Effect”, New York Sun, 3 May 2022.
The Israeli Supreme Court
The Israeli Supreme Court is a court of apartheid.
Israeli mythical legal historiography of course differs with this characterization. Two academics who share philosophical pursuits attribute both legal formalism and elements of liberal enlightened jurisprudence to the German legal education of some of Israel’s founding Supreme Court justices. One legal historian glorifies an originally American Jewish Zionist nationalist judge as the introducer of civil rights vocabulary and substance to the court’s rulings. Since the founding of Israel until 1981 this court has been a continuation of its British origin in mandate Palestine. In the background there has always been a mockery or a shy debate about the fact that no genuine Israeli Jewish judge of Mizrahi origin has been appointed to this court. The first such judge who was the country’s attorney general (2004 – 2010) resigned recently from his position because of substantive and procedural considerations. While explaining his resignation, he also discredited the credibility of the country’s Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) that regularly and primarily operates against Palestinians.
The composition of Israel’s Supreme Court reinforces the apartheid proposition attached to it. Judges are either proactively Jewish supremacists or simply accept this assumption as a governing fact. They don’t legislate the law, nor even attempt to interpret it in a meaningful manner, rather simply state what it is. The current Chief Justice also urged all judges in the Israeli judicial system to follow this professional pattern. A hide and seek vocation that can be traced to the era of the 1956 Alexandrovich judgment, considered as a foundational one in Israeli criminal and administrative / constitutional legal education. Paper Chase.
Although the understanding that Israel is an apartheid state is gaining more leverage in circles abroad that previously were considered to form Israeli and Zionist “bunkers”, it remains peculiar to observe the reaction of Israelis to this reality, particularly that for many Palestinians it has been a given fact for generations. An Israeli pseudo progressive version has alleged that apartheid is only in the occupied territories, and define this area contrary to applicable international law. There are two Israels, according to this line of thinking, one enlightened democratic and another one embraces apartheid. To uphold this argument academics who made aliya from apartheid South Africa may be recruited to refute the apartheid claim against one of the two mentioned Israels.
Israel is racist towards Palestinians in pre – 1967 territory, and an international law pariah in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Apartheid is only one of its appropriate qualifications. Israel’s Supreme Court is not distinguishable from this paradigm of governance. Any attempt to do so is futile, and will only expose it to ambassadorship argumentation rather than decent articulation of the facts.
Refusing to adhere to any international mechanism that considers international law genuinely, Israel has cemented its stature as a persistent international law violator. To this day Israel has never accepted the applicability of the Geneva Conventions (1949) to the 1967 occupied territories, and considers the formation of settlements as legal anchoring it in its understanding of the 1917 Balfour Declaration included in the preamble of the 1922 League of Nations mandate regarding Palestine. It rejected the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice as well as the International Criminal Court’s, and constantly oppose cooperating with United Nations authoritative investigative committees and special rapporteurs. Israel is an island of awkward national international law. Support for Israel’s phenomenal illegal behaviour was provided by various American administrations, another significant problematic player in the field of international relations.
The Israeli Supreme Court has acrobatically considered some aspects of international law, routinely ruling in favor of the government and its organs. Acting incidentally to the abhorrent procedure and jurisprudence of Israel’s military courts in the occupied territories, one major Supreme Court justice stated in the early 1980s that “every Israeli soldier carries the rules of Israeli administrative law in his back pack”, rather than simply obligate the army to read and uphold basic principles of international law. Customary international law is applicable, this court asserted in the second half of the same decade, but disputed its content and scope. Then came the undefined proposition to adjudicate the “humanitarian provisions” of the Fourth Geneva Convention, but no legal analysis to support it was in sight. Building on public land in “Judea and Samaria” is permissible, as opposed to construction on private land. Confiscation for broadly defined and decades lasting military and other public purposes is plausible and desirable, even if it is always designed for the non-protected persons according to the Geneva Conventions (i.e. for the benefit of the illegal settlers).
Premeditated political assassinations are left to the discretion of the Israeli government and its subsequently internally discredited Israel Security Agency. The organization’s legal adviser acknowledged after retirement that the Israeli assassination policy was carried out arbitrarily disregarding applicable international law norms or any other binding standards, yet his position failed to reach the Supreme Court litigation.
The International Court of Justice’s advisory ruling on the Wall is not accurate, despite Israel’s conscious failure to present arguments at the international venue. Constitutional bill of rights is applicable and enforceable for Israelis/settlers in the occupied territories, even if the regime in the area is that of the military commander’s as opposed to a constitutional democracy, lacking anywhere in historic Palestine. Israel’s army may declare large areas as military zones for extended periods of time, regardless of the rights of international law’s subjects. And ultimately, a one sentence declaration about the end of Gaza’s occupation, which was never acknowledged either by the Israeli government or its Supreme Court.
Ecstatically apartheid, the Israeli Supreme Court is worthy of no less than constant condemnation.
The Trial of Mrs. Shatha Odeh
Israeli military courts are a creature of blatant deceptive legality. A pre-convinced and conviction motivated judges collaborate with military prosecutors eager to win the unfair trial with as less time and effort possible. One sided show of pretense and false incrimination. Superfluous claim for superiority of evidence and language yet it sets a new record of Israel’s evil dismissal for the rule of law in the occupied territories. Evidentiary, Israel remains in the era of “the confession is the queen of evidence” and questionable collaborators who are never identified are worthy of credibility without cross examination. An important contribution to Israel’s well-deserved characterization as an apartheid state.
490 Palestinian administrative detainees, that is without charge or trial, have boycotted the Israeli military courts since January 2022. Premised on the weakest, undisclosed, and unchallenged evidence the main purpose of the administrative detention is to break the spirit of the detainee hoping to obtain any kind of uncorroborated information levelled at him or her during Israel’s well-known methods of interrogation. Baseless in law and common sense, this detention is a demonstration of Israel’s relentless will to generate consecutive false incarcerations under duress.
The trial and conviction in an Israeli military court of Mrs. Shatha Odeh, a 60 years old nurse, the Director of the Palestinian NGO Health Work Committee, and head of PNGO a coalition of 142 Palestinian civil society organizations, is another farcical Kafkaesque performance by the Israeli authorities. Vague and undisclosed allegations of political ties to the Palestinian political left, as many Palestinian NGOs are, formed the basis for the indictment against Ms. Odeh.
For those with longer memory than the inception of the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel’s panicking attack against Mrs. Odeh and other Palestinian civil society organizations are reminiscent of the era that preceded them. Another draconian measure has been the designation in late 2021 of six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations as terrorist and illegal by the Israeli government (represented by Minister of Defense Gantz) and the military commander in the West Bank. Resorting to the ordinary and non-innovative methodology of concealing the purported grounds for the designation, the Israeli authorities seem insistent to declare and celebrate their own arbitrariness. The only public aspect of the designation is a general statement about ties to the Palestinian political left. As already noted, this is a charge no Palestinian civil rights or civil society activist would find problematic or worthy of denial. The desire for a decent society, pursuing accountability for Israel’s grave violations of international law, constant critique of the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel, opposing America’s malicious foreign policy, and seeking an independent political decision making are dignified objectives that should guide any self-respecting person in a given society.
By now it is difficult to dispute Israel’s signaling that it is facing a genuine problem with Palestinian civil rights and community-based activity both in Palestine and abroad. Targeting Mrs. Odeh, the symbol of Palestinian civil society, is not a mere message to the Palestinian population on both sides of the green line. Rather, it should be understood as a declaration of some other sort. Ignoring any mild diplomatic observations has been, as expected, Israel’s response internationally. The country considers itself as located in an international law and diplomatic vacuum or black hole. This is dangerous and should be confronted by upgrading reiterated methodologies of litigation, advocacy, and popular resistance.
In this endeavor Palestinians will find little to no allies in Israel. At best they will encounter Zehava Galon’s prolific concurring political analysis: Israelis don’t think about Palestinians. What is better for Palestinians, Gantz or Ben Gvir?
Shoot to Kill Policy
Exceptionally talented Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a common household character in the region, was shot in the head from a distance on 11 May 2022 during Israeli military operation in the West Bank town of Jenin. She did not pose any danger to Israeli soldiers. Israel’s reaction following the reporter’s death was familiar: engaging in denial, cover-up, and counter blaming.
Probably nowhere has Israel’s racist mindset been manifested than in its use of force against civilians in the 1967 occupied territories, or against non-Jews as such. The idea of deterrence has galvanized the Israeli political, military, and strategic thinking for decades. The amount of racist slogans that this thinking has accumulated over the years is pathetic. Strategically, the apocalyptically amusing Uzi Arad is the most vocal figure of this notion, usually articulated in the context of the “Iranian threat”. It also benefits from other regular applications: the Israeli army’s excessive use of force in Lebanon and Gaza; the capricious use of snipers against unarmed demonstrators in Gaza; and the random, almost daily, killing of persons in the occupied territories. The combination of indoctrinating Israeli high school education, military policy and motivation, and public acceptance generate lethal results for ordinary Palestinians.
Israel's Supreme Court
Comments