The British Government’s recent reaction in the Tzipi Livni case is only just the latest episodes in a series of shameful European surrenderings against the mighty power of Israel and its lobbies. Belgium succumbed to Israel in 2003 in nearly the same conditions when a case was lodged against Ariel Sharon in its courts. Sharon has under his belt the masterminding of Sabra and Shatila amongst the mildest of his atrocities. Later described by Bush II as a “man of peace”, the man is now in a coma on his way to death, denying thousands of people their right to justice with the full complicity of Europe. Spain followed suit earlier this year and amended its laws to make it impossible to put Israeli subjects to trial on war crimes. This week, Britain’s Miliband apologises: “The Government is looking urgently at ways in which the UK system might be changed in order to avoid this sort of situation arising again “.
Evident is the fact that Israel and its lobbies in European countries have for long known that a proper court is no venue for propaganda. The standard arsenal of deceit and bold lies cannot navigate the rough landscape of evidence, reason and the law. One would think that a reasonable legal system would hold every defendant to the same law and the same treatment. One would believe that accused defendants clear themselves in court. Not in Europe.
Netanyahu charges: “We will not accept a situation in which [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defence Minister] Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the defendants’ chair”, publicly declaring that any Israeli politician is beyond the law, beyond questioning for any war crimes or crimes against humanity. Such a nefarious statement comes from the same man who continues, just as arrogantly and shamelessly, to license building settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, to order routine raids on the Palestinian territories and to effectively give the peace process the death sentence at a time when an American administration just might be looking for a real end to the conflict.
Europe and America cannot expect Israel to work for peace while pretending that she is beyond the law. Europe and Obama are being humiliated by Netanyahu who refuses to react positively to their calls for a solution, appearing powerless without anything to bargain for. But now British politicians would rather castrate any power that could hold sway over Israel, even the law itself. Israel will again give them the same treatment that can be expected from a nation that doesn’t stand to lose anything by doing as she wishes, from building more settlements to murdering thousands of civilians and anything in between.
Israel sympathisers speak of Palestinians and people working for their cause “hijacking the courts” for their own gains. What they really mean is that the Palestinians do not deserve justice and that the courts should by default not uphold them as equal humans. The self-evident fact that the law is the text and the text is nonnegotiable for anyone is suddenly forgotten. Benedict Brogan in the Indepedant does one step better and singles out all muslims who sought justice in British courts as unworthy of it. “Britain’s judicial system is being used to help the bad guys” he thinks. To him, any muslim victim is a bad guy by nature. Nothing will appease these guys apart from codifying into law the exclusion of Muslims from any right to justice. Anyone seeking justice for these “bad guys” is a terrorist sympathiser or an anti-Semite, words that for all intents have long been emptied of any meaning.
With the principle of Universal Jurisdiction now dead, buried and forgotten next to the tomb of the separation of powers the war criminals of Israel and the world, with blood still fresh on their hands, can rejoice and party with the forgotten rights of those they oppress and the glory of the friendship and approval of western powers.
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December 19, 2009 at 12:59
Non-Arab Arab
Another point that should be made here is that it is now accepted wisdom in the US military that any attempt to resort to the law to point out US or Israeli war crimes (and the two are inextricably linked, the US and Israeli military “justice” systems are deeply concerned with using concepts of law to undermine principles of law that go against both countries foreign policy crimes/goals), is not a legal issue but “lawfare”. That is the term that has gained currency in “polite company” in the US. It should be seen for what it is – an attempt to undermine principles of legal justice that took centuries to build up and replace them with militarism. And the US military has gained civilian acquiescence in this matter as well. Republicans whole-heartedly believe in such militancy/fascist tendencies, and Democrats (Obama most definitely included) are so scared of being labelled as soft on defense that they allow this underlying trend to grow virtually unhindered. Watch out for the term “lawfare”, if you haven’t seen it already, you’ll hear more of it as the years roll on, it is the automatic excuse that modern American and Israeli supporters of empire and war crimes use to try and crush their opponents in the legal and public affairs realms when their crimes are made public. These European examples you point out are correlaries.
December 21, 2009 at 17:16
Houwari
An appreciated account of the problem in the US. Indeed, the problem extends beyond the oceans to North America. In the United States it manifests itself in a subtly different way. In the US there is greater regard for the law and how it shouldn’t be altered to suit individuals. The alternative is to navigate around the legal texts and find the most intricate of legal loopholes. This has been obvious in Gitmo and the way Netanyaho escaped prosecution. Other laws have been introduced to specifically target Muslims, e.g extraordinary renditions and the Patriot Act.
The end result, though, is the same.
December 21, 2009 at 20:50
Zaki
A Warfare state is good when you win and impose your will, but it sucks when you loose and you have to eat dirt. The glorious past of islamic civilization attests to this condition. Muslim Arabs opened up terrritories that were entirely living in utter ignorance of the rule of laws. The conquering Arab Muslims were good at it because they won the battles militarely then spiritually….
Nowadays the same is played out but not in terms of territories conquest (with the exception of Palestine) but in global propaganda war. The propaganda that wins is always the one that people listen to and take heed towards….