Arafat – who was at that time supposedly negotiating with Israel in good faith – chose an interesting date, ironic even. May 15, 1948 marked the beginning of the aggressive and ultimately unsuccessful war waged by several Arab states against Israel, a war over Israel’s very existence. The Arab League declaration of war asserted that “security in Palestine” was “a sacred trust in the hands of the Arab States” and that its Arab inhabitants not only have “absolute sovereignty” but that they “alone should exercise the attributes of their independence, through their own means and without any kind of foreign interference, immediately after peace, security, and the rule of law have been restored to the country.”

There are any number of head-shaking moments to be had after reading the declaration of war, such as the assertion that waging an aggressive war was not only somehow legitimate in and of itself but that it was necessary “in order to prevent bloodshed.” Still, if any one assertion stands out as absurd, it must be the pious declaration of the “absolute sovereignty” on the part of the former Mandate’s Arab residents. But to understand why, it is necessary to revisit the events of September 29, 1947, the date on which the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) proposed that the British Mandate be partitioned into a Jewish and an Arab state. The Jews reluctantly accepted the partition plan, while the Arabs categorically rejected it. The rejection itself displayed themes that have continued to plague the conflict to this day, including a longing for an unbroken ‘Arab region.’

The rejection of UNSCOP’s plan was delivered by Jamal Husseini, the Vice-President of the Arab League-created Arab Higher Committee on Palestine. As the United Nations press office reported, “Mr. Husseini said that the peoples of the eastern board of the Mediterranean Sea from the north of Africa throughout Egypt to the Persian Gulf and from the Turkish borders to the Indian Ocean, speak one language and have the same history, traditions and aspirations. One of the greatest political achievements in the world that served as a bulwark of peace and stability was the fusion of several nations into one homogenous entity.” His examples were the USA, UK and USSR, ironically enough.

There was a multinational entity that extended more or less throughout the borders Husseini set out – the Ottoman Empire. Of course the region never really shared “one language” when Turkish and Farsi are spoken by millions in the region along a number of Arabic dialects, much less “the same history, traditions and aspirations.” The Arab League declaration of war in 1948 did not seem to feel the need to elaborate on this utopian fantasy past stating that, “Palestine is an Arab country, situated in the heart of the Arab countries and attached to the Arab world by various ties – spiritual, historical, and strategic.”

Clearly, those “ties” never included actually granting any form of sovereignty to residents of the former Mandate. Egypt did no such thing after it occupied Gaza in 1948, and Jordan annexed the territory it conquered in 1948 on April 24, 1950, renaming it the “West Bank.” Even the Arab League’s Rabat Declaration of October 28, 1974 that established the PLO as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people in any Palestinian territory” came only after the last failure of those states to destroy Israel through full-scale warfare in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

As late as 1988, when King Hussein of Jordan allowed the PLO to ‘secede’ in order to pursue the first of several failed attempts at unilaterally claiming statehood, he stated that, “Jordan will remain the proud bearer of the message of the Great Arab Revolt, adhering to its principles, believing in one Arab destiny, and committed to joint Arab action.”

In 1993, Martin Kramer wrote in “Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity” that ultimately the utopian ideology of Arab nationalism might best be compared Soviet communism, “two great myths of solidarity, impossible in their scale, deeply flawed in their implementation, which alternately stirred and whipped millions of people in a desperate pursuit of power through the middle of the twentieth century, before collapsing in exhaustion — and stranding their last admirers in the faculty lounges of the West.”

There are some circles today that embrace the utopian fantasy that not only was Israel’s creation a ‘catastrophe,’ but that if Israel were to disappear then the Middle East would be miraculously pacified. To them, May 15^th makes sense as the day to commemorate their ‘nakba.’

But for those who sincerely wish for peace, there are other dates to consider catastrophic, aside from September 29, 1947, when the Arab Higher Commission rejected UNSCOP’s partition proposal.

Two in particular should stand out. July 20, 1951, when Jordan’s King Abdullah was assassinated for supposedly planning peace talks with Israel, or October 6, 1981, when Egypt’s Anwar Sadat was assassinated for actually making peace with the Jewish State. Making peace repudiates the utopian nakbaist dream by taking stock of the world as it is, rather than through the lens of fantasy, and acting on it.

The post Catastrophe and Utopian Ideology: Nakba Day and the Arab-Israeli Conflict appeared first on Act for Israel.

On October 4, 2004, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation TV interviewed United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees then-Commissioner-General Peter Hansen after Israel demanded a UN investigation into the agency and its chief. In response, Hansen blithely commented that:

“Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.”

The statement was met with outrage not only in Canada, but in the United States, which has provided the lion’s share of UNRWA’s funding to date, including well over $100 million annually over the past decade. The statement also flouted a standing US law, namely Title 22, Section 2151 of the United States Code. Subsection c is entitled “Palestine refugees; considerations and conditions for furnishing assistance” and states that:

“No contributions by the United States shall be made to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East except on the condition that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Army or any other guerrilla type organization or who has engaged in any act of terrorism.”

On August 30, 2011, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and dozens of cosponsors in the United States House of Representatives introduced the bill H.R. 2829, “United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act of 2011.” Section 801 of the bill contains a number of findings about UNRWA, and not only that “Almost all of UNRWA’s almost 30,000 staff are Palestinian refugees themselves, presenting a clear conflict of interest” but that UNRWA contravenes U.S. law by completely failing to screen its personnel to determine if they are members “of Palestinian Foreign Terrorist Organizations such as Hamas, Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

As damning as the bill’s 15 pages of findings are, it could be argued that it understates UNRWA’s ties to Hamas in particular. In her 2009 Forbes.com article, “Gaza Bedfellows UNRWA And Hamas,” Claudia Rosett explained that following Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2007, “UNRWA’s interests in Gaza are by now so entwined and, in many ways, so aligned with Hamas’ interests that it is often hard to tell them apart.”

And it would be a mistake to assume that UNRWA’s affiliation with Hamas marked any shift in how UNRWA interacts with terrorist organizations. On March 20, 2012, the informative blog Elder of Ziyon pointed out that the US was concerned with UNRWA’s terrorist ties back in 1966, when “Congressman H. B. Frelinghuysen and Senator Edward Kennedy both demanded that UNRWA stop giving food and other aid for any members of the Palestinian Liberation Army, the military wing of the PLO.”

But how does UNRWA see itself? Without any apparent sense of irony, its website claims that “UNRWA’s work exemplifies an international commitment to the human development of Palestine refugees” and that “UNRWA is unique in terms of its long-standing commitment to one group of refugees, and its contributions to the welfare and human development of four generations of Palestine refugees. Originally envisaged as a temporary organisation, the Agency has gradually adjusted its programmes to meet the changing needs of the refugees.”

UNRWA is an entity that claims simultaneously that it is “a humanitarian agency” and not involved in the Middle East peace negotiations yet it somehow “highlights the international community’s obligation to provide a just and durable solution for Palestine refugees.” Joseph Deiss, President of the 65^th session of the UN General Assembly,  stated on December 7, 2010 that UNRWA is “the only major United Nations program that is a direct subsidiary of the General Assembly” and claimed that by mobilizing international assistance for UNRWA, “we are also reaffirming our commitment to the Middle East peace process.”

Merriam-Webster defines anomalous as “inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected,” “of uncertain nature or classification” and “marked by incongruity or contradiction.” The history of UNRWA exemplifies all of these definitions. It was expected to be a temporary agency tasked with dealing with a single humanitarian crisis, but has endured for six decades and ensured that the refugees it was originally tasked to assist will never see a resolution to their plight until Israel surrenders its very existence as a Jewish state.

Perhaps Representative Ros-Lehtinen’s bill will achieve what previous Congressional actions could not – bring UNRWA at least partly back to being a humanitarian agency with a limited and apolitical mandate. Until and unless that occurs though, UNRWA will remain a politicized anomaly whose actual humanitarian work is dwarfed by the role it plays in perpetuating the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The post UNRWA-nomalous: Part III appeared first on Act for Israel.

Part I of this series

But when did UNRWA start to become a political tool against Israel? Reasonable guesses might include in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967 or during the rise of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or OAPEC’s “oil weapon” in the 1970s, but in fact the seeds were planted during UNRWA’s early years in the 1950s.

When UNRWA was created by UN Resolution 302 (IV) on December 8, 1949, the resolution stated that, “without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948, continued assistance for the relief of the Palestine refugees is necessary to prevent conditions of starvation and distress among them and to further conditions of peace and stability…”

Resolution 194 (III) was a nonbinding resolution entitled “Palestine-Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator,” and dealt with a number of plans that never came into being, such as the proposal that Jerusalem and surrounding places should be placed under UN control and internationalized. However, the real point of the resolution was to establish a Conciliation Commission, consisting of the United States, France and Turkey, which was never able to accomplish anything.

Paragraph 11 is noteworthy in and of itself as the basis of the so-called Palestinian “right of return” that was used by Yassir Arafat to reject Ehud Barak’s comprehensive peace plan in 2001 after which he launched the Second Intifada. It reads as follows

• “11. Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;
•  Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations;”

It is clear that Paragraph 11 dealt with larger political issues of the sort that a mediator or conciliation commission would normally consider in their attempts to end a conflict. It is equally clear that these are issues that should be unconnected to an emergency fund that was established to provide assistance to refugees. Accordingly, the earliest resolutions that dealt with UNRWA prominently stated that its function was “without prejudice” to Paragraph 11; UNRWA’s mission was a separate matter that was not intended to have any bearing on Paragraph 11.

By 1954, however, Paragraph 11 started playing a pivotal role. That year’s Resolution 818 (IX), entitled “Report of the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,” began by noting the director of UNRWA’s annual report, followed it by noting “that repatriation or compensation of the refugees, as provided for in paragraph 11 of resolution 194 (III), has not been effected and that the situation of the refugees continues to be a matter of grave concern,” and then requested that UNRWA not only continue to consult with the Conciliation Commission “in the best interest of their respective tasks” but to do so “with particular reference to paragraph 11 of resolution 194 (III).”

By 1958, the annual Report, Resolution 1315 (XII), did not merely note that Paragraph 11 “had not been effected,” but noted it “with regret.” In 1961, Resolution 1604 (XV) began noting the same with “with deep regret,” and completely dropped the clause “without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948.”

Within 10 years, UNRWA’s mission had shifted dramatically from providing much-needed assistance to refugees in order “to prevent conditions of starvation and distress among them and to further conditions of peace and stability” to arguing that “the situation of the refugees continues to be a matter of serious concern” not because of starvation or distress, but because “repatriation or compensation” and “reintegration of refugees either by repatriation or resettlement” had not occurred.

Of course resettlement never occurred, aside from the Jewish refugees taken in by the State of Israel – the League of Arab States made certain of that. As for UNRWA, its role within the Arab-Israeli Conflict would only grow darker with the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964 and its subsequent terror campaign against Israel.

Part III of this article will address how UNRWA grew to see itself as an “advocate” for the Palestinian cause, a thoroughly political viewpoint that has led to providing resources to the PLO in the 1960s and working closely with Hamas in the present day.

The post UNRWA-nomalous: Part II appeared first on Act for Israel.

Part I covers UNRWA’s possibly surprising origins, while Part II addresses how the UN and international principles alike have been used to perpetuate the war against Israel between and during wars, using UNRWA’s politicization as the case study.

A genuine humanitarian crisis arose in the months that followed Israel’s independence in 1948 and the subsequent attack on the fledgling state by its neighbors, one that quickly proved beyond the capabilities of voluntary aid societies like the Red Cross and the Quakers. On November 19, 1948, the General Assembly passed Resolution 212 (III), which not only authorized emergency funds to be allocated to alleviate “conditions of starvation and distress among the Palestine refugees,” but stated that this action “is one of the minimum conditions for the success of the efforts of the United Nations to bring peace to that land.”

Little more than a year later on December 8, 1949, the UN General Assembly decided that a temporary agency was required to create relief and works programs and established UNRWA with Resolution 302 (IV). In 1951, the General Assembly passed Resolution 393, which created a specific fund to facilitate reintegration as a means of reestablishing refugees and removing them from relief programs.

As the first Director-General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry Walter Eytan wrote in his 1958 memoir The First Ten Years, “It [the General Assembly] did not wish the refugees to drag out an idle and demoralized existence on relief; it wanted them to be ‘reintegrated.’” Unfortunately, “If the Assembly’s intention was not in doubt, the Arab states were determined not to heed it. They refused, as they have refused to this day, to co-operate in projects of reintegration.”

In the early 1950s UNRWA provided critical assistance to a number of actual registered refugees, to the extent that as Eytan wrote, “In the [Egypt-controlled] Gaza area, where there are some 60,000 near-destitute Arabs who are not refugees, the contrast between them and the refugees maintained by the United Nations is particularly striking.” But reintegration was not to be, “as a result of the United Nations’ inability to overcome the political opposition of the Arab states.”

Sadly, UNRWA never successfully achieved reintegration, with a single exception. In 1952 the Annual Report of the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East noted that on June 30, 1952 UNRWA was able to close one of its major field offices after the host country agreed to reintegrate its 19,000 registered refugees. That office had been located in Haifa, Israel.

Tragically, Walter Eytan’s words written in 1958 to describe UNRWA’s early failures hold true over a half-century later: “The international community tried to see to it that the refugees were kept alive until the day they could cease to be refugees. The Arab states have seen to it that the refugee problem has been kept alive, and that day should never dawn.”

Part II of this article will explain how UNRWA itself was turned into an avenue of attack against the State of Israel.

The post UNRWA-nomalous: Part I appeared first on Act for Israel.

Moreno-Ocampo correctly noted that the Rome Statute does not contain any provision that would allow it to unilaterally define what is and is not a state. This is a critical point, insofar as only states may join the Rome Statute by acceding to it, and thereafter bring cases before the ICC. Unfortunately, he then stated that “competence for determining the term “State” within the meaning of article 12 [of the Rome Statute] rests, in the first instance, with the United Nations Secretary General who, in case of doubt, will defer to the guidance of General Assembly.” Alternatively, he suggested that the Assembly of States, i.e. the body of states who are party to the Rome Statute, could decide to “address the matter.”

One might ask why the UN should be involved at all, since the ICC – unlike the International Court of Justice – is not in fact a part of the UN, but an independent entity governed by the Rome Statute. Moreno-Ocampo explained that because:

the Rome Statute is open to accession by “all States”, and any State seeking to become a Party to the Statute must deposit an instrument of accession with the Secretary‐General of the United Nations. In instances where it is controversial or unclear whether an applicant constitutes a “State”, it is the practice of the Secretary‐General to follow or seek the General Assembly’s directives on the matter.

The UN’s lengthy Summary of Practice of the Secretary-General as Depository of Multilateral Treaties does indeed state that, “The Secretary-General must ascertain whether a State or an organization may become a party to a treaty deposited with him” and that the General Assembly could effectively consider any “particular entity to be a State” and instruct the Secretary-General to act accordingly.

In this case, that would mean declaring ‘Palestine’ to be a state for purposes of the Rome Statute. The ICC could then theoretically decide to hear Palestinian charges against Israel without being challenged that it overstepped its authority in determining who is a state and who is not. However, all of the treaties mentioned in the Summary of Practice are UN treaties; the Rome Statute is not. And while the General Assembly might have apparently acquired the ability to declare who may or may not sign UN treaties, there is absolutely no clear authority that it has any legitimate power to define who may sign international treaties that are not under the authority of the UN.

When it comes to Israel, the General Assembly has unfortunately been all too willing to ignore the actual powers and limitations provided in the UN Charter, and it is not difficult to foresee this issue becoming another such case. So while we should all be encouraged that the ICC declined to find that it has jurisdiction over Gaza and the West Bank, we must bear in mind that this doesn’t mean “not ever,” but only “not yet.”

The post The Temporary Victory at the ICC Points to a Difficult Road Ahead appeared first on Act for Israel.

But in between these events, the State Department made a further headline when a spokeswoman irritably and repeatedly stated that, “our position on Jerusalem has not changed” and that “With regard to our Jerusalem policy, it’s a permanent-status issue.  It’s got to be resolved through the negotiations between the parties.”

In a sense, the State Department was absolutely honest in insisting that its core position on Jerusalem has not changed since the 1940s. That core position has effectively been to punt the question, with the latest version being that it is “a permanent-status issue.” However, the State Department’s reasons for holding this stance despite sweeping changes in the Middle East are anything but consistent, much less clear. The policies themselves have been anything but constant.

In the Supreme Court ruling mentioned above, a key element to the case lay in the fact that a Jerusalem-born American citizen whose parents wished to have Israel listed as his place of birth on his US passport was not born in the Old City or any territory captured by Israel in 1967 – but well inside the Green Line, within what has been Israeli territory since the country’s independence. The State Department’s position has been to refuse to recognize ANY part of Jerusalem as Israeli, which is an issue completely separate from the question of pre- or post-1967 territory.

Where did this concept come from? On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed resolution A/Res/181 (II), entitled “Future government of Palestine.” Notably, it called for “Independent Arab and Jewish States” and a “Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.” Of the three, only the Jewish State came into being, and that came as the result of military victories against several invading Arab state armies rather than by UN fiat. Incidentally, UN Resolution 181, reluctantly accepted by the Jewish Yishuv and rejected outright by the Arab States, called for the UN-administered “corpus separatum under a special international regime” for Jerusalem and surrounding villages: “the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem; the most western, Ein Karim (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern Shu’fat.”

In turn, the plan had two stated purposes, first to “protect and to preserve the unique spiritual and religious interests located in the city of the three great monotheistic faiths throughout the world” and to “foster co-operation among all the inhabitants of the city in their own interests as well as in order to encourage and support the peaceful development of the mutual relations between the two Palestinian peoples throughout the Holy Land.”

Interestingly enough, this internationalized trusteeship proposal was introduced by the United States, and was initially part of a larger plan conceived by Arabists within the Department of State who had little faith in the viability of a small Jewish state surrounded by enemies. In his book The Faithful City, the late Dov Joseph, who was the Jewish military governor of Jerusalem in 1948 and later a Knesset member, wrote that that “the United States told the Security Council it was now convinced that Palestine could not be partitioned without violence and recommended a temporary trusteeship over Palestine while the General Assembly reviewed the entire problem.”

Joseph continued that not only was the proposal regarded “as a direct betrayal,” but that it was “devoid of serious content, and it never got off the ground. By the end of April, the U.S. representatives at the U.N. had whittled the proposal down to a trusteeship for Jerusalem alone and by May 4 they were proposing to the Trusteeship Council that even this attempt to protect the city be abandoned.”

The internationalization proposal for Jerusalem was rendered entirely moot regardless when, on March 15, 1948, the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon attacked the fledgling Jewish state. Due to a number of factors, notably including the British-trained elite Jordanian Arab Legion, Jordan was able to occupy a swath of land that it termed “ad-difa’a al-gharbiya” or the West Bank [i.e. the west bank of the Jordan River], including the Old City of Jerusalem, while Israel managed to hold onto the parts of the city to the west of the original walled area.

Despite ongoing fighting, the UN General Assembly passed resolution A/Res/194 (III), “Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator,” which restated the internationalization plan for Jerusalem, but also resolved that “the Holy Places – including Nazareth – religious buildings and sites in Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured, in accordance with existing rights and historical practice; that arrangements to this end should be under effective United Nations supervision” and requested “detailed proposals for a permanent international regime for the territory of Jerusalem.” The State Department clung to the stillborn Jerusalem internationalization plan until 1950, and its policy to not recognize any part of Jerusalem as Israeli has incredibly remained unchanged since then.

Despite decades of international machinations, several Arab-Israeli wars and decades of terrorism, the city of Jerusalem continues to grow and thrive as an integral part of the State of Israel, the globally marching “footilla” and its doom-and-gloom propaganda decrying “The Destruction of the Holy City of Jerusalem” notwithstanding. For myself, I’ll continue looking forward to Yom Yerushalayim, “Jerusalem Day,” which will fall on May 20^th this year. It commemorates the day that Jerusalem was once again made whole after nearly two decades of artificial division. Perhaps Jerusalem will be in the news that week on its own merits, rather than for the games that have been played over the holy city.

The post Jerusalem: Eternal City, Transitory Attacks appeared first on Act for Israel.

By Aaron Eitan Meyer

Many around the world were shocked and horrified in 2000 when France 2 broadcast a brief video purportedly showing a young Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Dura being supposedly shot by Israeli forces in a 55-second video clip taken on September 30, 2000, at the beginning of the deadly Second Intifada against Israel. More shocking still was the revelation that the video has as much truth to it as a late-night sensationalist TV movie “based on true events,” which is to say none whatsoever. Yet though the video’s credibility has been thoroughly undermined over the past decade, it is still routinely used to defame Israel around the world. And the French legal system has been the mechanism for covering up France 2’s egregious conduct and perpetuating this modern day blood libel for over a decade.

On February 28^th, 2012, France’s highest court, the Cour de Cassation, overturned a previous 2008 appellate court ruling that acquitted Philippe Karsenty, who had been sued for libel by France 2 for the ‘crime’ of debunking the al-Dura hoax. The 2008 court had acquitted M. Karsenty after compelling France 2 to produce 27 minutes of footage that was then heavily edited down to produce the brief clip that the station then aired. This critical evidence served to demonstrate that M. Karsenty acted in good faith, a defense against libel under the Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse.

Unfortunately, the Cour de Cassation chose to hear the appeal, despite the recommendation of the Advocat General, ruled that the appellate court had exceeded its power by compelling France 2 to turn over the unedited footage, and remanded the case to the Paris Court of Appeal. Instead, the Court stated that if the defendant could prove his good faith by demonstrating special circumstances, the burden of proof was entirely on him without any assistance from the court. [“si le prévenu peut démontrer sa bonne foi par l’existence de circonstances particulières c’est à lui seul qu’incombe cette preuve sans que les juges aient le pouvoir de provoquer, compléter ou parfaire l’établissement de celle-ci”]

The brief ruling was limited entirely to the above technical point, and tellingly did not challenge or even address the lower court’s ruling that M. Karsenty had demonstrated his good faith based on the unedited footage. There was also no mention of the fact that France 2 had categorically refused access to the unedited footage before the appellate court so ordered.

To anyone schooled in the American legal system, the Court’s ruling is baffling in that every burden has been placed upon the defendant, while the only means of defending himself were in the hands of those with a vested interest in keeping the information secret. It is impossible to imagine how any court could justly rule on the case without viewing the unedited footage.

Still, France’s law of defamation defines libel as when an allegation or imputation of fact that impugns the honor or reputation of a person or entity to whom the allegation is attributed. [“Toute allégation ou imputation d'un fait qui porte atteinte à l'honneur ou à la considération de la personne ou du corps auquel le fait est imputé est une diffamation.”]

It could be argued that France 2’s honor was not truly impugned by M. Karsenty or anyone else who exposed the Al Dura Hoax, but by its own actions, first in airing the video, and thereafter by engaging in a legal intimidation campaign against any who dared challenge its falsehood. Indeed, France 2 would be a laughingstock were it not for the fact that its actions allow Hamid Dabashi, Hanan Ashwari and others to continually invoke al-Dura in their quest to delegitimize and demonize the State of Israel years after the deadly – and incidentally premeditated – Second Intifada ceased. No one’s honor is served by France 2’s actions; justice is thwarted and the truth suppressed instead.

Though the Cour de Cassation narrowly ruled that the appellate court overstepped its authority in compelling France 2 to produce the unedited footage, it remains impossible to see how justice could have been done otherwise. When the Paris Court of Appeal next hears the case, it will have the opportunity to further judicially confirm M. Karsenty’s good faith, as opposed to France 2’s legalistically bolstered campaign of disinformation and denial. Then, perhaps France 2 will stop desperately trying to silence others rather than confess to the shame it should feel.

The post The Al Dura Hoax Continues: Truth and Technicalities in French Court appeared first on Act for Israel.

Wars have rarely been won by using a single tactic, and this holds true for current non-military campaigns, including those waged by the use of legal warfare, or lawfare. When the goal of a campaign is to widely disseminate disinformation, legal intimidation is often an effective means of silencing inconvenient facts that would disrupt the disinformation campaign, especially through defamation lawsuits. The enduring myths surrounding the “Al-Dura Incident” provide a case in point.

On February 15th 2012, the Jerusalem Post reported that a French appellate court has overturned a libel judgment against an Israeli doctor, Yehuda David. The suit had been brought by Jamal al-Dura, who was caught in cross-fire between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli forces in September 30, 2000, during which his son Muhammad was killed. The incident quickly became a way to demonize Israel, and a widely used image from the footagehas been said to possess “the iconic power of a battle flag,” and was included as one of 18 “Images of the Intifada” on Al Jazeera’s website in 2003.

The Palestinian Permanent Observer at the United Nations claimed that Israel’s public expression of sympathy over the death was predicated by the ‘fact’ that “the camera on channel 2 of Canal France had captured the act.” However, when questions began to be raised over the authenticity of the footage, France 2 “responded with defensive lies and threats of lawsuit,” as media watchdog CAMERA well put it, including threats to the Israeli government three times.

French journalist Philippe Karsenty accused France 2 of perpetrating fraud with its broadcast, and was promptly sued for defamation. France 2′s libel suit against him – initially successful – was somewhat surprisingly overturned in 2008, given plaintiff-friendly French libel law, in what has been termed ”the first major European breach of the blanket of silence that has greeted any effort of critics to call into question France2′s presentation of the Al Dura footage as actual news.”

Meanwhile, the director of Israel’s Government Press Office pointed out in 2008 that the issue highlighted the need for Israeli government officials “to familiarize themselves with the phenomenon of widespread media-manipulation prevalent in the Palestinian territories,” though he stopped short of directly addressing the role lawfare has played.

Despite the eventual legal victories won by Mr. Karsenty and Dr. David, the “incident” has continued to loom large. The fact that the footage was protected from justified scrutiny and challenge by legal threats early on, followed by lawsuits, allowed for the disinformation to firmly take root in the global consciousness, and extremely difficult to dislodge.

Aaron Eitan Meyer is a consultant, analyst and researcher. He is legal correspondent for the Terror Finance Blog, an advisory board member for the digital advocacy group Act for Israel and a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ Noncommercial Users Constituency. He has served as research director of The Lawfare Project, director of research for the Children’s Rights Institute, and assistant director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum. He received his B.A. from New School University, and his J.D. from Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center. He coauthored Lawfare: The War Against Free Speech: A First Amendment Guide for Reporting in an Age of Islamist Lawfare, as well as numerous articles dealing with lawfare, terrorism/terror finance, and other emerging concepts in non-traditional warfare.

February 16, 2012 Published by The Legal Project
Follow @ActForIsrael

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