Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

Campaigns to delegitimize Israel politically in the global arena have increasingly manifested on the legal front, very recently exemplified by a London court issuing an arrest warrant against former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. In order to address this threat, Simon Weisenthal Center’s Director for International Relations Shimon Samuels suggests going on the offensive.

Samuels writes that by pursuing Israel’s delegitimizers on the basis of libel, defamation, and even genocide, Israel could attach a price tag to these actions.

In an example of how this could work, Samuels cites a 2001 incident in which the threat of litigation by a group of IDF officers against the Le Nouvel Observateur in 2001, led to an apology for calling the IDF “an army of rapists.” The author also suggests a legal basis in Israel’s laws regarding Nazi war criminals that endow it with the possibility of trying purveyors of genocide through universal jurisdiction, which can be potentially used against incitement to genocide abroad.

In order to effectively centralize such a response mechanism, Samuels proposes establishing an on-call “consortium of the best Jewish and pro-Israel legal brains.”

Importantly, it was Samuels’ participation in a post-Durban I NGO Forum International Steering Committee that focused on Israel as an Apartheid state, which led him to identify the urgency of a comprehensive response to the new battles Israel faces. The agenda of this forum was an eight-point plan of attack, including educational, economic, cultural, diplomatic and legal campaigns to demonize, boycott, embargo and isolate the Jewish state.

Related Posts

Fighting Delegitimacy: More Israel Studies Departments

Combatting Delegitimacy:  Utilizing Personal Networks

Fighting Delegitimacy: Driving a Wedge Between Soft and Hard Critics