Question: Under what circumstances are the fundamental institutions of a sovereign democratic state subject to the review and judgment of the international community?
Answer: When the legitimacy of the state in question’s political model is in doubt.
The trend advancing Israel’s international delegitimization reached a new threshold with the recent establishment of three UN commissions to investigate Israel’s conduct.
While two of these commissions focus on aspects of the flotilla affair, the third – established by the notorious UN Human Rights Council in the wake of the Goldstone report – will examine the “efficiency, independence, and professionalism of Israel’s court system and its adherence to internationally accepted standards.”
According to Haaretz‘s Barak Ravid, Israel’s diplomatic and defense establishments are set to debate the Israeli response to the first-ever instance of a UN investigation into Israel’s military and civilian legal systems this week. Foreign and justice ministries’ support for full cooperation will be balanced against the fear that Israeli involvement could legitimize proceedings with the potential to reflect poorly upon Israel’s legal system and even to result in “countries around the world ignoring Israeli court rulings or filing indictments against Israeli soldiers and officers.”
In addition, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is working to form a review panel to monitor Israeli and Turkish investigations into the flotilla affair, and a UN Human Rights Council committee will seek to determine whether Israel violated international law and committed war crimes during the flotilla affair.
General
Amit Granek
Yuval Holtzmann
Ronit Gudes
Gidi Grinstein
Gaddy Weissman
Calev Ben Dor
Yossi Horesh
Dana Preisler
Omri Dagan
Eran Shayshon
Liran Bainvol
Merav Pick
Noa Ecker
Netaly Ophir
Yariv Mann
Reut Institute
Omri Zegen
Yael Weisz
Toni Hasson
Talia Gorodess
Gil Murciano
Anat Horowitz
Abed Assli
Daphna Kaufman
Shay Gurion
Elad Leshem
Aliza Petrack
Jessica Brandt
Yael Brendel
Martin Ben Moreh
yotamhacohen
By referring to the UN Human Rights Council as “notorious” you (rightly) indicate that the UN itself does not adhere to legal priniciples or standards of equal treatment.
If so, should Israel’s defense be mounted in the legal arena? Or should we not acknowledge that “it’s all politics” or “it’s all about oil” and act as nations have always done in pursuit of their vital interests thtrough a combination of crafty strategy and blunt force, acknowledging obligations of principle only when this suits our aims?
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your comment. Some thoughts:
While the sense that Israel often serves the ‘whipping boy’ of the global community can yield an inclination to disengage, in an increasingly interdependent and rapidly changing world, Israel must continually pursue common cause with elements of this community with which it shares fundamental values.
Tactics for contending with questionable elements in that regard – such as the UN Human Rights Council – should probably be navigated on a contextually bound, case-by-case basis.
However, a larger point is that by simply navigating crises with tactical responses, Israel fails to address the real challenge, which lies in an infrastructure of conceptual inferiority. Years of Israel’s neglect of the diplomatic and political arenas are the reason the upcoming UN investigations may gain the kind of traction that the Goldstone report did.
Reut recently published a conceptual framework on creating a political firewall to combat Israel’s delegitimization (http://www.reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3769). In it, we outline response guidelines that aim at cultivating a global network to contend with the network mobilized towards Israel’s delegitimization, driving a wedge between critics of Israeli policy and those seeking to delegitimize it by engaging the former and ‘naming and shaming’ the latter, and re-organizing Israel’s foreign affairs establishment, among other elements.
In the absence of a proper recognition of the delegitimization challenge as a strategic and potentially existential threat, and lacking a coherent response strategy that harnesses both the official establishment and global civil society, Israel will continue to manage the crises that reflect the deterioration of its international standing.