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The Hypocrisy of "Universal Jurisdiction"

[Hudson Institute New York] Alan M. Dershowitz - Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was arrested when he set foot in Great Britain. (He was quickly released on grounds of diplomatic immunity because he was an official visitor.) And now Moshe Yaalon, an Israeli government minister and former Army Chief of Staff, was forced to cancel a trip he was scheduled to make in London on behalf of a charity, for fear that he too would be arrested. The charges against these two distinguished public officials are that they committed war crimes against Palestinian terrorists and civilians. Those demanding these arrests are political activists seeking to invoke so-called "universal jurisdiction" against those who they consider guilty of war crimes and genocide. They would never dream of demanding the arrest of Hamas murderers who target Israeli schoolchildren for suicide bombings or rocket attacks. They are willfully misusing the concepts of human rights and universal jurisdiction to serve their anti-Israel and anti-Western ideology. Let there be a legal proceeding - a fair one in an objective forum - in which Israel's policies are tested against those of other countries. The end result would be that Ehud Barak and Moshe Yaalon will be able to hold their heads high in the full knowledge that what they have done meets and exceeds every standard of international law applicable to their conduct. The writer is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
2009-10-08 06:00:00
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