Reply

By Eli E. Hertz

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974180408
• ISBN13: 9780974180403
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Myths and Facts, Inc.
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A clearly written reply to a serious travesty of justice

In 2003, the United Nations asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to render an advisory opinion about a barrier that Israel was building to defend its citizens from terror attacks. The next year, the court delivered its advisory opinion. But the opinion was simply a travesty that makes me mistrust international justice. Now we have a book on the issue that clarifies what the court did that was so counterproductive and wrong. We discover that the Court showed bias when it accepted briefs from nations that neither recognize Israel's right to exist nor have diplomatic relations with it, as well as from a terrorist organization that is not a state at all. The next chapter shows that the right of Jews to settle anywhere in the Levant (present day Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza) was established for the British Mandate by the League of Nations in the 1920s, and remains in effect. While it is true that UN resolution 181 recommended the internationalization of Jerusalem, that resolution was simply a non-binding recommendation. It is improper for the Court to treat it as more than that. In addition, it is a myth to say that Jerusalem is traditionally Arab: it has had a Jewish majority since the 1870s. Resolution 181 also recommended the partition plan. Again, that was non-binding, and relied on acceptance by both parties to have any legal status. It did not get that acceptance by the Arab states, who vowed to defy it by force, and who kept that vow. The UN's Article 51 says that nothing shall impair the rights of people, individually or collectively, to defend themselves against an attack of their state. Israel was indeed attacked. The Court said that did not count because the attacker was not a state. But Article 51 does not require the attacker to be a state. And the Court has no mandate to amend this article. Nevertheless, the Court went on from there to completely disregard the terrorism that caused the barrier to be built in the first place, ignoring many applicable UN resolutions that would have required a different conclusion. It also blithely called Israel an aggressor in spite of the fact that only the Security Council, within the UN, can label a Member state as such (the Security Council has never labeled Israel as an aggressor). The author discusses UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. These do not brand Israel as an "unlawful occupier," or an "aggressor." They do not call for Israel to withdraw from all the "territories." These simple facts seem to be ignored by the Court. Hertz notes that the Court calls the building of a barrier to protect the lives of Israelis is "tantamount to de facto annexation" of some West Bank land. Um, there could be some truth to that. But Hertz asks if the ICJ's arbitrary claim that the entire West Bank (including the eastern part of Jerusalem) is Arab isn't even more clearly tantamount to unlawful de facto annexation. I agree with Hertz. In addition, I think t