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Lawless Israel?
By Eric Heinze
Professor of Law
Queen Mary, University of London
Israel's raid on the Mavi Marmara immediately triggered a backlash. Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan has called it 'totally contrary to the principles of international law.'
Accusations of Israel breaching international law are familiar. In recent years, strikes in Lebanon and Gaza have been called 'disproportionate', with politicians and activists citing norms of armed conflict. A few years ago, the International Court of Justice held Israel's security wall, built on disputed territory, to be illegal. Such condemnations start with specific events, but progressively seep into a broader, global view of Israel. The notion of 'lawless' Israel has become a commonplace. Each Israeli misdeed ends up bearing two faces: it is a moral outrage and it is an illegal act.
Israel must be held to global norms, as must all states. The violence following the 2009 Iranian elections, for example, in which hundreds were killed or wounded, was covered as briskly as the Palestinian territories. Cameras showed Iran's crackdown as a moral outrage. But never did the mainstream media report it, as Israel is routinely reported, in terms of Iran's breaches of international law. That same disparity holds for violations committed by Israel's other declared adversaries. The coupling of morality with legality, ubiquitous in reports on Israeli human rights violations, is largely missing from coverage of her neighbors. States like Iran or Libya are cited for international breaches when, for example, they commit acts of international terrorism, or trade in nuclear materials. But the mainstream media rarely, if ever, mention that those states' internal repression also violates international law.
There are several reasons for that disparity. A common one is that democracies like Israel must be held to a higher ethical standard. Yet the problem is that such a criterion, far from applying international law, flatly contradicts it. International human rights law, to which all of Israel's adversaries have officially committed, apply to all states, irrespective of political regime. Indeed, insofar as non-democratic governments by definition contradict certain specific rights (notably, the right to political participation), lack of democracy should not lighten, but rather should intensify the scrutiny a state receives.
Palestinians live in appalling conditions, which must be improved. Nevertheless, even conditions in other democracies, such as India or Brazil, with far more millions of people living in equal squalor, attract nothing like the same degree of censure. Those states have indeed been held up as candidates for permanent seats on a reformed Security Council. Israel, by contrast, is functionally barred even from a temporary seat. Meanwhile, some of her most brutal adversaries, such as Libya, have secured key UN human rights positions.
A second explanation is that human rights are a Western concept, inappropriately imposed upon non-Western states. That position is sometimes held by those who view the Middle East from a post-colonial perspective. However, leaving aside other problems with that view, it scarcely casts a better light on Israel's neighbors, several of whom claim the supremacy of Islamic law. Classical Islamic jurisprudence does not sanction massive, power-mongering brutality and repression any more than modern international norms do. If Islamic law is, as some of Israel's adversaries claim, equal or superior to democracy, then those states are inviting the outside world to hold them to equal, if not higher, standards of treatment of their own people. It as an invitation we too willingly decline.
A third explanation is that international law is precisely that--the law governing conduct beyond a state's borders. On that view, the disparity between Israel and her neighbors makes sense, since Iran, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and others, however bad they are, mostly brutalize people within their borders, whereas Israel abuses people beyond borders that, moreover, remain contested.
The problem with that third view is that it adopts a long outdated version of international law. A cornerstone of international law is that a state's treatment of its own nationals is just as subject to global norms as is conduct beyond its frontiers. Violence on innocent civilians breaches international law when waged by Israel against Palestinians, but also when committed, or tolerated, by Iranian, Syrian, Libyan, Saudi, Egyptian, Sudanese, and indeed Turkish authorities within their own borders. Murder and rape are not 'better' when done by one's own.
The final explanation is the most important, and follows from the third. Journalists often hold degrees in politics or social science. But the world has moved on. Compared to a generation ago, political events are more intricately tied to legal norms. Despite the crucial importance of human rights throughout all corners of the globe, even the largest media outlets still lack reporters knowledgeable about human rights within a context of formal legal training. Once Israel is signally branded as the region's outlaw, journalists perpetuate that label, exercising no independent expertise. When Israel's adversaries commit abuses, often far worse ones, upon their own citizens (still vastly underreported, in comparison to abuses of Palestinians), few editors have any idea whether, or in what way, international law is breached.
That disparity is no mere journalistic detail. Its immediate impact on regional politics is devastating. Once the suggestion has taken hold that Israel is uniquely lawless, the greater attention to Israeli abuses appears justified. In the UN Human Rights Council, Israel's adversaries continue, at every session, to form powerful voting majorities. They repeatedly cite the mantra of lawless Israel to avoid scrutiny of their own records, even to the point of preventing action against genocide in Darfur--all too revealing about their genuine views, and cynical manipulations, of the core values of human rights.
Much of the global public has been infected as well. In a recent major, worldwide survey commissioned by the BBC, respondents rated North Korea better than Israel as a global actor. That concerted styling of Israel as distinctly lawless, when her more abusive adversaries escape any such label, ends in the most striking indifference to egregious abuses throughout the planet. What counts in human rights is not what states actually do, but what gets reported. Libyan or Syrian internal violence is so well perfected, so absolute, so adept at smothering any incipient spark of dissent, that, far from facing the kind of unrelenting hostility directed at Israel, their heinously repressive regimes are mostly ignored. It is difficult to expect Israel to respect international law when the international community applies its norms with such gross hypocrisy.
When asking whether coverage of the Middle East is balanced, we tend to look at news organizations' broader political leanings. In Europe, with longer traditions of broadsheets overtly pinning their colors to the political mast, we have come to expect center-left agencies to devote more attention to Palestinians, and center-right outlets to underscore Israeli security. But those left-right distinctions shed little light on the deeper media distortions. The failure to understand how international norms are respected, or violated, throughout the Middle East, and the wider world, is conspicuous on both the right and the left. It will continue to keep political and public perceptions grossly out of touch with the worst realities of global human rights abuses.
Prof. Eric Heinze is on the Faculty of Laws, Queen Mary University of London, London.
By Eric Heinze |
June 7, 2010; 10:00 AM ET
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Posted by: azaus | June 11, 2010 11:41 PM
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The apartheid attitude against a people no matter what the history books say cannot not be justified. I am unable to comprehend why just half a century after the Jewish people were persecuted, the same actions are now being taken by them against another community. We have fought really hard as a global community to eradicate such state sactioned acts in countries such as South Africa. But it saddens me to see that there is no fight to save another community that is being persecuted by same community that the world fought to save half a century ago. When will we stand up? Is this our message to our future generation during the time of the world cup where all participate as equals?
Posted by: azaus | June 11, 2010 11:40 PM
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Holding Israel to a higher standard is prejudice either against the Arabs and others (treating them like animals) or prejudice against Jews (restraining their rights of self-defense).
Either way, it's a prejudice that literally lets governments get away with murder.
The Russian killing of Chechens, the Turks killing Kurds, the Chinese killing Tibetans, the Sudanese killing in Darfur, the Syrian killing in Hama, the genocide in the Congo, all go on in the shadows as the focus is on Israel.
Likewise, the blockade of Yemen against South Yemen is truly deadly, unlike the blockade against Hamas, yet the blockade in Yemen is practically a secret.
Posted by: FredJ | June 10, 2010 5:45 PM
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Dear Stavvmc,
Thank you for your comment. The duty of international law is not to divide states into "good" and "bad"; and it is certainly not to apply to any state a "lowest common denominator". Its job is to apply high standards, but it must apply those standards even-handedly.
No legal system is perfect. However, when any legal system severely, and over decades, fails to apply its own norms consistently to all members of its own legal community (in this case, the so-called "international community"), its legitimacy, and its moral foundations, become undermined.
That failure becomes critical when neighboring states are all actively involved in the same regional events. When the media, in turn, merely perpetuate the disparity, not only politics, but also public perceptions become distorted; and politics and public perceptions constantly shape each other.
Fundamental failures of law, matched by deep distortions in media coverage, can never lead to fair or rational solutions for any of the parties involved in a political crisis.
EH
Posted by: EricH3 | June 10, 2010 3:25 AM
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Dear Stavvmc,
Thank you for your comment. The duty of international law is not to divide states into "good" and "bad"; and it is certainly not to apply to any state a "lowest common denominator". Its job is to apply high standards, but it must apply those standards even-handedly.
No legal system is perfect. However, when any legal system severely, and over decades, fails to apply its own norms consistently to all members of its own legal community (in this case, the so-called "international community"), its legitimacy, and its moral foundations, become undermined.
That failure becomes critical when neighboring states are all actively involved in the same regional events. When the media, in turn, merely perpetuate the disparity, not only politics, but also public perceptions become distorted; and politics and public perceptions constantly shape each other.
Fundamental failures of law, matched by deep distortions in media coverage, can never lead to fair or rational solutions for any of the parties involved in a political crisis.
EH
Posted by: EricH3 | June 10, 2010 3:24 AM
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This reminds me of arguments made by apologists for the apartheid regime growing up in South Africa. As bad as things seemed for South African blacks, they were better off than those in other African countries, and by extension apartheid was humane, the argument went. The argument that "You might think we are bad, but the guys next door are much worse" does not prove you are good.
Is Israel demonized and wrongfully accused of international law violations? That's subject to debate, but this essay makes the argument that Israel should be compared to the lowest common denominator. As the sole state representative of Jewish ethical traditions and the culmination of serving as the conscience of the persecuted for two thousand years of exile, perhaps it's not entirely appropriate for Israel to hold itself to a higher standard.
Posted by: Stavvmc | June 9, 2010 5:53 PM
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Why such immense hatred against Israel? Why such bias towards others who are far more objectionable towards many international norms? I believe that it comes down to a religious tension between Israel and many nations. Israel represents something very special. The Old Testament and the God of the Old Testament. While the Old Testament has passed and the New Testament has taken hold, there are still many prophecies both Old Testament and New concerning Israel that are rapidly coming to pass. All nations will be against Israel in the end, and Israel will be desperate, but God will save. Acts 2:38-39
Posted by: wldavis1 | June 8, 2010 6:21 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
The apartheid attitude against a people no matter what the history books say cannot not be justified. I am unable to comprehend why just half a century after the Jewish people were persecuted, the same actions are now being taken by them against another community. We have fought really hard as a global community to eradicate such state sactioned acts in countries such as South Africa. But it saddens me to see that there is no fight to save another community that is being persecuted by same community that the world fought to save half a century ago. When will we stand up? Is this our message to our future generation during the time of the world cup where all participate as equals?