U.N.'s Newest Joke
Aron U. Raskas
It is a fundamental tenet of international law that a country has the right - arguably the duty - to protect its citizens from death and violence perpetrated by others. It is equally indisputable that, in the history of mankind (civilization no longer seems an appropriate word), there has never been a campaign of terrorism as barbaric as the indiscriminate suicide attacks perpetrated recently against Israeli civilians.
Neither of these facts seemed to matter to the potentates posing as judges on the International Court of Justice in The Hague as it declared unlawful a fence that Israel has built to protect its citizens from these attacks. Then again, that should not be surprising given the nature of this court or the manner in which the case came to it.
The ICJ describes itself as the "principal judicial organ of the United Nations." The court's opinion was procured through a United Nations resolution co-sponsored by the Palestinian Authority and a coalition of Islamic countries seeking to do politically what they have failed to do violently for more than 50 years: isolate and ultimately eliminate the Jewish state.
The court's concern for fairness is best highlighted by the fact that an Israeli judge cannot be elected to the court, nor can Israel even participate in the voting for the court's judges, because Israel, like no other nation, is barred from participating in U.N. Geneva-based regional groups.
Such farcical machinations are what occur in an organization such as the United Nations, where Libya serves as the chair of the Committee on Human Rights and Syria chairs the Security Council. A fence built by a Jewish nation to protect its citizens generates the ire of this body, while it has yet to ever convene to condemn the terrorism that precipitated the fence.
The United States, European Union, Russia, Israel and other states urged the court not to involve itself in this political matter because it lacked jurisdiction or any other good reason to do so. Alas, the court could not resist the temptation.
The U.S. government - from the Bush administration to Democrats like John Kerry and Hillary Rodham Clinton - was correct to squarely reject the court's gratuitous conclusions. Indeed, it was precisely fear of this sort of political homily masquerading as judicial exegesis that led Congress to reject the U.N. treaty seeking to establish a similar International Criminal Court.
Israel's security barrier is a non-violent response to a scourge of terrorism that no civilized nation would tolerate as Israel has. When the United States was attacked by terrorists on its soil, it went to war against an enemy thousands of miles away. For Israel, that enemy is literally across the road.
Palestinians regularly seek to portray Israel as an awesome military power seeking to do them great harm. It is therefore worth noting just what Israel has not done even in the face of the savagery emanating directly from Palestinian population centers. It has been pointedly restrained in its military response, even putting its own soldiers at greater risk to avoid casualties to the broader Palestinian population.
Since September 2000, nearly 7,000 Israelis have been brutally maimed in more than 20,000 terrorist attacks. Close to 1,000 Israelis - about 1 of every 6,000 citizens! - have been killed by Palestinian terrorists.
The security barrier has but one purpose: to save lives. It is a defensive response to the terrorism that brought it about.
And it works. Since Israel completed the fence in northern Samaria, it has reduced the number of effective suicide attacks by 90 percent and has saved countless lives.
None of this, however, seemed to matter to the ICJ, as it reliably followed the United Nations' lead.
For example, while noting in one part of its decision that the barrier is comprised primarily of a chain link "fence with electronic sensors," and that barely 3 percent of the barrier is a concrete wall (where Palestinian villages are but yards from Israeli highways or villages), the court chose to refer to the barrier as a "wall" throughout its decision because that was the "terminology employed" by the Arab propaganda machines that sponsored the U.N. resolution.
The court gave objective observers many other reasons to question its integrity and intellectual honesty as well.
In a 59-page opinion, it addressed and dismissed in three sentences Israelís right to protect its citizens. While painstakingly cataloging instances where trees were destroyed, farmers were affected or passage was made difficult because of the fence, the court made not a single mention of an Israeli who lost a parent, child or a limb because they made the mistake of patronizing a cafe where a Palestinian from an area now behind the fence chose to explode a bomb and kill Jews.
The court held that the fence was unlawful because it is built primarily upon what the Arab nations have termed Palestinian land. The court paid little mind to the fact that these are disputed territories, which have never been a part of a Palestinian state. They are still subject to negotiations between the parties. Yet, astonishingly, the court disingenuously sought to bolster its decision by simply referring to this territory as Palestine, despite that no such state exists.
Israel has acted with great moral integrity in this difficult war on terror. It would be refreshing for all other nations to do the same.
Aron U. Raskas, a Baltimore attorney and a frequent commentator on Israeli affairs, is a member of the Advisory Board of the One Jerusalem organization.
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