Israel and the Struggle Over the International Laws of War Hardback - 2012

Lawfare: a political weapon used by terrorists--and supported by the United Nations

In recent years, the term lawfare has come to describe the use of international law as a political weapon. The Goldstone Report, which was published by the United Nations in September 2009, and the Gaza flotilla controversy, which erupted at the end of May 2010, are examples of lawfare in action. In both cases, diplomats, international human rights lawyers, and UN officials put forward weak or indefensible legal arguments to condemn actions taken by Israel in self-defense. In Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War, Peter Berkowitz exposes these abuses of the international laws of war by bringing into focus the flawed assumptions on which they rest and refuting the defective claims they promulgate.

Berkowitz shows how the Goldstone Report engaged in disreputable fact-finding and misapplied the relevant legal tests, even as its mission lacked proper foundations in international law. And he demonstrates that the arguments presented in the Gaza flotilla controversy to condemn Israel's blockade of Gaza as unlawful prove on inspection to be unsound and insubstantial. The result, he explains, is to reward terrorists who, in gross violation of the international laws of war, seek to eradicate the distinction between civilian and military objects and to punish liberal democracies--in particular Israel and the United States--that expose their soldiers and civilian populations to heightened risk in the quest to wage war lawfully.