The whole point of law is to prevent humans from interacting in a world where only power dictates human affairs, and instead, to establish a system of rules grounded in justice. But for this to happen, a lot of power needs to be forcibly shifted away from the powerful, and into the hands of — well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?

In a democratic society, the power is shifted into the hands of the police and courts of justice. These, in turn, are held accountable to a whole apparatus of elections, approvals, and appointments, the bottom line of which is that if people charged with effecting justice abuse their power, everyone will know about it, and those responsible will be punished and deterred. Also, there are principles and rules of legislation to make sure that laws are just — such as, for example, the idea that laws should not be enforced selectively, or passed with a specific person as the target.

In the international arena, however, the whole process of “law” doesn’t have an effective system of accountability or of checks and balances. This is its Achilles’ heel, which proponents of international law are permanently trying to make us ignore. Instead of being created by elected legislatures, executed by appointed enforcement apparatuses, and applied by judicial officials, international law is defined in a series of treaties that are often themselves a reflection of power politics, and its enforcement lies in the hands of unaccountable bodies like the UN, and especially a swath of NGOs, many of which receive their budgets from interest groups. The lack of an effective system of accountability means that individual countries can bear the brunt of a power politics that is supercharged with the legitimacy and invasive tools of law. Nowhere is this felt more keenly than with regard to Israel.

In an important column today, Gerald Steinberg describes the increasing abuse of the institutions of international law against Israel. He focuses on a series of new reports published in the wake of “inquiries” regarding possible Israeli war crimes during Operation Cast Lead this past Winter. Steinberg’s conclusion:

The three reports published and publicized last week, like dozens that have come before, combine pseudo-legal rhetoric, technical allegations regarding Israel’s defense against terror attacks, automatic sympathy for Palestinian victims, and condemnation of Israel. The images and the titles reflect these biases – Amnesty’s is headlined: “Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction.”

Researchers led by Donatella Rovera claim they could not find evidence of the use of human shields by Hamas. In fact, the entire population of Gaza was one massive human shield, with weapons stored and fired from schools, mosques, hospitals and similar civilian structures (in one infamous case, during a live video broadcast widely viewed on Youtube.)

Similarly, the 10-page ICRC publication (“Gaza: 1.5 Million People Trapped in Despair”) consists largely of pictures of Palestinians and none of Israelis in Sderot – the rights of Israelis are irrelevant, as they are in the case of the UN and the Goldstone commission…

In addition to the moral facade, HRW’s report (“Precisely Wrong”) uses hi-tech language to attack the IDF’s use of advanced drones. Here, the “war crimes” charges are based on six carefully chosen cases. The “evidence” comes from Palestinian claims of having heard and seen the arrival of these tiny and soundless weapons – a superhuman feat.
HRW’s “military analyst” Marc Garlasco added dubious assumptions regarding the “impact mark of the missile and the fragmentation pattern” consistent with Spike missiles. Although a few reporters were professional enough to investigate the details, check with independent experts, and expose the dubious claims, most reports copied Garlasco’s mix of fact and fiction without question. (They also omit mention of HRW fund-raising in Saudi Arabia that cites their anti-Israel campaigns.)

These events, as well as the ongoing Goldstone inquiry, are part of the broader strategy of demonization adopted at the NGO Forum at the 2001 UN Durban Conference. The goal is to brand and isolate Israel as the new “apartheid” state.

Israel has been heavily criticized for refusing to cooperate with international inquiries into its tactics of war. But with so transparent an abuse of “international law” going on at Israel’s expense, the Jewish state seems to have little choice.