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The Swedish Foreign Minister’s Condemnations of Israel Are Legally Ignorant and Morally Obtuse

Jan. 18 2016

In the most recent of many anti-Israel declarations, the Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, publicly accused the Jewish state of violating international law by carrying out “extrajudicial executions”; her reference was to the shooting by security forces of terrorists in the midst of carrying out lethal attacks. Jerusalem responded by declaring Wallstrom unwelcome in the country. Noah Feldman writes:

Wallstrom referred to . . . “the importance of the principles of proportionality and distinction.” Proportionality and distinction belong to the body of international law governing the use of military force in wartime against combatants.

But these principles don’t apply to domestic police arresting civilians committing violence, like the stabbers in Israel. . . . This is especially important because Wallstrom went out of her way to emphasize that “21 Israelis and 100 Palestinians were killed in connection with knife attacks, acts of violence, demonstrations, and clashes.” The numbers are legally irrelevant.

That also makes moral sense. Police making arrests aren’t morally or legally obligated to allow innocent people to die in order to balance the number of deaths of criminal attackers. Effective police are supposed to save the innocent and subdue the attackers, by lethal means if necessary. . . .

Wallstrom’s legal error is thus also a moral error, reflected in her statement that Israelis and Palestinians “were killed in connection with knife attacks.” The Israelis in question were killed by Palestinians wielding knives. Insofar as it’s possible to determine, the Palestinians in question were killed after they wielded the knives, attacking Israelis. There’s a crucial moral difference between the two kinds of “connection” to the knife attacks.

Read more at Bloomberg

More about: Europe and Israel, Israel & Zionism, Israel diplomacy, Palestinian terror, Sweden

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic