NIF 2004 Fellow Shamai
Leibowitz:
Support for Divestment and Single-State Solutions
Under the twenty-year old Israel-U.S. Civil
Liberties Program, the New Israel Fund sends
a pair of Fellows annually to the American University's Washington College of Law in
Washington, D.C. The Fellows receive a full tuition waiver as they complete the
one year Master's Degree in Law program (LL.M.), as well as a $2,000 stipend
for living expenses. In exchange for the stipend and waiver, the Fellows must
agree to return to Israel after completion of their studies and work for a year
in a NIF-approved civil rights organization. The NIF in Israel is responsible
for selecting the fellows, subject only to the condition that at least one of
the Fellows must be a woman. In recent years, the NIF has unofficially
adopted an additional condition that one of the Fellows must be an Arab.
The declared agenda
of the NIF in choosing Fellows is to provide "academic and professional
experience to Israeli lawyers specializing in civil rights" in order to
create and maintain civil rights leadership in Israel.
The 2004 Jewish Fellow is Shamai Leibowitz. Since receiving the Fellowship,
Leibowitz has devoted great efforts to advancing the cause of economic and
diplomatic war against the existence of the Jewish state.
In June, 2004 Leibowitz participated in the Palestine/Israel
Conference on One Democratic State in Lausanne. The Collective for Peace in
Israel/Palestine, created in order to hold the conference, promotes the
idea described in the P.L.O. charter of eliminating the state of Israel and
replacing it with a single "democratic" state. The conference adopted
a declaration
calling for an end to the state of Israel, and its replacement with a single
state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea that would be open to a
Palestinian "right of return." Leibowitz's reported address to the
conference, entitled "The Care and Feeding of the Binational State,"
has not yet been published as a paper by the Collective. Doubtless, though, the
address was similar to Leibowitz's similarly unpublished "Legal Strategies
for a One-State Framework," originally scheduled to be delivered at a
November 13, 2003 Montreal conference
of the Association for One
Democratic State in Palestine/Israel.
In November, 2004 Leibowitz testified before the
Somerville City Council in favor of a resolution imposing economic sanctions on
Israel through divestment. According to
Leibowitz, "divestment resolutions are an effective remedy for the severe
violence plaguing the Israelis and the Palestinians for 37 years."
Leibowitz claimed to have been ordered as a soldier in the I.D.F. to
"commit grave human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories" and that his platoon "shot and killed unarmed
Palestinian civilians" and committed other war crimes as "daily
occurrences." Leibowitz also railed against the peace process on the
grounds that it merely constitutes "an excuse to divert world attention
away from the infliction of suffering, humiliation and destruction upon the
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories."
In March, 2005, Leibowitz published an article
in the Nation claiming that "international law mandates the use of
sanctions to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions and human rights
treaties" and calling upon "American civic institutions to support a
multi-tiered campaign of strategic, selective sanctions against Israel until
the occupation ends." Leibowitz's proposed sanctions against Israel would
include barring Israeli politicians and military personnel from traveling
abroad and hauling them before international courts for alleged human rights
violations, barring all sales of arms to Israel, and ending all investment in
any company that sells to the Israeli military. Leibowitz specifically singled
out for praise the Presbyterian
Church and World
Council of Churches for their divestment efforts against the Jewish state.
During the same month, Leibowitz spoke at
the Philadelphia Cathedral in support of the Presbyterian Church's divestment
campaign and urged other Christian churches to join in imposing economic
sanctions on Israel. This followed on a speech in Oak
Park, Illinois in February, 2005 similarly calling for economic sanctions
against the Jewish state.
Leibowitz's anti-Israel activity could hardly have come as a surprise to the
NIF Leibowitz came out in favor of economic warfare against Israel several
years ago. At the October 2002 Second National Student Conference on the
Palestinian Solidarity Movement at the University of Michigan, Leibowitz
accepted an invitation
to argue for divestment alongside the likes of Sami al-Arien (under indictment
for his longtime activities in the service of the Palestine Islamic Jihad
terrorist organization).
Leibowitz's legal work in Israel prior to his Fellowship is notable
primarily for its political quality, rather than its devotion to civil rights.
For several years, Leibowitz has served as counsel
for International
Solidarity Movement activists who illegally
enter the state of Israel in order to foil anti-terror
operations. Leibowitz has also attempted to intimidate reporters into silence
through libel suits, such as the one he filed
on behalf of I.S.M. activist Radhika Sainath
against Jerusalem reporter Judy
Balint for writing
of Sainath's efforts to help Palestinians avoid security checks (The suit was
ultimately dismissed.). Employment of the law in order to chill political
reportage is generally thought of as inimical to the promotion of civil rights.
Leibowitz achieved public recognition in Israel for his decision to
represent Marwan
Barghouti, West Bank leader of the terrorist al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in his
murder trial in Israel. Leibowitz apparently took on the representation because
of his admiration for his client, and he claimed that trying Barghouti was
immoral, since Barghouti was the Palestinian Moses leading his people to
liberty (Ha'aretz, 4 Oct. 2002). Leibowitz expanded on the theme in a column
published by the Israeli news website nfc.co.il,
where he argued that the proper understanding of the Exodus story is that the
Almighty acted as a terrorist, killing Egyptian children and innocents as
punishment for Egyptian arrogance in lording it over another nation, and it
would behoove Israel to ask itself how it has become the Egyptians.
For Jewish audiences, such as readers of the Ha'aretz newspapers, Leibowitz
has continued to claim to support justice in the form of "two states for
two peoples" (Ha'aretz, 29 Sep. 2002). He has also repeatedly condemned
all terrorism and killing of the innocent in the abstract, while continuing to
extol the heroism of Palestinian terrorists and condemn anti-terrorist Israeli
measures.
While Leibowitz is likely the most notorious of NIF Fellows, others have
taken notable actions in the fight to delegitimize the Jewish state. Netta
Amar, a 2001
Fellow was among 218 signatories to a public
call in October, 2000 to the United States Congress to respond the outbreak
of Palestinian violence by suspending all aid to Israel. Yohanna Lerman, a 2000 Emily
Skolnick Law Fellow, is a member
of Women in Black and signed the Al Awda petition in 2000 calling for Israel to
yield to the Palestinian "right of return." Hassan Jabareen, a 1994
Fellow, founded Adalah;
three of Adalah's
eight-person legal staff are former or current Fellows (Hassan Jabareen, Marwan
Dalal and Gadeer Nicola). An additional two Fellows
are listed by the NIF as having served as legal staff for Adalah (Jamil Dakwar
and Suhad Hammoud), and another Fellow is listed as an Adalah board member
(Muhammed Dahleh). Several of these NIF Fellows are listed in Adalah's reports as having
playing important roles in Adalah's activities at the 2001 Durban conference against
"racism," where Adalah actively
promoted efforts to demonize Israel as an "apartheid" state
committing "genocide" against Palestinians.
Avi Bell