Israel’s legitimacy continues to be challenged on the international scene, according to experts speaking at the conference of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists held here this week.
Eugene Rostow, visiting research professor of law and diplomacy at National Defense University, Washington, DC, warned Monday that a 1984 decision of the International Court of Justice may have provided the Arab countries with rationale to wage war against Israel.
In the case, Nicaragua asked the court to order the U.S. to cease mining Nicaraguan ports and aiding attacks on its territory. The court ruled in favor of Nicaragua by prohibiting the right to intervene in another state for political and moral reasons. But the court made clear that this did not apply in cases involving decolonization.
Rostow, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration and one of the drafters UN Resolutions 242 and 338, said the exclusion provides a legal loophole for the Arab states to fight against Israel, which they consider a colonial power.
CALLED CHALLENGE TO UN CHARTER
“It’s a very ominous and dangerous idea,” said Rostow. He explained that the decision challenges the provision of the UN Charter, which prohibits the international use of force except for purposes of self-defense.
“To go beyond the limited (and controversial) principle of humanitarian intervention and recognize a general legal right to assist revolutions against governments characterized as ‘colonist’ or otherwise repugnant on political or moral grounds is to … authorize war of all against all,” Rostow said in a paper he wrote on the subject.
But Rostow added that the very existence of the UN Charter may prevent the worst from happening.
“The remarkable thing about the international law regarding the international use of force is … every time there’s a collapse the states go back and pursue the goal of putting the international use of force under regulation and under control, announcing that it is a practical necessity and moral necessity in world as chaotic as our world is,” said Rostow.
Rostow also said that UN Resolutions 242 and 338 were “the only solid basis” for negotiating a peace treaty. He said that Israel met the requirements of the resolutions by returning 90 percent of its territory in the form of the Sinai Peninsula.
SOVIETS CALLED ANTI-ZIONIST
In a separate speech, William Korey, a consultant for B’nai B’rith International, noted that despite the doctrine of “glasnost” (openness), the Soviet government is still strongly anti-Zionist and last February challenged the UN status of the International Council of Jewish Women. Korey explained that for years the Soviets have insisted on delegitimizing Israel in the UN to give credence to their own anti-Semitism.
But the Soviets were unsuccessful in introducing an anti-Zionism resolution in the UN Women’s Conference held in 1985 in Kenya, Korey said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
