Bid To Prevent TAU Appointment Of Israeli Expert In Military Law Fails

Tel Aviv University (TAU) plans to hire a senior Israeli army officer to lecture on international law despite an outcry from opponents of Israel’s recent Gaza incursion.

Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, head of the international law division at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Military Advocate General’s Office, has drawn the ire of doves for authorizing the bombing of a Gaza police barracks.

Professor Chaim Gans, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University and a member of the German government-funded Minerva human rights organization, together with the New York-based Ford Foundation and the Washington-based New Israel Fund, wrote a letter attacking Col Sharvit-Baruch’s credentials.

“At issue is ‘trick litigation,’ which legalizes the rather massive killing of innocent people and damages the internal values that are worthy of legal academia,” Mr. Gans wrote in a letter to Professor Hanoch Dagan, the university’s dean of law. “More importantly, it damages the values worthy of Israel.”

Mr. Dagan said that Col. Sharvit-Baruch would nonetheless teach a course in international law at the university during this year’s second semester as planned.

“We have a clear policy of not capitulating to pressure from one side or another,” a university spokesman said. “Pluralism is the university’s sustenance, part of the justification for its existence and one of its most important social roles.”

Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak sent a letter to the university last week defending Col. Sharvit-Baruch’s credentials.

“Sharvit-Baruch is a very talented officer who does her job faithfully to the best of her abilities, while perpetually examining IDF activity and issuing restrictions and prohibitions as well as giving authorization for actions, in keeping with the rules of what is permissible and what is not in international law,” Mr. Barak wrote. “Her integration in the process attests a thousand times to the morality of the IDF, which, as opposed to Hamas, did not deliberately target a completely blameless population.”

The veteran Israeli journalist Dan Magolit denounced efforts to bar Col. Sharvit-Baruch from teaching at Tel-Aviv University as a “disgraceful McCarthyist campaign.”

“The pro-Palestinian leftists demanded that her promotion be stopped, and they were repelled,” Mr. Magolit said. “This hostile course of action was not personally directed against Pnina. She is merely a tool in a sophisticated plot being hatched by the pro-Palestinians to bind Tel Aviv University to a mendacious position that charges that the IDF committed war crimes in its defense of the resident of southern Israel.”

Israel Fights Spanish Litigation

The Israel State Attorney’s Office hasn’t waited for Spanish legal proceedings pertaining to the suit that filed against former high-ranking Israeli security establishment officials. The suit was filed in Spain in accord with the Spanish courts’ claim to universal jurisdiction in the aftermath of the killing of Hamas member Salah Shehade. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) bombed him, together with his family. The Spanish government wants to bring charges against these Israeli government officials, alleging that the killing of the terrorist and his family constituted a human rights violation.

The Israel State Attorney’s Office urgently sent to the Spanish authorities large quantities of documents and information that explain in detail all of the processes that had been taken in Israel regarding Mr. Shehade.

The Israel State Attorney’s Office informed the Spanish authorities the Israeli High Court of Justice recently rejected a petition filed by a left-wing Israeli organization seeking a court order enjoining a criminal investigation of the targeted killing operation against Mr. Shehade.

The Israel High Court of Justice ruled that the petitioners failed to prove that there had been any flaw in the attorney general and judge advocate general’s decision not to launch a criminal investigation into the affair.

It also ruled the establishment of the investigative committee, its composition and its activity were all under the purview of the executive authority.

“We hope that the documents that we’ve submitted will lead the Spanish court to change its decision,” said one senior Justice Ministry source.

In tandem, Israel will demand that European Union countries to cease and desist from their initiative to prosecute Israeli officers for Israel’s military policies.

The Israel Foreign Ministry issued a statement yesterday that Israel had already received assurances from Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos, who is currently visiting Israel, that Spain could drop the case.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said Mr. Moratinos had promised that his government would take action to change legislation and to restrict the court’s authority, but noted that the legal system in his country was free, refusing to elaborate further.

“Anyone who calls the killing of a terrorist such as Salah Shehade a ‘crime against humanity,’ lives in an upside-down world,” Mr. Barak said.

The initiative to get foreign governments to prosecute Israel emanated from the initiative of a number of left-wing organizations that also operate with funding from the Washington-based New Israel Fund.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com