Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.
The video can be found here
Sarah: Good afternoon in the United States, and good evening here in Israel. I’m really honored to be here. It’s been a very interesting experience. Since I arrived on Tuesday, we’ve had two alarms, two as a coach. So I have a little taste of what wonderful Israelis such as Moshe Jaffee have to go through all the time, and what my children here have to experience all the time. We are very honored today to have Moshe Jaffee, who got his LLM from Columbia University and he’s studying for his doctorate of law at the University of Michigan Law School. He has taught at Harvard University Law School, at West Point and at many, many other places. He is an international legal scholar who has specialized also in humanitarian law and has worked as an advocate general for the state of Israel, and has seen a tremendous, a tremendous amount that does not get reported on the front pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post. So it is indeed a wonderful honor and a pleasure to have Moshe Jaffee with us today, who is going to talk a little bit about humanitarian law, what is going on with the state of Israel, what the state of Israel is providing to the people in Gaza, and the kind of international legal situation they now find themselves in. So, Moshe, take it away.
Moshe Jaffee: Hi. Thank you so much, Sarah, for having me and for inviting me. It’s an honor to be here. Lily, thank you for the technical support. I appreciate it. It’s really a big honor. So you all hear in the news all the time how Israel is starving the population in Gaza. There’s a genocide, deportation, all these horrifying news articles where Israel is basically violating every article in the international law. Now, it’s very easy to go through international law and explain why yes, why not, and go into the argue. But I’m not planning on giving you an international law course here, or talking about what’s the humanitarian law demands here or that. I’m going to prove to you by actual personal experience and Supreme Court decisions that probably you can just read them by yourselves, how Israel is so careful, you say, in Hebrew, [foreign words] small and big to keep dignity, moral, humanitarian law, Israeli constitutional law, and every aspect of human rights, really not to violate anything.
You’ll see in a second, it’s a very long list of examples that some would say, many would say in Israel that the IDF and the court went too far, by the way of really protecting human rights and actually we lost it a little bit, and we need to go back to the center. Now, I won’t say if it’s true or not, I will leave that for you to judge, but just to show how much, really you don’t read it on the news, Israel is protecting human rights beyond any international demand. Now, I will start with a very, maybe extreme example. This is not a regular situation in Israel, but it’s an extreme example, just to show before I start talking. This is something that was on the news just a few weeks ago where it came out on the news that the military police called prisoners from Hamas, from the Nukhba of Hamas that were arrested in Israel and were released back to Gaza to see if they have any complaints or violation they want to report.
So we became like Delta Airline customer service, we call to make sure how was your experience in jail. So on the one hand, it’s beautiful, they want to make sure that no violation of human rights happened, but a lot of criticism was also on this decision. Now, again, I’m not saying if it’s good, if it’s bad, just showing how far we go as a military and as a country to really make sure nothing happened and if something happened, we’ll investigate. Now, I have to say, and I have to be honest, obviously, people make mistakes, or we also have people that violate the law. That happens but when it happens, they go to court, and they can sit in prison. As I said, military police investigate. Two examples that I can just bring out of the top of my head, Elor Azaria was a very famous example a few years ago, was a soldier that he was in a situation where a terrorist was neutralized already, and he shot him in the head while he was on the floor neutralized. It was on camera and the soldier went to prison.
Another example, not as severe, but also to show how the army is really trying to make sure everything is okay. There is a parliament member, Yitzhak Kroizer. He is a military combat reserve soldier. he went into Gaza and he put up on Facebook a picture of him sitting in a big living room in Gaza with graffiti behind him saying, this is the parliament chamber of Parliament member, blah, blah, blah. Now, he is out of the army. He was kicked out of the army. He was in special forces. Sir, you’re a parliament member, everything, you are a soldier. You risked your life for Israel, you’re done, you’re out. So, and this is something that’s okay. It’s a war. The house was destroyed anyways, no, this is a violation of international law. You cannot do that. You are out. Done. So this is just an example to start on how it’s really looking from the inside.
Now, another comment before is just to think that, one of the reasons at least was first of all, okay, we want to keep international law. We want to make sure we keep human rights, which is wonderful, but also the army wanted to make sure, and the Supreme Court kept on saying it again and again, that we are the shield against the Hague. We don’t want to get into the situation where the Hague will bring out a warrant of arrest to our prime minister. As we all know, this didn’t work, the plan didn’t work, and we have this warrants against Bibi[?], Gallant, et cetera, et cetera.
So this is the situation. You need to understand before the examples that today legal advisors in the army have so much power, maybe the ultimate power. We, and I say because I’m one of them, and I’m not saying again, good, bad, there are a lot of great things, there are a lot of problematic things in that. But we are involved in almost every decision. Every unit has a legal advisor and we are involved. I’ll give you one example from my day-to-day life that I think most of you will say like this, like what? It’s like why so much? There are reasons for that. Not only that, the Supreme Court, and we are the only Supreme Court in the world that gives Palestinians a direct line for petitions to the Supreme Court. For example, if I feel that the United States is doing something wrong to me, I cannot go to the United States Supreme Court to complain because I’m not a citizen. I want to have standing. They won’t let me. Palestinians they’re not citizens, even not sure what the situation. International law, yes, occupy territory, not occupy territory, it doesn’t really matter. They have a direct line. They file thousands of petitions or hundreds of petitions every year on things that I will give more examples. The house demolitions, the fence, money compensation, holding corpse, day-to-day things, block on the roads, whatever you would want. So the Supreme Court is very much involved. Legal advisors have a lot of power.
Now I want to start with some examples. I want to start with a story. Imagine, I’m asking all of you to imagine that you are in the Navy Seals and you’re in the Navy Seals, and you finally found Bin Laden, you found Bin Laden, and you’re surrounding the house of Bin Laden. Everybody ready with the guns? We’re about to breach 3, 2, 1, you’re about to kick. Then the officer says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have to get the Supreme Court on the phone to get approval. Can we arrest him? Yes or no? Now, usually when it’s not a webinar, I ask the people in the crowd, do you think this is a reasonable scenario? Do you think that will ever happen in the United States? And I get a 100% no. Now, we will see in a minute, it’s not exactly like that in Israel, but it’s not very far. Now, I have to be honest also, the examples I’m going to bring are the extreme examples, I have to be fair, but they are real and they happened, and this is part of what’s going on. Remember this story because in a few minutes, I’m going to give this example, but first I want to start with my personal experience, and I want to tell you another story about Mr. John.
Mr. John is a terrorist. Now he’s serving in the in the Israeli prison after killing 10 Jews. Besides the fact that he gets a very nice salary from the Palestinian authority, and this salary gets higher and higher as more Jews that he kills will put that aside, he will also get money from Hamas or from the Jihad Islamic. This money that he gets, or usually his family would get for him is what we call terrorism money. Terrorism money in the United States, in Israel, and basically almost all around the world is illegal money. The fact that it’s illegal money means that we can compensate this money. So what happens? This happens daily. The IDF goes at night, knocks on the door of Mr. John’s family’s house. Hello, you got 100 bucks. When I say 100 bucks, sometimes it’s literally 100 bucks and this is important. You got 100 bucks, 1,000 bucks from Hamas. We’re taking the money. Simple, right?
I want you to know now how this procedure looks from behind the scene. This 100 bucks, now, listen carefully, this 100 bucks, we first come to me for a pre-approval. I will get intelligence, I will get the reports. I will look, and I’ll make sure there’s enough evidence to see that these 100 bucks are really indeed Hamas money. Good. After that, I get previous approval, good. Now, they will go do it, and they might call me from the field at 2:00 a.m. to ask a real time approval because I don’t know, maybe the wife is not there, maybe it’s the brother-in-law, maybe there’s no cash, there’s a car. Can we take the car? They want to make sure they’re doing everything kosher, everything, okay?
So they will call me, legal approval on the spot. After that, I will have to give a legal approval after act. I will look at the compensation report. I will look again on the intelligence. I will make sure everything is okay, that it wasn’t too much money, that the idea is the same, that it didn’t violate any right. I will make sure. You think it’s enough? You are wrong. After that there’s an appeal committee of three lieutenant colonels that will listen and they can decide, you know what, give them back the money. After that, the aluf, which is basically there’s the head of chief of staff, this is number two, general. He would personally sign every warrant personally sign. After that, there’s a direct line to the Supreme Court to say, we want our money back.
This is just one example from my life of 100 bucks, because as I said, [foreign words], small things, 100 bucks and a house demolition, we look at it at the same way. We do not want to violate human rights. We do not want to harm or to violate international law, and also Israeli constitutional law. So again, imagine I’m talking about 100 bucks, 1,000 bucks, sometimes it’s more. This is the process. We have to be available 24/7 legal advisors, 24/7 on call, Shabbos, holidays. It might happen. We have to say, yeah, you can, no, you cannot. Many times we would say you can’t. So that’s me, those are my personal problems. But now I’m going to tell you a little bit about the Supreme Court. I want to start with a video and remember my story with [inaudible], we will get there. I didn’t forget. Don’t worry. I want to start with the video. Now, the video is in Hebrew. I will apologize, but I will translate while we’ll see the video, because I think it’s very powerful.
The speaker in the video is Hanan Melcer. Hanan Melcer is the previous deputy of Chief Justice, meaning number two in the Israeli Supreme Court. He’s talking about the siege that was made on the Nativity Church. The church that is in Bethlehem where the 2000 terrorists took over the place, held the priest and some of the prayers there, or some of the people that prayed there as hostages and the army, like in the movies, came, made a siege, nobody in, nobody out. We want to save the hostages starting negotiation. I want to show you what Hanan Melcer is saying. So with your permission, I’m going to share my screen. Just one second. Again, I apologize, it’s in Hebrew. To be honest, I tried the whole day to add English subtitles, but I failed. I’m sorry. So, first he explained what’s the case, and then now he started.
Hanan Melcer: [Foreign words]
Moshe: So there was a siege and they filed a petition with the Supreme Court against the siege.
Hanan: [Foreign words]
Moshe: Against the behavior of [foreign word], the IDF.
Hana: [Foreign words]
Moshe: He says we did give food but the food went to Hamas, not to the hostages.
Moshe: The Supreme Court found while we were fighting during the war, this is important, Bagatz Supreme Court found that the right thing to do was during the war to run the show. [Foreign words] During the war, we decided we take over, we are going to run the show. Listen.
Moshe: By the reasons of reasonableness, we’ll decide what’s reasonable.
Moshe: The Supreme Court will say, who would go in, who would go out, who would get food. The end of the event was that besides two people that Hamas killed.
Moshe: All the hostages were released.
Moshe: It’s true that we gave, say we, we Supreme Court.
Moshe: Israel gave them, they left. We didn’t arrest them, we didn’t stop them.
Moshe: All these events
Moshe: During the war,
Moshe: During fighting
Moshe: Was solved
Moshe: But no noise, quietly in international aspects.
Moshe: All the words [inaudible] said “Kol Hakavod” they praised the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court solved it quietly. Now, again, I’m not giving it as a criticism or I’m not saying that it was good. I’m just saying the fact. War, we want to save the hostages. Army is negotiating Supreme Court. No, no, we’re taking over. We will decide what’s humanitarian, what’s not humanitarian, we’re going to decide. He says it. I’m not saying it. He says it. Yes, we ran the show, thanks to the way we ran it only two people died, and the international community didn’t say anything against us. So Kol Hakavod, the way to go, Israeli Supreme Court. So this is a video, and I thought I could have told you about it, but I think it’s very strong to see it from him himself like he is telling it. That’s his story.
So that being said, and you saw Hanan Melcer, the way he describes that the Supreme Court really feel that they have the obligation to protect human rights, and they are right, they have this obligation. So they interfere so much. So now let’s go back to Bin Laden? Remember Bin Laden, I want to tell you about the case from 2004. 2004, history repeats itself. Again, another war in Gaza. There’s a siege on Rafiach. Rafiach same discussion was now six months ago. Rafiach it’s a town in Gaza, and the army wanted to conquer it so they did a siege. I want to quote from the Supreme Court’s decision. “Colonel Mordechai gave us oral information about the issues. Sometimes he asked for a temporary stay in order to stay on top of what’s happening while calling his people in Rafah, who gave him details, which he gave us.”
So imagine the scenario. There’s a major, a captain in the field in Gaza with his weapon ready, and there’s a colonel sitting in the Supreme Court, and he is reporting to them, and they say, yes, this is okay, this is not okay. Again, this is the decision. I’m quoting from the decision itself. Now again, many of my friends criticize it as over helping and many of my friends saying, thank God we have this Israeli Supreme Court to protect human rights. Point is that after that, blaming Israel of violation of human rights and humanitarian law is just not knowing the facts. So this is first of all, a very powerful example. Now, by the way, if you listened to the news yesterday, obviously there’s the story now with the humanitarian aid, yes. To bringing food, not to bring in food, what to do, putting aside.
We can talk about the international law and, the fact is that obviously we cannot starve the people of Gaza. But the question is, are we obligated to give food then when we know it doesn’t reach the population of Gaza? If Hamas takes the whole thing, then anyways, we’re not fulfilling the obligation but this is a different story. There was a discussion between the government and the Ramatkal, the head of chief of staff, how can we give the food? Because there was no discussion of starving there. We want to give the food, the question is how, because at the end of the day, again, we wanted not to get to Mohammed Sinwar, maybe Alav ha-shalom, maybe he is deceased. Maybe, hopefully, but to the people, the innocent people that need the food. The Ramatkal said yesterday that the Attorney general of the IDF, the [foreign word], that’s how we call her, the [foreign words], the head of the Military Advocate Corps, said that they are not allowed to limit it, to act the way the government wanted him to act. I don’t know exactly what are the details, because this is against international law.
So the Ramatkal said, we can’t do it. We have to find another plan. So the [foreign word], the Attorney general of the army is involved in every decision, and she’s making sure this is according to international law, this is not, you can’t do that. So this is from yesterday. I want to bring some more examples that I think are very strong and very powerful. I’m sure most of you know about the wall, the fence, the security wall, doesn’t matter what’s your political perspective on the matter, but if you don’t know, the wall is a fence built in the years of 2000s between Israel and the Palestinian authority. As most of you remember, there were a lot of terrorist attacks in the 2001, ‘2, ‘3, ‘4 people just walked in from Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem, and it was very easy.
So they built this wall for security reasons, purely security reasons. Again, we can argue it was political. That’s not the issue. The Supreme Court assumed for that matter that it was security reasons to prevent terrorists from entering Israel. There was a petition against the building of the fence. Okay, you know what? I think that’s the room of the Supreme Court to check is this fence legal, according to international law, according to constitutional law. The Supreme Court really ruled fine, very good. After that, since the year 2002 to 2012, more than 150 petitions were filed in the Israeli Supreme Court about the fence. More than 50% of them were ruled on the merits. 7% of them were on the major discussion whether is the fence legal, yes or no. The other ones, and the justices are telling about themselves. They’re writing it about themselves.
Justice Beinisch said that she saw Aharon Barak, the Chief justice, sitting on maps. She’s describing him, sitting on maps and looking about this meter is okay, this meter is not okay. This is crossing the border, this is not. This is violating too much, this is not violating at all. Literally, every meter of the fence was ruled separately with the Israeli Supreme Court. Now, again, you can think it’s great. You can think it’s terrible because it’s too much. That’s not the issue. The issue is that not only it passed legal advisors and making sure it also goes, there’re still cases now on the fence. They’re looking, they’re putting the maps, they’re putting themselves in the positions of the commanders saying, no, this is too much. One example, if a kid has to go to school and you put the fence in the middle, now instead of five minutes, the kid has to walk two hours. This is violating international. So they really looped into that 150 cases. You don’t have this amount in one in the United States Supreme Court in all of the topics.
This is another example. For example, there’s a procedure that used to be called the neighbor procedure. The neighbor procedure was a procedure where, imagine the scenario. A unit of the IDF comes into a house. They know this house as terrorists inside. Now, there are three options. One option, break the door, start shooting, people will die from both sides. Probably the IDF will win this battle at the end with a lot of people dying from this side and the other side. The other option is to wait, surrender, surrender, surrender, nothing. Okay. We go back home. Third option was, an original solution, was to call for a friendly neighbor. Tell him you knock on the door and you will tell them we are outside and they should surrender. Now, this is problematic. On the one hand, it makes sense. You want to make sure that less people will die, but on the other hand, you take someone, say, but he volunteered. Well, none of us would gladly volunteer into this situation. They take, this guy then say, okay, knock on the door. He’s not very happy about it. That went to the Supreme Court, and this very Supreme Court says, and I’m going to quote again with your permission, “The civilian population must not be exploited for military needs of the army.” The Supreme Court is saying, this is a violation of human rights and international law, and you cannot use it anymore and it’s done. The IDF never used it again. Now, somebody might use it, but then he will be trialed. He will be trialed. It’s illegal in Israel today to use it because that’s a violation of international law and Israeli constitutional law.
So this is another example. Now I have, what, three more minutes and then I’ll open it for questions. Our house demolition is very famous. I don’t want to go too deep into this, but if you don’t know, Israel has a custom now that if a terrorist in a severe terrorist attack, which severe subjective, there’s no definition. The result of that would be destroying the house of the terrorists. Now, the Supreme Court ruled this is legal. However, every house demolition goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court looks into it and said, okay, this house, you can destroy it completely. This house, you can only not even destroy, just block with concrete deferred room from the left on the upper floor.
They look into every scenario. Where did they live? What did they use? The family knew. They didn’t know. They looked to into every case separately, making sure, and I’m telling you their decisions where they literally say, okay, the third room to the left, you can destroy it. All the rest should be kept the way it is. So this is very famous as well. Last example, I have to choose. This is maybe one of the weirdest cases where relatives of Hamas terrorists that were aware and I don’t know if they’re involved, but very much aware of their activities, wanted to get medical treatment in Israeli hospitals in Israel. The Minister of Defense said, no, I don’t have to. Does US hospitals have to take Mexicans or Canadians to their hospital? They don’t have to. I’m not talking even in times of war. That’s in general, right? Supreme Court is saying the following, and that will be my last quote to you today.
“The decision” and the decision meaning not allowing them to go in, “does not give enough weight to the value of human life. Therefore, this decision is not within the scope of reasonableness.” This decision evokes and they get treatment not only in Israel. I also believe that the Israeli citizens are paying for this treatment. I’m not sure. So, conclusion is that you can criticize Israel, you can be supporting to Israel. But one thing you have to know, and that’s the facts. If you don’t know the facts, we have a problem. There is a war, and in war, people die and it’s very sad. But we do everything in our power to prevent it and to keep international law, humanitarian law, human rights, and also Israeli constitutional law. I hope and I pray for better and safe days. Thank you so much.
Sarah: Thank you so much. That was really a brilliant overview. I have a lot of questions. One is the good neighbor policy. We saw on October 7th how there were young men that with terrorists behind them would go knocking on doors in the south and Nahal Oz and Be’eri. The terrorists were behind them, and they say, “Please let me in because otherwise I’m going to die. Let me in.” And people would open up their doors. Why is there this double standard and these children ended up being slaughtered anyway? What can we do to let the world know and Americans know? We have another question; how can we possibly use international law to benefit Israel?
Moshe: Okay. Very interesting questions. First, I want to say that the double standards are there, but it’s not only double standard, it’s much worse. Where in the Be’eri case, they had a gun into his head and said, knock on the door and lie. Where in the other case said, okay, you go, we’re not touching you. You go and tell them just to surrender. When they opened the door, they didn’t kill them. So it’s very different. Now, unfortunately, I think we need this magician to solve the double standard issue. Where really, the double standard is sometimes, again, a lot of fake news and sometimes it’s pure antisemitism. The problem with the fake news, and I think we spoke about it when we spoke for the first time, is when you lie, it’s very easy to lie and when you say the truth, sometimes it takes a long time.
The best example is Jihadi Islamic fired the missile and it fell on the hospital. Ten minutes after the missile, the first to blame is Israel for sure and they said that 500 people were killed. Now, if you have any sense in you, you know that even if 500 people died, you can’t know that in 10 minutes, it could be 5,000, but it’ll take days to know. But since you are lying, there’s no problem you just do it right away. Then Israel need time to prove that they’re not lying and then it’s too late. Then it’s already old news, it’s cold, it’s not interesting. So it’s very hard. I can’t give a good advice, but just by trying, and we are trying to really keep on fighting the news on real time, but it’s very hard. What people do, like what you are doing Sarah and EMET is doing is to publish the facts and the real facts. Then, okay, you can still hate Israel, it’s fine, but know the facts. I think that’s very, very helpful.
Now, international law has a lot of tools. It gives us a lot. For example, article 51 of the charter allows self-defense. This is with no doubt self-defense. Now, people have, as you said, double standards. They said it’s not self-defense. The Israel is the neighborhood bully. He doesn’t have a right for self-defense or you do just slap him in the end. International law has tools for us to fight and there’s a full department of international law in the IDF, and they supervise everything the IDF is doing. So they know the laws and we use them, but when we have double standard, it doesn’t really matter, unfortunately.
Sarah: To what degree are the Halachah laws, the Jewish legal laws taken into consideration? When you’re talking about maybe withholding water or food and you know that there’s a population that might be starving. So to what degree is Jewish Halachah law taken into consideration?
Moshe: I appreciate this question very much because I have a research that I did with Professor (Aviada Cohen[?] about the use of Jewish law in the place of Jewish law in Israeli secular law, and specifically in Israeli Supreme Court’s decisions. The truth is, I won’t include details because I don’t want you all to fall asleep, but basically we found that although the Jewish law theoretically has a lot of room, in practice, the room is very, very minor and doesn’t really have a real impact. Now, there are many decisions, a house demolition, you can see they refer to Jewish law sometime as a source, sometime as a comparative view. It’s very nice. It makes us feel good, but it doesn’t have, like, really, okay, we decide, because Jewish law says 1, 2, 3, that never happens.
Sarah: There are proposed plans right now for the United States and Israel to manage the distribution of aid to the Gazan people. How do we know that we’re giving it to bonafide civilians and not to members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or [crosstalk]
Moshe: First, I think that’s the million dollar question. I think in the past year and a half, almost two years, that’s what happened. We gave it to Hamas and now that’s what exactly what they’re working on. What’s the plan? How can we do? Now, the plan that the government is talking about is to have food distribution points in every city, every major, I dunno, neighborhood that the IDF will give the food. Now, the army is not thrilled about it from various reasons. Again, I think one of them is first of all, the exposures. The soldiers will be very exposed, and it’s very dangerous. Second, if we do that, there are cities we can’t do that because we, they’re not cleared and then those people there won’t have access to food. That’s what I think the Attorney General of the army said, this is violation of international law.
So maybe indeed, I know now they’re talking about having a third party, not US Army, but maybe private companies, military companies, to do that and to stand. That might solve some of the problems, I think. I don’t know why the Red Cross is not playing in this game. I don’t know exactly. Maybe they don’t have the resources for that, but they could be a player in this. But I think also the Red Cross doesn’t have weapons. You need somebody with a gun, because if you don’t have a gun, Hamas will take it. Even if you have a gun, Hamas will try to take it so it has to be a powerful organization.
Sarah: What is your feeling about the Red Cross not visiting hostages for the last 19 months? They could have given them food, they could have given them medications that they needed to survive, but there were no visits.
Moshe: First, I don’t want to go into the double standard of the Red Cross, but I think it’s obviously on the table. But in this case specifically, I don’t think they were able to, I’m just assuming that Hama didn’t give them the option. I assume maybe they didn’t demand enough. Maybe they were not aggressive enough. You see in the videos where they’re too friendly with the terrorist. But again, that’s not the point. Point is I can only assume, and I don’t know, I didn’t see the intelligence. I can only assume that they were not able to. But definitely in any dispute regarding Israel, I don’t think the Red Cross was relevant player ever. They were just a taxi driver, an important taxi driver. I don’t want to insult anyone. Thank you for that but they didn’t play anything else.
Sarah: Right. So we have one question that isn’t the reality, what we call international law set of unilateral constraints, Western powers adhere to that are enemies, gleefully, ignored. [Crosstalk] What’s the purpose of international law that we could apply across the board to all of our friends and allies, “in the Middle East”?
Moshe: First, international law has a major problem in general, and not only with Israel, most besides maybe Russia and Ukrainian now, India and Pakistan that just started. All the military operations/wars in the last 20, 30 years are between terrorist organizations and a state or terrorist organization, and some kind of our organizations and international law has a very hard time to deal with it. Now, there are solutions, and you can apply regular war. There are solutions but the problem is, again, first the double standard, and second, there’s a very famous saying of the Israeli Supreme Court, Justice Haim Cohn said it, Justice Barak said it, and many other justices said it, that the power of Israel is that even if we fight with one hand behind our back, the hand of rule of law will win, which basically is saying, okay, we fight with someone that doesn’t play fair, so we have one hand tie, but we will play by the rules and we will win by the rules, which is something to respect. We’re saying, okay, we will not violate human rights. Again, sometimes it puts us in a very hard position, and sometimes it’s even absurd that we are being blamed for violating human rights. But it’s also respectable. Again, Israel, and I think I proved it, really is doing a lot of effort into not violating human rights and being proud of, okay, we play with a hand behind our back, but we’re playing by the book.
Sarah: Can you define what the Supreme Court uses as the standard of reasonableness?
Moshe: No, nobody can.
Sarah: [Inaudible]
Moshe: Actually, the term is usually proportionality and proportionality is very famous. Proportionality is being used in almost every modern country in the world, besides by the way the United States in interior constitutional law. When you use proportionality, you have certain tests that you use but when you talk about reasonableness, it’s very gray. Basically, it’s subjective. The way the judge that sits sees it. Sometimes I can see something very reasonable and the judge would say, this is not reasonable at all and vice versa. There’s no clear definition of it, and I think it’s impossible to have a clear definition for it.
Sarah: We have a question. You’re in academia, which is of course not becoming full of haters, but has been full since 1978 when Edward Said first wrote Orientalism, including professors that have been indoctrinating their youth with misinformation and really anti-Israel concepts, which I see anti-Israeli concepts as being the other side of the same coin as anti-Semitism. So how can we ever counter such an aggressive strategy by the haters brainwashing the youth in the West? Of course, we also come across Qatar, which has been indoctrinating not only our universities to the tunes of billions and billions of dollars, but now kindergarten through 12th grade students. We can’t match the Qatari dollar for dollar? How do we counter this kind of indoctrination?
Moshe: First, I think it’s very true. I think that if you want to go in any campus in the United States, and I felt it when I was in Columbia, Michigan, although I have to say in the defense of Michigan, where Columbia was terrible. As you all know, Michigan was actually very safe and very pro-Israel but that’s not the point now. Even there, when you want to walk with a Kaffir or a sign from Gaza, from Jordan to the sea, which is basically killing all the citizens of Israel. That’s what that sentence means. There’s no problem. Probably people could be against, but you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Where if you want to wear a Magen David, or if you want to wear a yellow sign or anything like that, you have to be brave.
You have to be brave. It’s not obvious you can do that and if you do that, you’re a brave student. There are a lot of brave students, but they have to be brave. The fact that this is, as you said, the bad double standard, the fact is that the one hand, it’s okay, you said and it’s okay. the other hand it’s like, no, how can you do that? You’re being judged and you have to be afraid of professors not liking you because of it and what will they think of you? It’s a major problem. I think the way to solve it is what exactly, again, I’m going back to you, Sarah, is what you’re doing, spreading the facts, spreading the fact. Because again, a lot of the students are just getting full of fake news, so much fake news. When you talk to them, they’re like, oh, we didn’t know that. Some, there’s nothing to do. Pure antisemitism, good old fashioned, a man style antisemitism, and we will never win that. But the other part, we can win and we need more EMET and more Sarah.
Sarah: We do. But in the meantime, we’ve had legislation for almost a decade of the Antisemitism Awareness Act that’s being held up in the Senate which would just give Jewish students the same rights as any other minority group. Unfortunately, there are members of the US Senate that feel that Jews cannot be blamed for the death of Jesus Christ because of this. It’s the most absurd things, unfortunately, Senator Bernie Sanders says. But there’s a whole other side, the Palestinian side. Of course, the Palestinians have the bully pulpit right now with their professors. There are Jewish students that are feeling alienated and discriminated against and if you walk around with a map of Israel with a Jewish star or a yellow ribbon, you are scuffed upon.
Now, I have a grandniece that hides her Jewish identity. She’s at Columbia. Before she crosses Amsterdam Avenue or Broadway, because she’s afraid of being surrounded and intimidated and bullied. So we are just asking, and we’re asking everyone on this call to please contact your senator and tell them to support the Antisemitism Awareness Act, just to give Jewish students the same rights as any other student. It’s absurd what is going on. Because we are less than 2% of the population and divided, unfortunately, there are too many Jewish students that have forgotten about their core identities, and they just want to get along and be part of the end crowd. Right now, it seems very cool to be very pro-Palestinian. So we’ve got to start younger and influencing our students younger and showing them, who they are, some pride of who they are so they can stand up for themselves.
But it is very intimidating when you’re at Columbia University and you’re taking a class in the Middle Eastern studies programs or the Iranian studies programs. There are so many various programs and they’ve replicated themselves so much so that it’s very difficult if you are pro-Israel or conservative to get a job teaching in a university. Most people who are somewhat conservative have given up on trying. It’s tragic. So I think we do have to write some other curriculum guides. People who are in education need to write other curriculum guides, because right now there are curriculum guides like the Arab Studies notebook by Audrey Shabbas that have been given out for decades now to teachers from sixth grade through high school where there’s a real anti-Israel slant. So it’s time that our people woke up and understood what’s at stake here. So any other closing words that you would like to give us?
Moshe: First of all, [inaudible] you 100% what you say, and I want to add that when October 7th happened, personally, and I want to say something maybe a bit disturbing, but this is true, the video of the three presidents of the university sitting and saying that calling for genocide of the Jewish people is not violating any code of the university, was more horrifying than the videos I saw on October 7th. Well, not because physically it was more horrifying because I expect Hamas terrorists to kill Jews. That’s very sad, but I’m not surprised. But to see the leaders of the most amazing and most luxurious prestigious universities in the world saying that, and now going back to your point, what a student, a Jewish student, but also another Jewish student should think when he hears the leader of the university, that all his life he dreamed to get accepted in.
Finally he was, and he looked up to this president, and the president said, yes, it’s completely cool to say, kill all the Jews. There’s no problem with that. So the Jewish student feels, okay, I’m done. There’s nothing I cannot protect myself. There’s nothing I can do in the non-Jew student. If he is anti-Semite student, it feels great. But if it’s a middle student, like he doesn’t say, okay, if the president say that, of course it’s okay. Maybe they are right. So going back to your point, I think this is terrible. But I think also it was good for us in the aspect that it really shook up the word, the university, the Jewish population, the donors, and President Trump and what he’s fighting now with Harvard. I see the change in Columbia, we were talking about before we see the change in Colombia already. I hope it will last. I’m not very optimistic, but yes, I think it’s devastating and I felt it myself, and I hope it will end soon.
Sarah: Right. I have to say also, there is a distinction between free speech in the public square and free speech in a university, we have protections for other minorities. God forbid, God forbid, if anybody said the N word, it would take a nanosecond for that person to be kicked out of university. But you can say things like, from the river to the sea, Palestine should be free, which means no room for Israel, which is basically a justification for the genocide of our people and that is considered free speech. Free speech is not an excuse to call for genocide. We really have to remember that. It’s horrible, worse things have been said than that on college campuses, but this is the rallying cry. So I think it’s very, very important that every Jew knows this and every non-Jewish lover of the state of Israel, because I do believe right now, Israel is fighting a just existential and righteous war. We are doing it alone here. My son-in-law is right now in the reserves and everybody you’ve served, and you are serving practically everybody I know serves and we’re doing it for the good of Western civilization, and whether they know it or not, for the Sunni Arab nations against Iran as well. So this is a just and righteous war. I hope one day people in the West will turn around and say thank you to Israel.
Moshe: With your permission, I would like to end with a story of what’s the Jewish values and the Jewish people values besides of all my job as a IVF and lawyer, I’m also an Hatzalah volunteer, Hatzalah is an ambulance on call. I want to tell you a story how the same time, when I was in the IDF dealing with petitions about holding corpse, I came out of the university one day and I see a terrorist attack, a terrorist stabbing people in the streets. I am the first EMT medic on the scene, and I start treating the people there. At some point I get to the point with my brother is a doctor. He came to the scene as well with treating the terrorist. While the terrorist is yelling, [foreign words] kill all the Jews, kill all the Jews, we saved his life. We saved his life, and he is the life today. We saved him while he tried to kill us, and then yelled, kill us. So, this is who we are, and this is what we do. Life is complicated here, but also very good.
Sarah: Right. I feel that Israel can teach the rest of Western civilization a lot of lessons about what it means to be a human being. Thank you so much. Next week we are going to have the International legal scholar Emmanuel Navon, who will be talking about President Trump’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Thank you. Oh, and as my husband who is at my side said, please, if you can, support the work of EMET. Thank you. You could go to emetonline.org and thank you so much, Moshe. It was really a pleasure to [crosstalk]
Moshe: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Sarah: Pleasure [inaudible]
[END]
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