Natasha Hausdorff is an accomplished British Barrister at the forefront of the battle for social justice and truth in law and media vis-a-vis the Israel-Hamas War.
As the ICC, the ICJ, the UN and other international bodies wage a war of lawfare against the Jewish State, Natasha is one of the leading voices clarifying international law and proving that Israel not only obeys all Laws of War, but goes far above and beyond to ensure the legality and morality of all their actions.
From social justice accusations of genocide and deliberate starvation, to colonialization and war crimes, the facts have largely been hidden behind enormous walls of propaganda that are only fortified by the voices of the mass media.
In this LIVE conversation, Shana Meyerson of YOGAthletica and Natasha Hausdorff discuss the rules of war and warfare and how they relate to Israel, the Israel Defense Forces ( @IsraelDefenseForces ), Hamas, and the people of Gaza.
If you are a yogi or yogini who believes that Israel is guilty of war crimes against the Palestinians of Gaza, you owe it to yourself and to humanity to listen to the facts and get educated on the reality of this devastating war.
WATCH NATASHA HAUSDORFF ON UKLFI @uklficharitabletrust2399 🎥
FOLLOW NATASHA ON TIKTOK AT https://www.tiktok.com/discover/Natasha-hausdorff 📱
FOLLOW HER ON INSTAGRAM AT https://www.instagram.com/natashahausdorff/ 📸
Natasha Hausdorff is a Barrister and expert commentator on international law, including the law of armed conflict, foreign affairs and national security policy. She holds law degrees from Oxford and Tel Aviv Universities and was a Fellow in the National Security Law Programme at Columbia Law School in New York. Natasha previously worked for American law firm Skadden Arps, in London and Brussels, and clerked for the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Chief Justice Miriam Naor, in Jerusalem. She serves as legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust.
YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0
#israel #israelhamaswar #israelwar #israelnews #istandwithisrael #amyisraelchai #war #middleeast #hamas #hamasvsisrael #socialjustice #goodvsevil #goodvsbad #terrorism #factsmatter #socialjusticewarriors #socialjusticewarriors #socialjusticematters #lawfare #genocide #internationalcriminalcourt #internationallaw #internationaljustice
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Israel is the cause of social justice.
(00:07):
I know how upset people are over this war, and it's understandable because they are being
flooded with these horrific images of Gaza, but they are being given without context,
without understanding of what is actually going on in this war and where the justice
(00:30):
actually lies.
Social media algorithms have been proven that they are strongly biased against Israel.
And the narratives that are being pushed on us by the mass media are the narratives of
Hamas themselves, a terrorist state that also happens to make up its own statistics that
(00:52):
are in no way verifiable.
That being said, I would like to introduce you to Natasha Hausdorff.
Natasha is a barrister and expert commentator on international law, including the law of
armed conflict, foreign affairs, and national security policy.
(01:12):
She holds law degrees from Oxford and Tel Aviv universities and was a fellow in the
national security law program at Columbia Law School in New York.
Natasha previously worked for the American law firm Skadden Arps in London and Brussels
and clerked for the president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Chief Justice Miriam Naor in
(01:36):
Jerusalem.
She serves as legal director of UK lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust.
Natasha, it is such an honor and a pleasure to have you here.
And thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.
The pleasure and honor is mine, and especially as legal director of the Charitable Trust
(01:58):
of UK Lawyers for Israel.
It's very much our mission to educate on exactly the issues that you set out in your introduction.
Yeah.
And that being said, I just really ask that people listen.
We are not going to be talking about opinions or feelings.
We're going to be talking about laws and international rule.
(02:19):
And we are talking to an expert.
When it comes to social justice, I understand that is a very emotional issue, but please
take the time, listen to the facts, and then make an opinion because that is truly what
social justice is about.
Okay, Natasha, I'd love to begin by talking about this concept of lawfare because Israel
(02:44):
is already fighting this war on seven physical fronts, plus the social media, mass media,
and the populist fronts of the rabid anti-Semites are taking over our cities and our streets.
As such, Israel is constantly finding itself on its heels, defending itself from insidious
(03:06):
and patently false allegations.
So can you talk to us a little bit about what is lawfare and how is it being used in this
particular war?
Well, lawfare against Israel is unfortunately not a new concept.
Lawfare is essentially the abuse of legal systems, legal processes, legal institutions
(03:33):
to advance a political agenda, which is not in keeping with the rule of law or the equal
application of law, but in fact inverts legal questions and legal standards.
And we've seen this on display very forcefully more recently with respect to Israel at the
International Criminal Court, at the International Court of Justice, at other UN bodies like
(03:58):
the UN Human Rights Council, and in widespread discussion and public fora in the media where
legal terminology is being deployed, often in a way which inverts its meaning, and it's
being deployed for political reasons by those with an agenda against Israel.
(04:19):
I recall well over 10 years ago an article by Mahmoud Abbas in Op-Ed in the New York Times,
which called for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal, not just a political
matter.
Those were his words, and I read that as Mahmoud Abbas's declaration of lawfare.
(04:42):
So you're absolutely right that Israel is facing a further front, another battle, in
the international legal arena against this phenomenon of lawfare.
And the reason it's so pertinent to Israel's ability to conduct this war against Hamas
and other Iranian proxies, Hezbollah, also the Houthis in Yemen, the reason it's so
(05:05):
critical is because it inevitably has a direct impact on Israel's ability to defend itself
and its citizens.
And we have seen this in the rhetoric that has surrounded many of these lawfare initiatives,
both at the International Criminal Court and at the International Court of Justice, allegations
of genocide, starvation, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, apartheid.
(05:31):
All of these terms have no basis in their application against Israel, but they are powerfully
deployed as pseudo-legal terminology.
And the impact that they have can be seen in the rhetoric that has come from governments,
even those friendly to Israel, the United Kingdom and the US included, and the pressure
(05:54):
that has been put by these governments on the basis of these false pseudo-legal allegations
with respect to the war against Hamas.
And we have seen this in many respects drawn out, Israel's ability to conduct this war
has been directly impacted by these lawfare initiatives.
And we've seen this playing into the hands of Hamas, because Hamas only have one aim
(06:18):
in the present circumstances, and that is to survive.
And the way they do this is by shaping the international discourse and the lawfare terminology
around what is happening in Gaza at the moment.
They do this by seeking to drive up the casualty count as much as they can.
And you are right that the Hamas figures certainly cannot be trusted.
(06:40):
These are put out by an internationally prescribed terrorist organization, but they are taken
as read by many international organizations, by many media institutions, and even by some
governments.
And this plays into the hands of Hamas in seeking to drive up this casualty count that
they have put out and drive the agenda of these allegations against Israel in order
(07:04):
to have international pressure on Israel to cease its war against Hamas.
Yeah.
And I want to go over these allegations one by one, because people blob them together
and there's literally no difference to actual definitions or facts.
I mean, on the man on the street level, I understand because they, like, who's going
(07:29):
to take the time to research this the way that you do or the way that I do because I
really care about this when you could just see the image and say, dead people, bad, end
of story.
I mean, I do want to get back to the broader sort of issues of the ICC at the end of this
discussion and why they don't seem to defer to these definitions and laws because that
(07:54):
the whole the fact that they seem to be creating their own legal standard that doesn't even
adhere to their own legal standard, as John Spencer calls it, triple standards.
They're not even double standards that are only levied against Israel.
I do want to just sort of break this down.
(08:16):
And before we do, Natasha, can you briefly go over not just what this really meant for
Israel?
Because this is another thing that's just so amazing.
All anybody's talking about is what this means for Israel.
But in fact, they also ruled on Hamas.
In fact, the first part of the opinion was a part was against Hamas.
But nobody wants to hear this because nobody cares that Hamas happens to be.
(08:41):
I don't want to say far bigger because what Israel is doing is not war crime, but what
Hamas does, everything they do is war crime.
So could we talk a little bit about what the judgment means and doesn't mean for both Israel
and Hamas?
And can we talk about Hamas first?
Well, I think the first thing we need to do is make sure we're talking about the same
(09:04):
legal proceedings in the same court.
And again, the terminologies are being wrongly deployed.
And it's often on purpose.
But there are many, understandably, non-lawyers getting confused about what a decision is,
what a judgment is, what an opinion is.
So the most recent development at the International Court of Justice has been a non-binding advisory
(09:30):
opinion that was Friday a week ago.
And that opinion didn't deal with Hamas at all.
This was an opinion sought in the context of a General Assembly resolution.
So the General Assembly asked the court to give a legal opinion on a series of allegations
that it levied against Israel, breaches of international law that it alleged.
(09:53):
But it didn't ask the court actually to examine those allegations.
It simply asked the court to take those allegations as a given, including the violation of the
Hamas right to self-determination, and rather than analyzing what was alleged, it simply
asked the court to say, what are the legal consequences of Israel violating international
law in this way?
(10:14):
Now in this context, we're not looking at the creation of a new legal standard here.
We're looking at the subversion of legal standards.
The allegations that were made against Israel were baseless, but they involved an invention
of history, an invention of law, certainly, but an inversion of the victim perpetrator
(10:39):
analysis here.
Because we see Jews in particular, Israel as the Jewish state, being blamed for the
very crimes of which they have been victims.
And that was certainly on display in the context of the ICJ advisory opinion, albeit it's not
legally binding.
It still has caused a great stir.
(11:00):
And in that-
Yeah, no, I was actually speaking more specifically about the ICC with the arrest warrants, the
allegations.
Yeah.
So there we don't have any judgment yet.
We don't have any decision.
But what we do have is an application by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
for arrest warrants against the arch Hamas terrorists, including Yair Sinwar and Mohammad
(11:28):
Daif, and also against the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the defense
minister, Yoav Galant.
This is clearly even to a layman an abhorrent equivalence for anyone to draw.
But there are serious problems with an international court, and the International Criminal Court
(11:49):
has jurisdiction over individuals, not states.
But it doesn't have jurisdiction in this case.
The International Criminal Court is what we call a creature of statute.
It was established through a convention that was entered into by states called the Rome
Statute.
And that sets down the rules of the court and the jurisdiction of the court in relation
(12:13):
to each of the states that have become members of the International Criminal Court.
Rome never became a member.
The United States didn't join either.
And there were important reasons for that, including that it was pretty evident, even
at the drafting stage of the Rome Statute, that this was potentially a court that could
be open to abuse for political reasons.
(12:34):
And the reason I say that is because if you look at the drafting of some of the crimes
that are set out in Article 8 of the Rome Statute, there has, to give one example, been
an inclusion of some additional words into one of the crimes to do with the transfer
of populations by an occupier and occupied territory.
(12:57):
They included two key words, directly or indirectly.
Now, this was an attempt, essentially, to manipulate international law, to seek to criminalize
the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria.
The idea that Jews cannot live in certain parts of the world simply because they're
Jews could be, I would suggest, morally abhorrent to any individual that subscribes to the principles
(13:22):
that you set out very effectively and powerfully in your introduction.
But this is exactly what the court was seeking to do.
I mean, we can go into the many reasons why it is still not successfully able to create
international law in that fashion and to suggest that there is some illegitimacy attached
to Jews living in those areas and disputed territory.
(13:45):
But putting that aside.
Yeah, yeah.
Amazingly though, Natasha, didn't they try to use, I mean, I know they did, that same
displacement theory that because the IDF was actually trying to relocate people to safe
zones that they tried to say that that was the forceful displacement of a population
(14:07):
and that that was a war crime rather than, say, leaving them where they knew that there
was going to be mass bombing and therefore casualties if they did not move them.
I mean, talk about an inversion of reality.
That was one of the allegations that was made.
It's also been Egypt's justification for its failure to comply with its international law
(14:31):
obligations.
It could also suggest basic humanity in facilitating the evacuation of civilians across the Egyptian
border into Egyptian Rafah, where they could be provided for in a safe humanitarian zone
away from Hamas.
The alternative of Egypt sealing that border to anyone who's not able to pay extortionate
sums to be able to evacuate themselves.
(14:53):
Egypt sealing these individuals in so that they can continue to be used as human shields
by Hamas, which has been firing only in the last few days from within the humanitarian
zones that Israel has set out as safe areas.
So Egypt is also complicit in the Hamas strategy here.
And it is something that Israel, as a state, finds itself very hamstrung in being able
(15:16):
to call out because there is a very delicate peace agreement with the Egyptians, which
they have threatened essentially to tear up if any issue is made of seeking to facilitate
the safe passage of Gazan civilians away from Hamas and into the Sinai, where they can be
properly looked after, provided for, and where aid won't be diverted by Hamas as it has been
(15:41):
diverting international aid throughout this tragic set of circumstances.
But I think it's just important to acknowledge that the first problem with the International
Criminal Court is that it does not have any jurisdiction here as a result of Israel not
being a party to the Rome Statute and there being no state of Palestine under international
law that can accede to the court, become a member, and give of its own jurisdiction to
(16:08):
the court.
And in fact, this was one of the issues that the United Kingdom was proposing to submit
to the court on in the context of challenging its jurisdiction to seek arrest warrants over
Israelis.
Because as I know you and many people watching will know, it is as a result of the Oslo Accords,
the Oslo Process, that the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 with autonomy and
(16:33):
authority over areas A and B of the West Bank.
But explicitly, it does not have criminal jurisdiction over Israelis.
So even if it purported to become a state, to join the Rome Statute, it would not be
able to give the court a jurisdiction which it simply does not have.
(16:56):
Now the other aspect of these international legal proceedings against Israel is that it
essentially tears up the Oslo Accords.
It has thrown these internationally backed agreements out of the window.
It is strongly indicated to Israel that international agreements that it signs with the Palestinian
leadership are not worth the paper they are written on.
(17:16):
And it has sent a very strong message to the Palestinian leadership themselves that they
simply do not need to engage in the universally accepted process of bilateral negotiations
with Israel, that they can simply decide to engage in these lawfare initiatives in following
(17:37):
the aim.
The only aim that really seems to underscore all of these activities is to seek to eradicate
Israel, to defeat the Jewish state in a way that it has not been able to do on the battlefield,
to do so in the legal arena.
Sure.
And I mean, I'd love to actually talk about this concept of a Palestinian state because
(18:00):
at this point, I mean, I think well over 170 countries or something have acknowledged a
Palestinian state that has neither a government nor borders, which goes against the very concept
of a state.
There is no state.
Objectively speaking, there is no state.
But when it comes to trying to say undermine the Oslo Accords, I would say that beyond
(18:25):
just lawfare, there's this war of words, and I'm not just talking about social media, but
this war of words, this insidious insertion of the word Palestine into the public discourse.
And I hate to say this because I love her, but even Caroline Glitt says Palestine, which
(18:47):
hurts my hat because what's happening is we are creating a de facto state because at the
point where everyone in the world is saying Palestine as if it's a state instead of Palestinian
territories or Palestinian controlled areas or whatever it is, that like literally, I
(19:08):
would sort of liken it to in a democracy such as the United States or the UK, if for example,
any group were to have a large enough population, then they could peacefully take over the government
just by being 90% of the population and taking over the government, just voting them in.
(19:29):
That there is a non-aggressive way of accomplishing the same things that they're trying to accomplish
with aggression and this use of the word Palestine, you use the word enough times, you tell a
lie enough times, and it actually becomes reality.
So what does it even mean literally besides to undermine the state of Israel and say,
(19:57):
we don't consider you legitimate?
What does it even mean to acknowledge a Palestinian state without a government or borders?
Well it's contrary to what international law says.
Yes, you are absolutely right with respect to borders and government.
(20:19):
The criteria set out for statehood, which include those two in the Montevideo Convention,
have also now become part of customary international law.
That is law that doesn't necessarily need to exist in a treaty that states sign themselves
up to, but that is so universally acknowledged and applied that it applies to all states.
(20:44):
And the aspect of recognition is actually only quite a minor part of what statehood means
in international law.
One example, I think, of the real difficulty that the supposed legal reasoning that has
been used to advance the Palestinian law for initiatives, one example of where this starts
(21:06):
to unravel is in this International Court of Justice advisory opinion, which is just
over a week old, where the court seeks to recognize the unity and the contiguity of
Palestinian territory and seeks to ensure that this is recognized and preserved.
(21:30):
Those are the words the court used.
Well you and I understand what a map of the Middle East looks like.
The disputed territories, the Palestinian authority controlled areas of the West Bank,
the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip, they are not contiguous.
Right, there's a little thing called Israel in the middle of it.
(21:51):
It's through this sort of legalese, if you will, that Israel has seemingly been eradicated
from the map.
And this is the process.
We talked about some of this terminology.
And of course, when you repeat these canards frequently enough, they start to take hold.
(22:15):
They start to become the received wisdom.
Alan Dershowitz spoke about this probably nearly two decades ago now when he talked
about the term occupation.
And this had suddenly become the received wisdom.
Well, in the legal proper application of the term, there's no such thing as an Israeli
occupation.
(22:36):
The framework of the law of occupation exists when one sovereign occupies the territory
of another sovereign, the proper application of international law to the disputed territory
to tell us what the status of the territory is under the rule of Utiposidetes Iuris, in
fact tells us that since Israel's declaration of independence in 1948, the territory of
(23:00):
the former British mandate, Palestine, has been Israeli sovereign territory.
Now that was since 49 occupied by Jordan in the West Bank in East Jerusalem and by Egypt
and Gaza.
But in 1967, when Israel recovered those territories, albeit that the underlying status of the territory
as sovereign Israel hadn't changed, it instituted a temporary administration in the West Bank
(23:26):
in the anticipation that in the course of a peace agreement with Jordan, some of that
territory would be given to Jordan.
That was the land for peace formula that Israel was encouraged to embrace.
And so that temporary administration that Israel instituted in 1967 ultimately became
altered.
(23:47):
Certainly one could argue that in the context of the internationally approved agreement,
the Oslo Accords, we've already spoken a bit about.
But none of this, none of this changes the underlying status of the territory.
And ultimately, Israel cannot occupy what is its own sovereign territory.
Can I just say that, just to reiterate something that you said, because I think you're used
(24:13):
to speaking to an audience that has a little more context, that the Jews not only have
indigeneity on their side, I mean, nobody can refute.
I mean, even the Quran can't refute.
The Jews were there for thousands of years before Islam even existed.
But in order, people don't seem to understand that in order to occupy a nation, you have
(24:37):
to have a homeland, as you said, that you could say theoretically go back to.
So I would love anybody to tell me what this occupying nation, where did the Jews come
from besides the fact that, and Natasha, if I'm not mistaken, your family goes back in
Israel eight generations.
Isn't that, is that accurate?
(24:59):
Yeah.
It was since the 1840s.
But you see, the proper application of international law doesn't even require us to go that far
back.
There is a recognized universal rule that simply requires us to look at Israel's declaration
of independence.
That's right.
When new states come into being, it is this rule that dictates that the newly emerging
(25:22):
states inherits the preexisting administrative lines of whatever unit preceded it as its
internationally recognized borders.
So I'm not suggesting even that we recognize the thousands of years of history that the
Jews have in the land of Judea.
(25:44):
I don't even think we need to go that far.
I think we need to stand upon the proper and equal application of international law.
And I'll give you a very current example, an equivalence, if I may.
They're all extremely invested also in the outcomes of the Ukraine-Russia war, Russia's
(26:07):
war of aggression against Ukraine, subsequent to, of course, its occupation of Crimea from
Ukraine.
And the reason there is a general consensus that Russia has occupied Crimea from Ukraine
is Crimea's, forgive me, Ukraine's borders also follow the rule of Otypossidatae Syros.
But if Ukraine were to recover Crimea from Russia in this war in the same way that Israel
(26:30):
recovered the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, from Jordan in 1967, I
mean, do you think anyone would accuse Ukraine of occupying Crimea from Russia?
Exactly.
And by the way, where are the people all in the streets complaining about Ukrainians fighting
back with full force?
(26:52):
There's that.
Yeah, no, the only reason that I was talking about going back eight generations, because
so many people are saying, oh, the Jews showed up in Israel in 48 or after World War II.
And it's like, well, that's ridiculous.
I mean, that's ridiculous.
If the Jews ever had a homeland, it was the three nation states of Israel that existed
in Israel.
I mean, they had different iterations, different names, but we've always been there.
(27:16):
And it has been our nation state.
And in fact, of course, when the partition plan came out, the Arabs were offered a state
and they issued instead of accepting it, the famous three no's, right?
No peace, no negotiations, no recognition of the state of Israel.
So why isn't there a Palestinian state?
Because the Palestinians refuse to have a state next to the Jews.
(27:40):
And also, I do want to point out because again, like people, I think, believe Israel is like
a big bad Israel and they don't understand that Israel is less than one fifth of one
percent the size of the Arab world.
Like on a small map, you can't even see Israel in the map of the Arab world.
(28:03):
And that is point zero to point zero to.
Okay.
You can do the math.
That doesn't make sense, guys.
Just write it down.
It's a very small number percent of the population of the Middle East.
Like, why is everybody so obsessed with this tiny, tiny piece of land that happens to be
(28:25):
the homeland of the Jews?
That's a rhetorical question.
I think somewhat outside my area of expertise.
But one thing that I was really struck by many years ago, the late great Rabbi Lord
Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, talked about the evolution of anti-Semitism
(28:51):
and what many have described as the world's oldest hatred, what began in the Middle Ages
with a focus on the Jewish religion manifested itself in these ancient blood libel's that
Jews would kill Christian children to use their blood to make matzah or for other religious
rituals.
(29:12):
And when that mutated and the focus was on the Jewish race in the context of science
becoming the order of the day, eugenics was used in order to seek to justify that hatred.
And in the context of international law and human rights taking over as the order of the
day, the modern manifestation of anti-Semitism is the so-called anti-Zionism, a hatred of
(29:38):
the Jewish state.
And in this context, all of these legal faux allegations, occupation, ethnic cleansing,
apartheid, colonialism, genocide, these are essentially the modern blood libel's.
And we can see that mutating virus of anti-Semitism in its modern updated form.
(30:01):
And that must explain the bizarre focus.
And I don't want to suggest, you know, this is simply water battery and we can look around
the Middle East at situations where there are real human rights abuses taking place.
We don't have to go very far away.
I mean, what Hamas has been doing to its own people in Gaza is abominable.
(30:22):
Dan Gilliman, former UN ambassador from Israel, put it in his own way in terms of the international
focus on the Jewish state, on Israel, and the comparison with real tragedies that are happening
all around the world.
He said, when Jews kill Arabs, it's the massacre.
(30:44):
When Christians kill Arabs, it's a crusade.
And when Arabs kill Arabs, it's the weather channel.
Nobody really cares.
And that is desperately tragic when you think about all of the wars in the Middle East and
all of the millions of lives that have been lost that have not occasioned international
attention.
(31:05):
And then you see the way that international attention is being abused for the purpose
of an internationally prescribed terrorist organization in this fashion.
And I think we need to ensure that there is better education, but also that the international
community is taking responsibility for its part in this misinformation and in propagating
(31:28):
these blood liabilities.
And I don't just mean the media here.
The real causes of what we have been seeing in the last nine months since the 7th of October,
the indoctrination in UNRWA schools with international funding and the incentivization to terror
through the Palestinian Authority Pay for Slave Program with international funding.
(31:53):
These are the key issues that need to be addressed if we're ever going to have a hope of avoiding
a repeat of the 7th of October.
But they require, I think, the international community to wise up to its complicity in
both indoctrination and incentivization to terror and to ensure that never again means
(32:17):
never again.
A hundred percent.
And for anybody who doesn't know, in quick layman's terms, pay display is literally the
Palestinian Authority pays terrorists to kill Jews.
That's like a very simple explanation.
Salaries that are greater than they would earn in the actual labor market and to their
(32:40):
families as well.
The wage is often presented by the Palestinian Authority as though it is welfare.
These are welfare payments made either to detainees, terrorists or to their families.
However, the salaries increase depending on the severity of the sentence.
(33:03):
So depending on how many Jews an individual has managed to slaughter.
And these are people who are celebrated either as martyrs if they are killed in the process
of their terrorist activities or otherwise as heroes if they serve prison sentences for
their crimes.
(33:25):
So this system structure that is built around celebrating those that seek to martyr themselves
and those that seek to slaughter Jews, it manifests itself in football clubs being named
after terrorists, in the school textbooks that celebrate famous individuals, as well
(33:47):
as in the salaries that are paid.
And as you say, they are substantially higher than ordinary Gazans or even those in the
Palestinian Authority controlled West Bank would be able to earn under honest jobs in
those territories.
Sure, so it's a pretty great incentive, especially because it's such, Gaza in some areas is such
(34:12):
an economically distressed area, not due to Israel, but due to Hamas and the way that
it oppresses its own citizens and takes all the billions of dollars of financial aid that
have been sent there and uses them for the terror tunnels and for their missiles, ammunition.
But because we're limited on time, I definitely want to get to the big one.
(34:32):
Okay, I definitely want to make sure that we talk about genocide and these accusations
of ethnic cleansing.
I'd like to start with the definition because again, you know so much more than my audience
knows.
So let me start with the actual just simple sentence.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group
(34:54):
in whole or in part.
The irony being of course that when people are calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide
because or ethnic cleansing by the definition that they're using, which is there are people
dying in a war in a place, then all war would be genocide.
So there are a hundred reasons why this is not a genocide.
(35:18):
And by the way, why the Hamas incursion?
I'd like to call the Gaza incursion because they weren't all Hamas.
There was a lot of citizens that were just and un-run employees that took place in the
massacre that that is an actual effort for genocide and ethnic cleansing.
But Natasha, I know that this is an area that you can really shed some tremendous light.
(35:45):
Why is what's going on in Gaza absolutely and unequivocally neither a genocide nor ethnic
cleansing?
You were right in reading out the definition which comes from Article 2 of the Genocide
Convention.
This was a term that was coined by a Jewish jurist, Raphael Lemkin, in the aftermath of
(36:11):
the Holocaust to provide some form of terminology for the Jewish experience of people seeking
to exterminate Jews because they were Jews, to eradicate a group, an ethnic, religious
or racial group in whole or in part.
And that intention to destroy a group in whole or in part is at the very center of that definition
(36:36):
and reflective of the crime that was committed against the Jewish people in particular in
the Holocaust by the Nazis.
You're right that the 7th of October saw acts of genocide perpetrated against Jews again
and Hamas have made no secret of their intention to destroy Jews because they are Jews.
(36:59):
They have celebrated this and they have said that they intend to commit those acts of genocide
again and again.
And you were absolutely right, there were other terrorist groups that crossed the border
on the 7th, affiliates of Fatah, the PFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and as we now know
many civilians and UNRWA employees also.
(37:22):
The deploying of this allegation against the real victims of genocide is another example
of blaming the victims for the crimes that were committed against them.
This has been done with purpose.
I was on the equivalent of the BBC in South Africa, ABC shortly after the first provisional
(37:49):
measures order in the allegations case with the allegations brought by South Africa genocide.
And my counterpart was celebrating, isn't it wonderful?
They said we can now finally use genocide in Israel in the same sentence and nobody
can tell us otherwise.
And that gives you a pretty strong indication of South Africa's motivations here seeking
(38:13):
really to shift the Oberton window, to shift what the acceptable terminology in the anti-Israel
propaganda arena is.
And in that respect, this case has been extremely successful in shaping public opinion because
now if you can believe it, this question isn't even up for the debate.
(38:33):
Why is it wholly untrue?
Well the measures that Israel takes to prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, which
are completely unparalleled in the history of warfare, is one reason.
Issuing warnings, evacuating civilians wherever possible, providing leaflets, indicating safe
(38:54):
zones and humanitarian corridors, instructions for evacuations, phone calls to individual
householders, text messages, calling off strikes if there are too many civilians in the vicinity
on the principle of proportionality, ensuring that it not only upholds the other rules of
international humanitarian law, including the principles of necessity, distinction,
(39:18):
proportionality I've mentioned and precaution, but in fact going far above those requirements
in terms of the involvement of the military advocate general corps, the army lawyers in
pre-approving strikes and in being there to assist the officers on the ground with their
proportionality assessments in real time.
(39:38):
I mean all of this, the level of which Israel has been upholding these rules and preventing
civilian casualties is unheard of, unprecedented and there are experienced army officers from
the US and the UK in particular that have said their armies would not be able to hold
(39:59):
themselves to the standard that Israel is setting.
That also brings in some disquiet.
So in that context, in the prevention of civilian casualties, which is also marked out by the
comparisons, we've seen many with an informed assessment on this putting the casualty ratio
in the region of one to one, one civilian to every one combatant.
(40:22):
But when you consider that the global average that the United Nations has assessed is nine
to one, nine civilians for every one combatant or that in Afghanistan and Iraq we were looking
at three to one and five to one, five civilians for every one combatant.
Then what Israel has been doing in an unprecedented military theatre where Hamas has spent 16
(40:46):
years embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and using civilians as human shields, where
every mosque, school and hospital and by all accounts every second house is part of the
terror infrastructure.
Then Israel's success in minimising civilian casualties here is in fact utterly unprecedented.
So that is one aspect of where the intention towards genocide is certainly not made out.
(41:10):
But we've also seen this in the context of the humanitarian provisions that Israel has
facilitated into the Gaza Strip.
Far in excess in fact of the calorie needs assessed by the World Food Program.
Despite the diversion of much of this aid to Hamas, all of these allegations or predictions
(41:32):
of starvation have now been thoroughly debunked.
And Israel's efforts and initiatives to provide humanitarian assistance for the local population
despite Hamas abusing those supplies and using them for their own terror initiatives, again
indicates the levels, the initiatives that Israel is undertaking, which are far and beyond
(41:58):
what many other armies in that position would be doing.
Of course, there is a unit that is specifically set up to provide for the needs of the local
civilian population in armed conflict, Kogat.
And in all of these contexts, much of this actually comprise the submissions that Israel
was making to the International Court of Justice to rebut and refute these absurd allegations
(42:23):
of genocide.
But on a very basic level, any government, any army with an intention to commit genocide
would not be seeking to save lives in the way Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip.
A hundred percent.
And because I just last week did a long talk with John Spencer on the actual warfare, I'm
(42:47):
going to say like people check that out because he is like the foremost expert in America
on urban warfare, you can also check out Colonel Richard Kemp in Britain, who comes to the
same exact conclusions.
They both have zero skin in the game.
But Natasha, how do the international courts, I don't even know how else to say it, get
(43:10):
away with perpetrating lies?
Like the UN, as you said, has formally stated that there is no famine after the investigation,
that there is no famine in Gaza.
In fact, over 3000 calories a day, which I could tell you as somebody who's in the fitness
(43:30):
world is more food than anybody should be eating in a day, is being brought into Gaza
on a daily basis.
The UN has already proven there is no sign of famine.
And yet the international criminal courts keep saying Israel is purposely starving these
people.
What's happening to these trucks?
The trucks are going in, they're being hijacked by Hamas.
(43:52):
Is this somehow Israel's fault?
And anything that is going on, any hunger, I don't even know what else to call it because
the findings have been that nobody is dying of hunger.
There is no famine, but is caused by Hamas.
How is there this constant deflection?
How do they get away with literally trying to uphold the lies that the UN itself has
(44:19):
quietly under the radar debunked?
So this comes down to the information that is put before the court.
And it has been the subject of several submissions now by UK lawyers for Israel and some other
NGOs, both to the International Criminal Court and to the International Court of Justice.
And I'll just explain how that works.
(44:41):
So with respect to the ICJ and the advisory opinion I mentioned, we pointed out how much
of the information that the court was essentially seeking to base its determinations on, its
opinion on, was false.
The court had the same problem in 2004 where it issued another advisory opinion in respect
(45:01):
of Israel called the Wall opinion, which opined on the supposed legality or illegality of
the security barrier that Israel had built in response to waves of suicide bombings.
That opinion didn't mention terrorism.
The latest opinion from the ICJ also doesn't mention terrorism and is based on shed loads
(45:23):
of false information, fabricated material that is often manufactured by armies of NGOs
that are funded in order to fabricate these false allegations against Israel.
So the submission to the International Court of Justice sought to draw the court's attention
to that false information and say it should not be basing an opinion on that data or those
(45:49):
reports.
But similarly, the International Criminal Court that we have spoken about and the application
for arrest warrants by the prosecutor of the court, who is also a barrister from the United
Kingdom called Kareem Khan, he produced a summary, a public statement, a summary supposedly
(46:09):
of the application that he had put for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Galland to
pre-child chamber one to make a determination.
And having gone through that public statement, the submission by UK Lawyers for Israel to
the court, it was actually an application for permission, but we set out there already
(46:31):
in robust terms and some detail and I encourage your viewers to find it on the UKLFI website
and have a read of it.
Every statement that the prosecutor put in support of his application for arrest warrants
in that public summary was false, was incorrect.
And we have set out chapter and verse.
(46:53):
One only needs to look at publicly available information, including from Kareem Khan, to
see the error of the material that has been put forward.
But if you want a relatively short answer as to how it is that the court can make such
absurd findings on the basis of plainly actually incorrect information, that's unfortunately
(47:14):
a major reason as to why.
Yeah, it's really mind boggling because we live in a post-factual society.
Facts simply do not matter.
And I could tell you, as a lay observer, it hurts my head every day more and more to see
how the propagation of these massive lies and the people who are drinking the Kool-Aid
(47:39):
and our world that's being taken over by this rabid, I mean, also the anti-Semitism.
And I'm going to wrap this up because I know you don't have a lot of time, but I do also
recommend everybody, I put a whole playlist of Natasha's brilliant talks in the description
below.
(47:59):
I also recommend, I'll try to remember to put in the link that you check out, the monk
debate that she did with Douglas Murray, which they won, proving that modern day anti-Zionism
is anti-Semitism.
That being said, Natasha, you have been so incredibly generous with your time.
(48:20):
I'm going to ask you one last, you can make it as short as you want to, question.
What message do you have for anyone who is standing against Israel today in the name
of social justice?
That if they truly cared about the future of both Palestinians and Israelis, they would
(48:40):
be seeking to educate themselves on these issues because the wool being pulled over
the eyes of those who are serving the purposes of Hamas as we speak, protesting against Israel's
legitimate right to defend itself is doing immeasurable harm.
It is serving the purposes of this internationally prescribed terrorist organization.
(49:03):
The way that Hamas treats its own people is not that dissimilar to the way that it has
treated Jews and it has threatened to treat Jews on an ongoing basis.
That is what we need to be standing very firmly against and combating, as I indicated earlier,
the indoctrination and the incentivization to terror because otherwise all that we will
(49:25):
see is a repeat of history.
Natasha, I wish I were as eloquent and brilliant as you.
I can't thank you enough, honestly, for taking this time.
Thank you for not only educating my audience, but really every day you educate me.
I love watching your videos and learning from you.
(49:47):
I'm in awe of you.
And it's just when I see people as young as you who have taken such a passionate life
purpose, whatever it is, from an informed viewpoint and in using your brilliance to
such noble ends, I just honor you, respect you.
(50:10):
And once again, thank you so much.
It's been lovely to meet you.
Thank you so much.
Israel is the cause of social justice.
(00:07):
I know how upset people are over this war, and it's understandable because they are being
flooded with these horrific images of Gaza, but they are being given without context,
without understanding of what is actually going on in this war and where the justice
(00:30):
actually lies.
Social media algorithms have been proven that they are strongly biased against Israel.
And the narratives that are being pushed on us by the mass media are the narratives of
Hamas themselves, a terrorist state that also happens to make up its own statistics that
(00:52):
are in no way verifiable.
That being said, I would like to introduce you to Natasha Hausdorff.
Natasha is a barrister and expert commentator on international law, including the law of
armed conflict, foreign affairs, and national security policy.
(01:12):
She holds law degrees from Oxford and Tel Aviv universities and was a fellow in the
national security law program at Columbia Law School in New York.
Natasha previously worked for the American law firm Skadden Arps in London and Brussels
and clerked for the president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Chief Justice Miriam Naor in
(01:36):
Jerusalem.
She serves as legal director of UK lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust.
Natasha, it is such an honor and a pleasure to have you here.
And thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.
The pleasure and honor is mine, and especially as legal director of the Charitable Trust
(01:58):
of UK Lawyers for Israel.
It's very much our mission to educate on exactly the issues that you set out in your introduction.
Yeah.
And that being said, I just really ask that people listen.
We are not going to be talking about opinions or feelings.
We're going to be talking about laws and international rule.
(02:19):
And we are talking to an expert.
When it comes to social justice, I understand that is a very emotional issue, but please
take the time, listen to the facts, and then make an opinion because that is truly what
social justice is about.
Okay, Natasha, I'd love to begin by talking about this concept of lawfare because Israel
(02:44):
is already fighting this war on seven physical fronts, plus the social media, mass media,
and the populist fronts of the rabid anti-Semites are taking over our cities and our streets.
As such, Israel is constantly finding itself on its heels, defending itself from insidious
(03:06):
and patently false allegations.
So can you talk to us a little bit about what is lawfare and how is it being used in this
particular war?
Well, lawfare against Israel is unfortunately not a new concept.
Lawfare is essentially the abuse of legal systems, legal processes, legal institutions
(03:33):
to advance a political agenda, which is not in keeping with the rule of law or the equal
application of law, but in fact inverts legal questions and legal standards.
And we've seen this on display very forcefully more recently with respect to Israel at the
International Criminal Court, at the International Court of Justice, at other UN bodies like
(03:58):
the UN Human Rights Council, and in widespread discussion and public fora in the media where
legal terminology is being deployed, often in a way which inverts its meaning, and it's
being deployed for political reasons by those with an agenda against Israel.
(04:19):
I recall well over 10 years ago an article by Mahmoud Abbas in Op-Ed in the New York Times,
which called for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal, not just a political
matter.
Those were his words, and I read that as Mahmoud Abbas's declaration of lawfare.
(04:42):
So you're absolutely right that Israel is facing a further front, another battle, in
the international legal arena against this phenomenon of lawfare.
And the reason it's so pertinent to Israel's ability to conduct this war against Hamas
and other Iranian proxies, Hezbollah, also the Houthis in Yemen, the reason it's so
(05:05):
critical is because it inevitably has a direct impact on Israel's ability to defend itself
and its citizens.
And we have seen this in the rhetoric that has surrounded many of these lawfare initiatives,
both at the International Criminal Court and at the International Court of Justice, allegations
of genocide, starvation, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, apartheid.
(05:31):
All of these terms have no basis in their application against Israel, but they are powerfully
deployed as pseudo-legal terminology.
And the impact that they have can be seen in the rhetoric that has come from governments,
even those friendly to Israel, the United Kingdom and the US included, and the pressure
(05:54):
that has been put by these governments on the basis of these false pseudo-legal allegations
with respect to the war against Hamas.
And we have seen this in many respects drawn out, Israel's ability to conduct this war
has been directly impacted by these lawfare initiatives.
And we've seen this playing into the hands of Hamas, because Hamas only have one aim
(06:18):
in the present circumstances, and that is to survive.
And the way they do this is by shaping the international discourse and the lawfare terminology
around what is happening in Gaza at the moment.
They do this by seeking to drive up the casualty count as much as they can.
And you are right that the Hamas figures certainly cannot be trusted.
(06:40):
These are put out by an internationally prescribed terrorist organization, but they are taken
as read by many international organizations, by many media institutions, and even by some
governments.
And this plays into the hands of Hamas in seeking to drive up this casualty count that
they have put out and drive the agenda of these allegations against Israel in order
(07:04):
to have international pressure on Israel to cease its war against Hamas.
Yeah.
And I want to go over these allegations one by one, because people blob them together
and there's literally no difference to actual definitions or facts.
I mean, on the man on the street level, I understand because they, like, who's going
(07:29):
to take the time to research this the way that you do or the way that I do because I
really care about this when you could just see the image and say, dead people, bad, end
of story.
I mean, I do want to get back to the broader sort of issues of the ICC at the end of this
discussion and why they don't seem to defer to these definitions and laws because that
(07:54):
the whole the fact that they seem to be creating their own legal standard that doesn't even
adhere to their own legal standard, as John Spencer calls it, triple standards.
They're not even double standards that are only levied against Israel.
I do want to just sort of break this down.
(08:16):
And before we do, Natasha, can you briefly go over not just what this really meant for
Israel?
Because this is another thing that's just so amazing.
All anybody's talking about is what this means for Israel.
But in fact, they also ruled on Hamas.
In fact, the first part of the opinion was a part was against Hamas.
But nobody wants to hear this because nobody cares that Hamas happens to be.
(08:41):
I don't want to say far bigger because what Israel is doing is not war crime, but what
Hamas does, everything they do is war crime.
So could we talk a little bit about what the judgment means and doesn't mean for both Israel
and Hamas?
And can we talk about Hamas first?
Well, I think the first thing we need to do is make sure we're talking about the same
(09:04):
legal proceedings in the same court.
And again, the terminologies are being wrongly deployed.
And it's often on purpose.
But there are many, understandably, non-lawyers getting confused about what a decision is,
what a judgment is, what an opinion is.
So the most recent development at the International Court of Justice has been a non-binding advisory
(09:30):
opinion that was Friday a week ago.
And that opinion didn't deal with Hamas at all.
This was an opinion sought in the context of a General Assembly resolution.
So the General Assembly asked the court to give a legal opinion on a series of allegations
that it levied against Israel, breaches of international law that it alleged.
(09:53):
But it didn't ask the court actually to examine those allegations.
It simply asked the court to take those allegations as a given, including the violation of the
Hamas right to self-determination, and rather than analyzing what was alleged, it simply
asked the court to say, what are the legal consequences of Israel violating international
law in this way?
(10:14):
Now in this context, we're not looking at the creation of a new legal standard here.
We're looking at the subversion of legal standards.
The allegations that were made against Israel were baseless, but they involved an invention
of history, an invention of law, certainly, but an inversion of the victim perpetrator
(10:39):
analysis here.
Because we see Jews in particular, Israel as the Jewish state, being blamed for the
very crimes of which they have been victims.
And that was certainly on display in the context of the ICJ advisory opinion, albeit it's not
legally binding.
It still has caused a great stir.
(11:00):
And in that-
Yeah, no, I was actually speaking more specifically about the ICC with the arrest warrants, the
allegations.
Yeah.
So there we don't have any judgment yet.
We don't have any decision.
But what we do have is an application by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
for arrest warrants against the arch Hamas terrorists, including Yair Sinwar and Mohammad
(11:28):
Daif, and also against the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the defense
minister, Yoav Galant.
This is clearly even to a layman an abhorrent equivalence for anyone to draw.
But there are serious problems with an international court, and the International Criminal Court
(11:49):
has jurisdiction over individuals, not states.
But it doesn't have jurisdiction in this case.
The International Criminal Court is what we call a creature of statute.
It was established through a convention that was entered into by states called the Rome
Statute.
And that sets down the rules of the court and the jurisdiction of the court in relation
(12:13):
to each of the states that have become members of the International Criminal Court.
Rome never became a member.
The United States didn't join either.
And there were important reasons for that, including that it was pretty evident, even
at the drafting stage of the Rome Statute, that this was potentially a court that could
be open to abuse for political reasons.
(12:34):
And the reason I say that is because if you look at the drafting of some of the crimes
that are set out in Article 8 of the Rome Statute, there has, to give one example, been
an inclusion of some additional words into one of the crimes to do with the transfer
of populations by an occupier and occupied territory.
(12:57):
They included two key words, directly or indirectly.
Now, this was an attempt, essentially, to manipulate international law, to seek to criminalize
the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria.
The idea that Jews cannot live in certain parts of the world simply because they're
Jews could be, I would suggest, morally abhorrent to any individual that subscribes to the principles
(13:22):
that you set out very effectively and powerfully in your introduction.
But this is exactly what the court was seeking to do.
I mean, we can go into the many reasons why it is still not successfully able to create
international law in that fashion and to suggest that there is some illegitimacy attached
to Jews living in those areas and disputed territory.
(13:45):
But putting that aside.
Yeah, yeah.
Amazingly though, Natasha, didn't they try to use, I mean, I know they did, that same
displacement theory that because the IDF was actually trying to relocate people to safe
zones that they tried to say that that was the forceful displacement of a population
(14:07):
and that that was a war crime rather than, say, leaving them where they knew that there
was going to be mass bombing and therefore casualties if they did not move them.
I mean, talk about an inversion of reality.
That was one of the allegations that was made.
It's also been Egypt's justification for its failure to comply with its international law
(14:31):
obligations.
It could also suggest basic humanity in facilitating the evacuation of civilians across the Egyptian
border into Egyptian Rafah, where they could be provided for in a safe humanitarian zone
away from Hamas.
The alternative of Egypt sealing that border to anyone who's not able to pay extortionate
sums to be able to evacuate themselves.
(14:53):
Egypt sealing these individuals in so that they can continue to be used as human shields
by Hamas, which has been firing only in the last few days from within the humanitarian
zones that Israel has set out as safe areas.
So Egypt is also complicit in the Hamas strategy here.
And it is something that Israel, as a state, finds itself very hamstrung in being able
(15:16):
to call out because there is a very delicate peace agreement with the Egyptians, which
they have threatened essentially to tear up if any issue is made of seeking to facilitate
the safe passage of Gazan civilians away from Hamas and into the Sinai, where they can be
properly looked after, provided for, and where aid won't be diverted by Hamas as it has been
(15:41):
diverting international aid throughout this tragic set of circumstances.
But I think it's just important to acknowledge that the first problem with the International
Criminal Court is that it does not have any jurisdiction here as a result of Israel not
being a party to the Rome Statute and there being no state of Palestine under international
law that can accede to the court, become a member, and give of its own jurisdiction to
(16:08):
the court.
And in fact, this was one of the issues that the United Kingdom was proposing to submit
to the court on in the context of challenging its jurisdiction to seek arrest warrants over
Israelis.
Because as I know you and many people watching will know, it is as a result of the Oslo Accords,
the Oslo Process, that the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 with autonomy and
(16:33):
authority over areas A and B of the West Bank.
But explicitly, it does not have criminal jurisdiction over Israelis.
So even if it purported to become a state, to join the Rome Statute, it would not be
able to give the court a jurisdiction which it simply does not have.
(16:56):
Now the other aspect of these international legal proceedings against Israel is that it
essentially tears up the Oslo Accords.
It has thrown these internationally backed agreements out of the window.
It is strongly indicated to Israel that international agreements that it signs with the Palestinian
leadership are not worth the paper they are written on.
(17:16):
And it has sent a very strong message to the Palestinian leadership themselves that they
simply do not need to engage in the universally accepted process of bilateral negotiations
with Israel, that they can simply decide to engage in these lawfare initiatives in following
(17:37):
the aim.
The only aim that really seems to underscore all of these activities is to seek to eradicate
Israel, to defeat the Jewish state in a way that it has not been able to do on the battlefield,
to do so in the legal arena.
Sure.
And I mean, I'd love to actually talk about this concept of a Palestinian state because
(18:00):
at this point, I mean, I think well over 170 countries or something have acknowledged a
Palestinian state that has neither a government nor borders, which goes against the very concept
of a state.
There is no state.
Objectively speaking, there is no state.
But when it comes to trying to say undermine the Oslo Accords, I would say that beyond
(18:25):
just lawfare, there's this war of words, and I'm not just talking about social media, but
this war of words, this insidious insertion of the word Palestine into the public discourse.
And I hate to say this because I love her, but even Caroline Glitt says Palestine, which
(18:47):
hurts my hat because what's happening is we are creating a de facto state because at the
point where everyone in the world is saying Palestine as if it's a state instead of Palestinian
territories or Palestinian controlled areas or whatever it is, that like literally, I
(19:08):
would sort of liken it to in a democracy such as the United States or the UK, if for example,
any group were to have a large enough population, then they could peacefully take over the government
just by being 90% of the population and taking over the government, just voting them in.
(19:29):
That there is a non-aggressive way of accomplishing the same things that they're trying to accomplish
with aggression and this use of the word Palestine, you use the word enough times, you tell a
lie enough times, and it actually becomes reality.
So what does it even mean literally besides to undermine the state of Israel and say,
(19:57):
we don't consider you legitimate?
What does it even mean to acknowledge a Palestinian state without a government or borders?
Well it's contrary to what international law says.
Yes, you are absolutely right with respect to borders and government.
(20:19):
The criteria set out for statehood, which include those two in the Montevideo Convention,
have also now become part of customary international law.
That is law that doesn't necessarily need to exist in a treaty that states sign themselves
up to, but that is so universally acknowledged and applied that it applies to all states.
(20:44):
And the aspect of recognition is actually only quite a minor part of what statehood means
in international law.
One example, I think, of the real difficulty that the supposed legal reasoning that has
been used to advance the Palestinian law for initiatives, one example of where this starts
(21:06):
to unravel is in this International Court of Justice advisory opinion, which is just
over a week old, where the court seeks to recognize the unity and the contiguity of
Palestinian territory and seeks to ensure that this is recognized and preserved.
(21:30):
Those are the words the court used.
Well you and I understand what a map of the Middle East looks like.
The disputed territories, the Palestinian authority controlled areas of the West Bank,
the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip, they are not contiguous.
Right, there's a little thing called Israel in the middle of it.
(21:51):
It's through this sort of legalese, if you will, that Israel has seemingly been eradicated
from the map.
And this is the process.
We talked about some of this terminology.
And of course, when you repeat these canards frequently enough, they start to take hold.
(22:15):
They start to become the received wisdom.
Alan Dershowitz spoke about this probably nearly two decades ago now when he talked
about the term occupation.
And this had suddenly become the received wisdom.
Well, in the legal proper application of the term, there's no such thing as an Israeli
occupation.
(22:36):
The framework of the law of occupation exists when one sovereign occupies the territory
of another sovereign, the proper application of international law to the disputed territory
to tell us what the status of the territory is under the rule of Utiposidetes Iuris, in
fact tells us that since Israel's declaration of independence in 1948, the territory of
(23:00):
the former British mandate, Palestine, has been Israeli sovereign territory.
Now that was since 49 occupied by Jordan in the West Bank in East Jerusalem and by Egypt
and Gaza.
But in 1967, when Israel recovered those territories, albeit that the underlying status of the territory
as sovereign Israel hadn't changed, it instituted a temporary administration in the West Bank
(23:26):
in the anticipation that in the course of a peace agreement with Jordan, some of that
territory would be given to Jordan.
That was the land for peace formula that Israel was encouraged to embrace.
And so that temporary administration that Israel instituted in 1967 ultimately became
altered.
(23:47):
Certainly one could argue that in the context of the internationally approved agreement,
the Oslo Accords, we've already spoken a bit about.
But none of this, none of this changes the underlying status of the territory.
And ultimately, Israel cannot occupy what is its own sovereign territory.
Can I just say that, just to reiterate something that you said, because I think you're used
(24:13):
to speaking to an audience that has a little more context, that the Jews not only have
indigeneity on their side, I mean, nobody can refute.
I mean, even the Quran can't refute.
The Jews were there for thousands of years before Islam even existed.
But in order, people don't seem to understand that in order to occupy a nation, you have
(24:37):
to have a homeland, as you said, that you could say theoretically go back to.
So I would love anybody to tell me what this occupying nation, where did the Jews come
from besides the fact that, and Natasha, if I'm not mistaken, your family goes back in
Israel eight generations.
Isn't that, is that accurate?
(24:59):
Yeah.
It was since the 1840s.
But you see, the proper application of international law doesn't even require us to go that far
back.
There is a recognized universal rule that simply requires us to look at Israel's declaration
of independence.
That's right.
When new states come into being, it is this rule that dictates that the newly emerging
(25:22):
states inherits the preexisting administrative lines of whatever unit preceded it as its
internationally recognized borders.
So I'm not suggesting even that we recognize the thousands of years of history that the
Jews have in the land of Judea.
(25:44):
I don't even think we need to go that far.
I think we need to stand upon the proper and equal application of international law.
And I'll give you a very current example, an equivalence, if I may.
They're all extremely invested also in the outcomes of the Ukraine-Russia war, Russia's
(26:07):
war of aggression against Ukraine, subsequent to, of course, its occupation of Crimea from
Ukraine.
And the reason there is a general consensus that Russia has occupied Crimea from Ukraine
is Crimea's, forgive me, Ukraine's borders also follow the rule of Otypossidatae Syros.
But if Ukraine were to recover Crimea from Russia in this war in the same way that Israel
(26:30):
recovered the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, from Jordan in 1967, I
mean, do you think anyone would accuse Ukraine of occupying Crimea from Russia?
Exactly.
And by the way, where are the people all in the streets complaining about Ukrainians fighting
back with full force?
(26:52):
There's that.
Yeah, no, the only reason that I was talking about going back eight generations, because
so many people are saying, oh, the Jews showed up in Israel in 48 or after World War II.
And it's like, well, that's ridiculous.
I mean, that's ridiculous.
If the Jews ever had a homeland, it was the three nation states of Israel that existed
in Israel.
I mean, they had different iterations, different names, but we've always been there.
(27:16):
And it has been our nation state.
And in fact, of course, when the partition plan came out, the Arabs were offered a state
and they issued instead of accepting it, the famous three no's, right?
No peace, no negotiations, no recognition of the state of Israel.
So why isn't there a Palestinian state?
Because the Palestinians refuse to have a state next to the Jews.
(27:40):
And also, I do want to point out because again, like people, I think, believe Israel is like
a big bad Israel and they don't understand that Israel is less than one fifth of one
percent the size of the Arab world.
Like on a small map, you can't even see Israel in the map of the Arab world.
(28:03):
And that is point zero to point zero to.
Okay.
You can do the math.
That doesn't make sense, guys.
Just write it down.
It's a very small number percent of the population of the Middle East.
Like, why is everybody so obsessed with this tiny, tiny piece of land that happens to be
(28:25):
the homeland of the Jews?
That's a rhetorical question.
I think somewhat outside my area of expertise.
But one thing that I was really struck by many years ago, the late great Rabbi Lord
Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, talked about the evolution of anti-Semitism
(28:51):
and what many have described as the world's oldest hatred, what began in the Middle Ages
with a focus on the Jewish religion manifested itself in these ancient blood libel's that
Jews would kill Christian children to use their blood to make matzah or for other religious
rituals.
(29:12):
And when that mutated and the focus was on the Jewish race in the context of science
becoming the order of the day, eugenics was used in order to seek to justify that hatred.
And in the context of international law and human rights taking over as the order of the
day, the modern manifestation of anti-Semitism is the so-called anti-Zionism, a hatred of
(29:38):
the Jewish state.
And in this context, all of these legal faux allegations, occupation, ethnic cleansing,
apartheid, colonialism, genocide, these are essentially the modern blood libel's.
And we can see that mutating virus of anti-Semitism in its modern updated form.
(30:01):
And that must explain the bizarre focus.
And I don't want to suggest, you know, this is simply water battery and we can look around
the Middle East at situations where there are real human rights abuses taking place.
We don't have to go very far away.
I mean, what Hamas has been doing to its own people in Gaza is abominable.
(30:22):
Dan Gilliman, former UN ambassador from Israel, put it in his own way in terms of the international
focus on the Jewish state, on Israel, and the comparison with real tragedies that are happening
all around the world.
He said, when Jews kill Arabs, it's the massacre.
(30:44):
When Christians kill Arabs, it's a crusade.
And when Arabs kill Arabs, it's the weather channel.
Nobody really cares.
And that is desperately tragic when you think about all of the wars in the Middle East and
all of the millions of lives that have been lost that have not occasioned international
attention.
(31:05):
And then you see the way that international attention is being abused for the purpose
of an internationally prescribed terrorist organization in this fashion.
And I think we need to ensure that there is better education, but also that the international
community is taking responsibility for its part in this misinformation and in propagating
(31:28):
these blood liabilities.
And I don't just mean the media here.
The real causes of what we have been seeing in the last nine months since the 7th of October,
the indoctrination in UNRWA schools with international funding and the incentivization to terror
through the Palestinian Authority Pay for Slave Program with international funding.
(31:53):
These are the key issues that need to be addressed if we're ever going to have a hope of avoiding
a repeat of the 7th of October.
But they require, I think, the international community to wise up to its complicity in
both indoctrination and incentivization to terror and to ensure that never again means
(32:17):
never again.
A hundred percent.
And for anybody who doesn't know, in quick layman's terms, pay display is literally the
Palestinian Authority pays terrorists to kill Jews.
That's like a very simple explanation.
Salaries that are greater than they would earn in the actual labor market and to their
(32:40):
families as well.
The wage is often presented by the Palestinian Authority as though it is welfare.
These are welfare payments made either to detainees, terrorists or to their families.
However, the salaries increase depending on the severity of the sentence.
(33:03):
So depending on how many Jews an individual has managed to slaughter.
And these are people who are celebrated either as martyrs if they are killed in the process
of their terrorist activities or otherwise as heroes if they serve prison sentences for
their crimes.
(33:25):
So this system structure that is built around celebrating those that seek to martyr themselves
and those that seek to slaughter Jews, it manifests itself in football clubs being named
after terrorists, in the school textbooks that celebrate famous individuals, as well
(33:47):
as in the salaries that are paid.
And as you say, they are substantially higher than ordinary Gazans or even those in the
Palestinian Authority controlled West Bank would be able to earn under honest jobs in
those territories.
Sure, so it's a pretty great incentive, especially because it's such, Gaza in some areas is such
(34:12):
an economically distressed area, not due to Israel, but due to Hamas and the way that
it oppresses its own citizens and takes all the billions of dollars of financial aid that
have been sent there and uses them for the terror tunnels and for their missiles, ammunition.
But because we're limited on time, I definitely want to get to the big one.
(34:32):
Okay, I definitely want to make sure that we talk about genocide and these accusations
of ethnic cleansing.
I'd like to start with the definition because again, you know so much more than my audience
knows.
So let me start with the actual just simple sentence.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group
(34:54):
in whole or in part.
The irony being of course that when people are calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide
because or ethnic cleansing by the definition that they're using, which is there are people
dying in a war in a place, then all war would be genocide.
So there are a hundred reasons why this is not a genocide.
(35:18):
And by the way, why the Hamas incursion?
I'd like to call the Gaza incursion because they weren't all Hamas.
There was a lot of citizens that were just and un-run employees that took place in the
massacre that that is an actual effort for genocide and ethnic cleansing.
But Natasha, I know that this is an area that you can really shed some tremendous light.
(35:45):
Why is what's going on in Gaza absolutely and unequivocally neither a genocide nor ethnic
cleansing?
You were right in reading out the definition which comes from Article 2 of the Genocide
Convention.
This was a term that was coined by a Jewish jurist, Raphael Lemkin, in the aftermath of
(36:11):
the Holocaust to provide some form of terminology for the Jewish experience of people seeking
to exterminate Jews because they were Jews, to eradicate a group, an ethnic, religious
or racial group in whole or in part.
And that intention to destroy a group in whole or in part is at the very center of that definition
(36:36):
and reflective of the crime that was committed against the Jewish people in particular in
the Holocaust by the Nazis.
You're right that the 7th of October saw acts of genocide perpetrated against Jews again
and Hamas have made no secret of their intention to destroy Jews because they are Jews.
(36:59):
They have celebrated this and they have said that they intend to commit those acts of genocide
again and again.
And you were absolutely right, there were other terrorist groups that crossed the border
on the 7th, affiliates of Fatah, the PFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and as we now know
many civilians and UNRWA employees also.
(37:22):
The deploying of this allegation against the real victims of genocide is another example
of blaming the victims for the crimes that were committed against them.
This has been done with purpose.
I was on the equivalent of the BBC in South Africa, ABC shortly after the first provisional
(37:49):
measures order in the allegations case with the allegations brought by South Africa genocide.
And my counterpart was celebrating, isn't it wonderful?
They said we can now finally use genocide in Israel in the same sentence and nobody
can tell us otherwise.
And that gives you a pretty strong indication of South Africa's motivations here seeking
(38:13):
really to shift the Oberton window, to shift what the acceptable terminology in the anti-Israel
propaganda arena is.
And in that respect, this case has been extremely successful in shaping public opinion because
now if you can believe it, this question isn't even up for the debate.
(38:33):
Why is it wholly untrue?
Well the measures that Israel takes to prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, which
are completely unparalleled in the history of warfare, is one reason.
Issuing warnings, evacuating civilians wherever possible, providing leaflets, indicating safe
(38:54):
zones and humanitarian corridors, instructions for evacuations, phone calls to individual
householders, text messages, calling off strikes if there are too many civilians in the vicinity
on the principle of proportionality, ensuring that it not only upholds the other rules of
international humanitarian law, including the principles of necessity, distinction,
(39:18):
proportionality I've mentioned and precaution, but in fact going far above those requirements
in terms of the involvement of the military advocate general corps, the army lawyers in
pre-approving strikes and in being there to assist the officers on the ground with their
proportionality assessments in real time.
(39:38):
I mean all of this, the level of which Israel has been upholding these rules and preventing
civilian casualties is unheard of, unprecedented and there are experienced army officers from
the US and the UK in particular that have said their armies would not be able to hold
(39:59):
themselves to the standard that Israel is setting.
That also brings in some disquiet.
So in that context, in the prevention of civilian casualties, which is also marked out by the
comparisons, we've seen many with an informed assessment on this putting the casualty ratio
in the region of one to one, one civilian to every one combatant.
(40:22):
But when you consider that the global average that the United Nations has assessed is nine
to one, nine civilians for every one combatant or that in Afghanistan and Iraq we were looking
at three to one and five to one, five civilians for every one combatant.
Then what Israel has been doing in an unprecedented military theatre where Hamas has spent 16
(40:46):
years embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and using civilians as human shields, where
every mosque, school and hospital and by all accounts every second house is part of the
terror infrastructure.
Then Israel's success in minimising civilian casualties here is in fact utterly unprecedented.
So that is one aspect of where the intention towards genocide is certainly not made out.
(41:10):
But we've also seen this in the context of the humanitarian provisions that Israel has
facilitated into the Gaza Strip.
Far in excess in fact of the calorie needs assessed by the World Food Program.
Despite the diversion of much of this aid to Hamas, all of these allegations or predictions
(41:32):
of starvation have now been thoroughly debunked.
And Israel's efforts and initiatives to provide humanitarian assistance for the local population
despite Hamas abusing those supplies and using them for their own terror initiatives, again
indicates the levels, the initiatives that Israel is undertaking, which are far and beyond
(41:58):
what many other armies in that position would be doing.
Of course, there is a unit that is specifically set up to provide for the needs of the local
civilian population in armed conflict, Kogat.
And in all of these contexts, much of this actually comprise the submissions that Israel
was making to the International Court of Justice to rebut and refute these absurd allegations
(42:23):
of genocide.
But on a very basic level, any government, any army with an intention to commit genocide
would not be seeking to save lives in the way Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip.
A hundred percent.
And because I just last week did a long talk with John Spencer on the actual warfare, I'm
(42:47):
going to say like people check that out because he is like the foremost expert in America
on urban warfare, you can also check out Colonel Richard Kemp in Britain, who comes to the
same exact conclusions.
They both have zero skin in the game.
But Natasha, how do the international courts, I don't even know how else to say it, get
(43:10):
away with perpetrating lies?
Like the UN, as you said, has formally stated that there is no famine after the investigation,
that there is no famine in Gaza.
In fact, over 3000 calories a day, which I could tell you as somebody who's in the fitness
(43:30):
world is more food than anybody should be eating in a day, is being brought into Gaza
on a daily basis.
The UN has already proven there is no sign of famine.
And yet the international criminal courts keep saying Israel is purposely starving these
people.
What's happening to these trucks?
The trucks are going in, they're being hijacked by Hamas.
(43:52):
Is this somehow Israel's fault?
And anything that is going on, any hunger, I don't even know what else to call it because
the findings have been that nobody is dying of hunger.
There is no famine, but is caused by Hamas.
How is there this constant deflection?
How do they get away with literally trying to uphold the lies that the UN itself has
(44:19):
quietly under the radar debunked?
So this comes down to the information that is put before the court.
And it has been the subject of several submissions now by UK lawyers for Israel and some other
NGOs, both to the International Criminal Court and to the International Court of Justice.
And I'll just explain how that works.
(44:41):
So with respect to the ICJ and the advisory opinion I mentioned, we pointed out how much
of the information that the court was essentially seeking to base its determinations on, its
opinion on, was false.
The court had the same problem in 2004 where it issued another advisory opinion in respect
(45:01):
of Israel called the Wall opinion, which opined on the supposed legality or illegality of
the security barrier that Israel had built in response to waves of suicide bombings.
That opinion didn't mention terrorism.
The latest opinion from the ICJ also doesn't mention terrorism and is based on shed loads
(45:23):
of false information, fabricated material that is often manufactured by armies of NGOs
that are funded in order to fabricate these false allegations against Israel.
So the submission to the International Court of Justice sought to draw the court's attention
to that false information and say it should not be basing an opinion on that data or those
(45:49):
reports.
But similarly, the International Criminal Court that we have spoken about and the application
for arrest warrants by the prosecutor of the court, who is also a barrister from the United
Kingdom called Kareem Khan, he produced a summary, a public statement, a summary supposedly
(46:09):
of the application that he had put for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Galland to
pre-child chamber one to make a determination.
And having gone through that public statement, the submission by UK Lawyers for Israel to
the court, it was actually an application for permission, but we set out there already
(46:31):
in robust terms and some detail and I encourage your viewers to find it on the UKLFI website
and have a read of it.
Every statement that the prosecutor put in support of his application for arrest warrants
in that public summary was false, was incorrect.
And we have set out chapter and verse.
(46:53):
One only needs to look at publicly available information, including from Kareem Khan, to
see the error of the material that has been put forward.
But if you want a relatively short answer as to how it is that the court can make such
absurd findings on the basis of plainly actually incorrect information, that's unfortunately
(47:14):
a major reason as to why.
Yeah, it's really mind boggling because we live in a post-factual society.
Facts simply do not matter.
And I could tell you, as a lay observer, it hurts my head every day more and more to see
how the propagation of these massive lies and the people who are drinking the Kool-Aid
(47:39):
and our world that's being taken over by this rabid, I mean, also the anti-Semitism.
And I'm going to wrap this up because I know you don't have a lot of time, but I do also
recommend everybody, I put a whole playlist of Natasha's brilliant talks in the description
below.
(47:59):
I also recommend, I'll try to remember to put in the link that you check out, the monk
debate that she did with Douglas Murray, which they won, proving that modern day anti-Zionism
is anti-Semitism.
That being said, Natasha, you have been so incredibly generous with your time.
(48:20):
I'm going to ask you one last, you can make it as short as you want to, question.
What message do you have for anyone who is standing against Israel today in the name
of social justice?
That if they truly cared about the future of both Palestinians and Israelis, they would
(48:40):
be seeking to educate themselves on these issues because the wool being pulled over
the eyes of those who are serving the purposes of Hamas as we speak, protesting against Israel's
legitimate right to defend itself is doing immeasurable harm.
It is serving the purposes of this internationally prescribed terrorist organization.
(49:03):
The way that Hamas treats its own people is not that dissimilar to the way that it has
treated Jews and it has threatened to treat Jews on an ongoing basis.
That is what we need to be standing very firmly against and combating, as I indicated earlier,
the indoctrination and the incentivization to terror because otherwise all that we will
(49:25):
see is a repeat of history.
Natasha, I wish I were as eloquent and brilliant as you.
I can't thank you enough, honestly, for taking this time.
Thank you for not only educating my audience, but really every day you educate me.
I love watching your videos and learning from you.
(49:47):
I'm in awe of you.
And it's just when I see people as young as you who have taken such a passionate life
purpose, whatever it is, from an informed viewpoint and in using your brilliance to
such noble ends, I just honor you, respect you.
(50:10):
And once again, thank you so much.
It's been lovely to meet you.
Thank you so much.
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