What the world is getting wrong on Israel: An interview with Natasha Hausdorff

Yahoo

11 hours ago

Natasha Hausdorff, the British barrister who has become an outspoken defender of Israel's legal rights on global news networks, warns that a 'vicious cycle of disinformation' — fuelled by media self-censorship and terrorist propaganda — has warped the world's understanding of the Gaza conflict, and put Jewish lives at risk.
More notably, the expert in international law has popularized one such law, Uti possidetis juris. It states that newly formed sovereign countries should retain the borders that their preceding area had before their independence. Therefore, at the time Israel declared itself a state, Mandatory Palestine – which included what today is known as Israel, Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank) and Gaza – would by law be legal territorial boundaries of Israel. It is a lynchpin argument, she believes, against the charges of 'illegal occupation' and 'illegal settlements.'
She regularly briefs politicians and international organizations and has spoken at parliaments across Europe.
After her law degree at Oxford University, she clerked for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel in Jerusalem in 2016. In 2018, Hausdorff was a Fellow at Columbia Law School in the National Security Law Program.
Dave Gordon interviewed Hausdorff prior to a talk she delivered at Toronto's Nova Exhibition on June 12, hosted by StandWithUs Canada.
It would seem ought to have been used by Israel decades ago in international forums. Why hasn't it?
I can fully appreciate that Israel's official stance is constrained by diplomatic operations and political pressures. It's a rule that applies automatically, whatever Israel says about the situation.
There are other examples of Israel not standing on ceremony, as far as international law is concerned. One of those relates to Egypt's obligation to open the border to Palestinian civilians, fleeing civil disorder in Gaza. That's in accordance with Egypt's obligation under the Organization of African Unity Convention on (governing the specific aspect of) Refugees, which it signed in 1980.
This is a convention that has a much broader definition of refugee than the international convention. Nobody has been calling on Egypt to open the border from October 2023. But Israel can't pressure (that), because Egypt threatened to tear up the peace agreement with Israel.
What's your opinion about how the media's been covering the war?
If the BBC were reporting from North Korea, there would be some indication somewhere that we are not free to report without censorship — controlled in what we're able to say by the regime. I have not seen a single piece of reporting from Gaza that has acknowledged that: nothing comes out of the Gaza Strip that is not controlled by Hamas.
So for a start, the notion that the international media would be parroting Hamas propaganda in this fashion is deeply shameful, and indicates to me a complete absence of journalistic integrity. That's quite apart from the devastating impact that this is having.
When I talk to policy makers, officials around the world, they tell me they're basing their determination on what to do, on the basis of the Gaza pictures they see in the media.
Now, let me be clear, they are terrible. But I see on Israeli media, a series of interviews from Channel 12 in November, in Gaza, where they held out a microphone to Palestinians that were leaving Jabala. At the time, they could not grab it from him quickly enough, to tell the world how Hamas was responsible for all of the ills that had been visited upon them, how grateful they were to Israel for the humanitarian assistance, the fact that Israel provided humanitarian corridors.
I didn't see those interviews anywhere on the international broadcast media. Frankly, they don't fit with the agenda that people want to follow.
The amount of damage that this self-censorship, and embracing of Hamas, and other terrorist organization propaganda is doing, is seen in the obscene statements that we've heard from supposed allies of Israel: the U.K., France and Canada.
Jews are being executed on the streets in the capital of the free world (Washington, D.C.), and I think that is directly attributable to the irresponsible broadcast, where we had the media repeating this absurd claim of 14,000 babies dying in the next 48 hours.
The link, I'm afraid, is undeniable.
Do you think Israel is telling its story well?
So much misreporting is happening, and this isn't being addressed. Can I put the blame squarely on Israel? I struggle with that, because the fact of the matter is that a lot of this information is publicly available. Right?
The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) website catalogues all of the aid going into Gaza, over the last 19 months. That is not only ignored by the international media, by politicians, by the UN, by the ICJ, it is actually inverted. And there is this reoccurring canard that there's not enough food getting into Gaza, which, ultimately, you know, Israel can't really fix if it's telling people what the reality is, and they choose to ignore it. That's not necessarily on Israel's head.
Have Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, gotten better at the propaganda war?
They certainly have, I think, invested a great deal more in time, energy and resources into it. It's certainly been a key factor of Hamas's planning of this war. Hamas puts members in press vests, and generates fake images.
We're seeing the impact of that disinformation campaign. I think we need to understand the symbiotic relationship that exists with these terrorist organizations and international organizations.
The Amnesty International report on genocide makes it clear in their methodology that they are taking their information from Hamas. They call them 'local government authorities,' but we all know what they're talking about.
They take this terrorist propaganda, put it into a report, which is headed up by Amnesty International. Then that gets repeated by Special Rapporteurs at the UN, like Francesca Albanese. Then it gets worked into UN resolutions, and the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly, then it gets quoted by the ICJ or the ICC, and then these international organizations pick it up again and say, 'see! The ICJ says so.'
So that vicious cycle of disinformation has been operational for a very long time.
Of the untruths peddled, like settler colonialism, genocide, apartheid, etc., which is the biggest?
I think they're all deeply vicious and poisonous, and the connection that they share is they are reminiscent of the ancient blood libel against Jews.
We're seeing a phenomenon where the real victims in each of these instances are being blamed for the very crimes that were committed against them. If you're asking me to pick one, I'd go with genocide, because it is the most reprehensible.
Principally, when you consider that the term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin to provide a lexicon for the Jewish experience in the Holocaust.
Ultimately the acts of the seventh of October were acts of genocide by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, and even Palestinian civilians targeting Jews. The fact that the experience would be weaponized against the Jews in this fashion, and they would be accused of this, is projection.
It's clear to me that when South Africa brought this claim of genocide at the International Court of Justice, it didn't have much hope of getting (a win) on it. It was trying to shift the debate and shift the Overton window.
In fact, when I was on (a broadcast) immediately after, my counterpart in this debate said, 'Isn't it wonderful, now we can finally use Israel and genocide in the same sentence, and nobody can tell us otherwise?' They've clearly been successful in doing that, even though the case has absolutely no resemblance to reality.
The Canadian government recently sanctioned two Israeli Knesset members, and in the same statement saying that Judea and Samaria are 'illegally occupied.' What's your response?
There is no illegal occupation to speak of, so (Prime Minister Mark) Carney's wrong about that. It's a policy that, as far as I can see, isn't driven by legal analysis, but by political agenda.
There are demographic issues here, and riding issues of constituencies, and who it is that he needs to kowtow to, that these policies are being put in place.
As a lawyer, we look for the proper and equal application of international law. You cannot have a general rule like uti possidetis juris, then an exception for a country you don't like very much, where you have some ideological or political opposition to it. That's not how any respectable legal system can operate.
Mark Carney and his government are actually undermining the very notion of international rule of law, and the international legal system, by inverting it.
Special to the National Post
This interview has been edited for brevity.
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.