‘Lawfare’: Weaponizing Human Rights
July 10, 2010
By Aaron Eitan Meyer
In January 2009, six men and one woman broke into an EDO MBM arms factory in Sussex and caused £180,000-worth of damage as a ‘protest’ against the Israeli counter-terrorist operation in the Gaza Strip known as Cast Lead. Despite the violent nature of the action, all seven were acquitted, because the targeted company provided arms to Israel, after the presiding judge sounded more like a defense attorney than a jurist, reportedly telling the jury that “you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time.”
This outcome is not only an alarming miscarriage of justice, it is a perfect case example of lawfare, the use of the law as a weapon of war, or more specifically, the abuse of the law and legal systems for strategic political or military ends. Writing for the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick put it succinctly, “As we see today in the wholesale perversion of law in the service of Israel’s destruction in countries around the Western world, law is but a tool. Depending on who wields it, it can be a force for injustice just as easily as it can be a tool for pursuing justice.”