The Daily Telegraph picks up on NGO criticisms that Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip violates international law. But as Jerusalem Post columnist Jonathan Rosenblum wrote recently:
It is time we recognize, to paraphrase Voltaire on the Holy Roman Empire, that “customary international humanitarian law” is neither customary, nor law, nor humanitarian. It is not customary because it is not based on the actual behavior of nations past or present….
Its “rules” were not enacted by any international governmental body to which sovereign nation-states ceded the right to legislate. Nor are they even embodied in reciprocal treaty obligations entered into by sovereign states. They are nothing more than “rules” derived from declarative statements made by any and everybody – from various tinpot dictators and tyrants to Human Rights Watch – on what they think international law should be; and presto, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), it is….
In responding to claims that Israel has violated CIHL, our recourse must be to elementary logic and an examination of the actual conduct of nations. Just as the US Constitution is not a “suicide pact,” neither is international law. Until human rights advocates tell us what we can do to protect our cities from missiles and our citizens from suicide bombers, CIHL has no claim on our attention.
Read the whole commentary.
