Shame upon shame
The Virginia State Bar Association is
looking worse by the hour. The bar's putrid leadership has apparently hijacked the entire organization without seeking anyone else's opinion (Hat Tip:
Leah P).
Let me make five general points:
1) I’m proud to say that many, inside the State Bar and beyond,
reacted with vigor to the timing and content of the announcement.
Several petitions have been organized, to rescind the cancellation (I
think it’s too late for that), to obtain the resignation of the VSB
president, or at least to elicit a full apology. B’Nai Brith
International, among many other groups, has condemned the State Bar for its action. Even the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates has chimed in.
Most importantly, many individual VSB members have written to the Bar
to express their outrage; several have been kind enough to send me
copies of their letters. Here’s an excellent example, from Jonathan
Schraub, an attorney in McLean whom I did not have the honor of knowing
before this episode brought us together. Mr. Schraub’s letter will be
published in the next issue of the Virginia Lawyers’ Weekly and thereby brought to the attention of every member of our state Bar:
AN OPEN LETTER TO VIRGINIA STATE BAR PRESIDENT KEVIN E. MARTINGAYLE
Re: Your decision to cancel the mid-year meeting in Israel
Dear President Martingayle
Along with many others I was shocked, outraged and deeply disappointed to receive your blast e-mail late Friday evening
announcing a previously undisclosed intention by the leadership of the
VSB to cancel the planned, mid-year meeting in Jerusalem, Israel. The
substance of the decision, the secretive manner in which it was arrived
at and the cavalier manner in which it was announced all merit
condemnation and call into question your continued ability to serve as
President of the Bar.
According to your email, the decision to cancel
the planned trip was based on “objections” by “certain members of the
Virginia State Bar and other individuals.” Neither the Bar members nor
the “certain other individuals”, presumably not Bar members, are
identified. Indeed, this entire decision is cloaked in a veil of secrecy
and opacity unbecoming of the Bar. Had you provided any measure of
disclosure regarding your decision, you would have advised VSB members
that the decision was based on a petition that, at last report, had 33
signatures. (The Virginia State Bar has over 50,000 members). The
petition, although citing reports form the US State Department regarding
border security measures in Israel, reaches inflammatory conclusions
regarding discrimination based on citations to such marginal, committed
anti-Israeli sources as the website “Electronic Intifada”.
Choosing to announce it late on a Friday evening and
without any prior hint that the matter was even being considered and
without any input from VSB members, speaks loudly to the underlying
discomfort that VSB leadership must have (and should have) felt at
adopting this position. What exactly was the influence that the 33
signatories to the petition had over the VSB leadership – not to mention
the “others” who presumably are not even constituents of the VSB? The
VSB is an arm of the Virginia Supreme Court and the Virginia
Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has a state sponsored commission to
promote the expansion of Virginia/Israeli ties (i.e., The Virginia
Israel Advisory Board). What exactly was the mandate that the VSB felt
it was under to unilaterally sever the ties of the Virginia mandatory
bar association with the State of Israel and announce it as a fait
accompli? Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate, if the issue was to
be considered at all, to publicly announce it, and put in place a method
for debating and ultimately voting to secure the clear sense of the
membership of the VSB? Instead, the decision was made in secret, with
no disclosure in the letter announcing the decision as to what the
thought process (if any) had been, who had been involved and what
competing arguments (if any) were considered. Nothing. Just an
intentionally vague communique that reeked of secrecy, politics and fear
of full disclosure and debate.
Many of us are left to wonder if this decision is
intended as a deliberate endorsement of the “Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions” (BDS) movement targeting the state of Israel. Certain
elements—the complete lack of transparency or open deliberation, the
late Friday afternoon announcement, and the reliance on
unabashed organs of the BDS movement like “Electronic Intifada”—point in
that direction. The BDS campaign is biased, unapologetically one-sided,
naïve at best and, other than the reckless participation by an
established group such as the VSB, historically viewed as marginal,
unsuccessful and for many who promote it, anti-Semitism in a thinly
disguised, modern costume.
If endorsing the BDS campaign was your intention, then the VSB
has elected to join hands with a truly radical movement whose openly
declared ambition is the end of the state of Israel. We know that the
BDS movement has no concern for promoting any objective, fairly applied
standard of concern over “unacceptable” practices to any state or
country other than Israel and the question is always, “why is that the
case?” Sadly, history tells us that the concern is not over
humanitarian or moral issues at all but is thinly disguised anti-Jewish,
anti-Semitic and anti- Israel propaganda. And with respect to the BDS
movement in particular, there is no need to rely on historical
inference. From a resolution urging expulsion of all Jewish students at a
South African university, to the removal of all Israeli academics from a
journal in the UK, to efforts to block the appointment of a Jewish
student to a university government position in California, to
accusations that Jewish organizations were funded by money supposedly
embezzled from failing financial firms, the BDS movement has been
implicated in naked anti-Semitism on too many occasions across too long a
period for there to remain any doubt about its character. In each of
the above situations BDS defenders rushed to complain that it was only
being accused of anti-Semitism because they were “critical of Israel.”
This is nonsense. Being part of an organization like the VSB which as
you state is “an agency that strives for maximum inclusion and equality”
means having at least a minimal understanding that deciding to stand
shoulder-to-shoulder with a movement that the global Jewish community
has long warned stands as amongst the primary purveyors of anti-Semitic
hatred, is a serious, indeed defining, step for the VSB. Did you give
any thought as to whether the BDS position fairly reflects the views and
beliefs of your membership? Or were you simply pandering to the 33
members and “others” who for whatever reason had your ear?
Your letter references “unacceptable discriminatory policies and
practices pertaining to border security” in Israel. These “policies and
practices”, according to your letter, “affect travelers to the nation”
Is it really your contention (and now that of the VSB) that meetings are
not held on a regular basis in Israel by hundreds of groups – including
the ABA and academic groups with Arab participants? What did you do to
determine whether the proposed VSB meeting would, in fact, have faced
any “discrimination” with regard to access by any and all participants?
With whom did you speak before reaching your conclusion that there is in
fact “unacceptable discriminatory practices”? To whom and in what
manner is it “unacceptable”? While there is no question but that Israel
has strict policies and procedures regarding access to the country, is
it really your position (and now the position of the VSB) that such
measures are so obviously unnecessary to protect legitimate security
concerns such that they can be dismissed as a mere pretext for
discrimination? Do you similarly demand that all policies and procedures
and laws and social mores of each state in the United States and each
country overseas in which the VSB holds meetings or sponsors trips be
vetted for “objectionable” content? Or is it just Israel? Israel
remains the most vibrant democracy in the Middle East. The Arab-Israeli
political party coalition now occupies the third largest voting bloc in
the Knesset. While that society is not perfect and many of us do not
agree with the policies of the present Israeli administration (and feel
free to say so), anyone who maintains a modicum of objectivity and is
not fronting for an ideologically anti-Israel position, will recognize
that Israeli policies are borne of the real politick faced by that
country. If they are more stringent and focused than those of
Switzerland or Sweden or Canada, it is because the reality of life is
different in Israel than in most other places.
This, of course, raises the other possibility—that the
endorsement was unintentional, and that you did not realize what this
decision would mean in the context of placing the VSB imprimatur on a
global movement seeking to isolate and dismantle the world’s sole Jewish
state. This possibility, too, does not inspire confidence. Had you
simply raised this issue publicly with the Virginia Bar, deliberated
openly rather than issue a back-office decree, these concerns would have
raised and the Bar could have avoided this catastrophe altogether. To
be blunt, this is why transparency matters—so one does not blunder into
controversies that could easily be avoided, so that genuine problems can
be resolved in a manner attentive to the concerns of all the relevant
stakeholders, and so that when the decision is finally made everybody
can feel that their voice was heard and their views fairly considered.
That did not occur here, by all appearances because you knew that your
decision would be met with justified outrage.
By adopting this position, the VSB has jumped with both feet into
the most extreme edges of the political spectrum on the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Either it intended this result, or it
didn’t. Neither possibility has anything positive to say about VSB
leadership. And regardless of what your intentions were, the VSB, by
aligning itself with the BDS movement which seeks to isolate Israel –
and only Israel - has instead succeeded in isolating itself. Although
it did not have the courage to debate the issue before deciding, the
position it has taken is far removed from the mainstream of public
opinion in this country and, without any doubt that of the Commonwealth
of Virginia and the rank and file VSB members.
It is beyond sad that, if allowed to stand, this will be the
legacy of the VSB – and of the Martingayle administration in
particular. It is outrageous form the point of view that the VSB is a
mandatory membership organization. As a practicing attorney, I am
obligated to be a member. I am obligated to pay dues to support the
policies and programs administered by you and your administration. But
I, along with many others I am sure, will now do all we can to distance
ourselves from the VSB and to cease any and all participation in VSB
programs. It is simply no longer an association that merits the support
of its members.
Shame on you President Martingayle and on the very small clique
of radical supporters with whom you have chosen to throw your lot and
reputation – and by coerced reference, the lot and reputation of the
VSB.
Read the whole thing. (Yes, that's just point 1).
Labels: BDS, boycott divest sanction, boycott Israel, Electronic Intifada, lawyers, Virginia
Jewish Community Federation of Richmond (Virginia) blasts State Bar Association for boycotting Israel
The Jewish Community Federation of Richmond (Virginia) has issued a powerful response to the State's Bar Association's decision to cancel a trip to Israel, essentially abiding by the diktat of the European-Arab-Muslim Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement.
I am embedding the response below:
Labels: BDS, boycott divest sanction, boycott Israel, lawyers, Virginia
Virginia State Bar boycotting Israel
I've been way too busy with work to post very much. But this morning, I awoke to an email from one of my law colleagues that was a bit surprising.
One of my law firms is having a meeting in May, part of which is scheduled to take place in Virginia. This morning, I had an email from one of my colleagues attaching a link to
this article from the Times of Israel reporting that the State Bar Association of Virginia has canceled a November seminar in Israel, claiming that 'many' of its members will not be allowed in because... wait for it... they are Arabs or Muslims.
In a letter sent late Friday night, Kevin Martingayle, president of the Virginia State Bar, wrote, “Upon review of US State Department advisories and other research, and after consultation with our leaders, it has been determined that there is enough legitimate concern to warrant cancellation of the Israel trip and exploration of alternative locations.”
Martingayle told the Washington Times that the trip was canceled due to concerns that “many of its members” would not be let in to Israel.
The concerns appear to stem from a change.org petition by the Concerned Members of the Virginia State Bar, which said, “It is without question that Israel employs discriminatory entry and exit policies for US citizens, particularly against visiting Arab- and Muslim-Americans.”
The petition also said, “As members of the VSB, we have taken an oath to uphold our profession’s highest ideals. At the core of these ideals is the belief that no person or group should be subjected to differential treatment on the basis of their immutable characteristics. The location of this year’s Seminar, however, strikes at the heart of our profession’s ideals.”
The petition was closed after the decision to cancel the trip. It had 39 signatures.
Writing in his group blog in the Washington Post, the Volokh Conspiracy's David Bernstein has
a few reactions.
(1) The American Bar Association has recently held meetings in Israel, for example here and here [update: along with hundreds of international conferences that are held in Israel every year, including, for example, a conference on Arabic literature with Muslim attendees from abroad.] Virginia has a state agency called the Virginia Israel Advisory Board “that
proactively serves as the bridge and facilitator between Israeli
companies and the Commonwealth of Virginia.” The idea that either the
state bar as an attorney organization or as a state agency has some
obligation to avoid Israel is nonsense. Surely Martingayle and
colleagues can’t be so naive and out-of-touch to think that the concerns
raised are not part of the broader divestment, sanctions, and boycott
movement meant to delegitimize Israel.
(2)
If the Virginia State Bar is in effect boycotting Israel, I, and I
suspect many others, will henceforth be boycotting the State Bar, in my
case beyond what is necessary to assist my students, which is my
professional obligation. I would hope that no Virginia attorneys who are
supporters of Israel will attend whatever alternative venue the State
Bar settles on.
(3) As near as I can tell, the only public discussion of all this before Martingayle’s letter was a petition circulated three days ago by anonymous “Concerned Members of the Virginia State Bar”
that, as of this writing, has received a grand total of thirty-four
signatures. It’s hard to imagine that the Martingayle and colleagues
canceled a planned event that already had a hotel booked, a CLE program, and even optional tours set up based on those objections. Who are the “other individuals” mentioned by Martingayle who objected?
(4) Relatedly, as a state agency, the Virginia State Bar is subject to FOIA.
If no enterprising journalist is already FOIAing the relevant
correspondence that led to this decision, I’m sure somebody else will
be.
UPDATE: The email Martingayle sent
out is timestamped 9:59 pm on March 27. Yet somehow the virulently
anti-Israel “Electronic Intifada” managed to have a copy of the letter
on its Facebook page and
website more than two hours earlier. Inquiring minds want to know who
had a copy of this letter before it was sent out to bar members at
large, and why. [Comments below suggest that while I and several others I
know received the 9:59 time stamp, other members of the bar received
the same message time-stamped earlier. If so, mystery solved.]
Hmmm.
Labels: BDS, boycott divest sanction, boycott Israel, lawyers, Virginia
Caroline Glick: First thing we do is kill all the lawyers
Caroline Glick has a
complaint about the legal profession. And she's right.
N. wrote that most IDF officers and soldiers were deeply disappointed
and distressed about Israel’s performance in the 2006 war with
Hezbollah, because they recognized that the IDF’s failure to defeat
Hezbollah rendered the jihadist force the victor.
But one faction of Israeli society viewed the war as an out-and-out victory. That faction is the legal fraternity.
Due to the widespread outrage over the war’s progression, then-prime
minister Ehud Olmert was compelled to form the Winograd Commission to
study the military and political leadership’s stewardship of the war.
In testimony before the Winograd Commission, then-attorney-general
Menahem Mazuz extolled the war as “the most ‘lawyerly’ in the history of
the State of Israel, and perhaps ever.”
It wasn’t that IDF commanders put legal considerations ahead of operational and strategic goals. It was worse than that.
According to Mazuz, the generals and the political leaders limited their
goals from the outset to what they hoped would conform with perceived
legal restrictions. This restraint, he bragged, was “the result of a
sort of education and internalization that have taken place over the
years.
“I remember periods when there was a great deal of friction with the
senior military level regarding what is allowed and what is prohibited.
But today I think there is more or less an understanding of the rules of
the game, and I can’t identify any confrontation… or… demands to ‘let
the IDF win.’” According to then-IDF military advocate-general
Brig.-Gen. Avi Mandelblit and Mazuz, legal advisers were present at all
levels of command in all the relevant service arms and in the security
cabinet.
At each level the lawyers were asked to judge the legality of all the
proposed targets and planned operations before they were carried out.
And as the two explained, in their decisions, these lawyers were
informed not by the goal of winning the war but by their interpretation
of international law.
Law professor Ruth Gavison, who was a member of the commission, found their testimony deeply disturbing.
“I find this analysis harsh,” she chided. “I think that you have
ignored the fact that international law is plagued with problems of
selective enforcement and that the application and use of international
law in the context of international conflicts is very biased and very
political…. Therefore, [reliance on international law] seems to me to be
a position that is possible to argue on a rhetorical level, but to
internalize it as a real position, that looks to me like a strategic
danger.”
Unfortunately, Gavison’s warning fell on deaf ears. Not only has the
power of radicalized lawyers with a distorted view of the laws of war
not been rolled back in the intervening years. It has expanded, to the
point where today, staff officers in the military refuse to carry out
lawful instructions from the government.
What's ahead, according to Glick, is worse.
As a consequence [of the Mavi Marmara incident], Israel formed the Turkel Commission charged with
determining whether Israel’s system of investigating charges of war
crimes meets the requirement of international law.
In the event, in February the commission submitted a 1,000-page report
to Netanyahu. It concluded that Israel’s system does abide by the
requirements of international law.
Yet, despite this fact, it recommended removing the authority to
investigate war crimes allegations from the IDF and transferring it to
the attorney- general and the military advocate-general who would no
longer be subordinate to the IDF chief of General Staff.
Moreover, the commission recommended that Israel’s political
leadership and General Staff be held criminally culpable “for violations
committed by their subordinates, if they do not take all reasonable
measures to prevent these violations or do not bring those responsible
to justice when they find out about violations after the fact.”
The strategic implications of the Turkel Commission’s recommendations are earth shattering.
They mean that from now on, when defending Israel from its enemies,
both government ministers and generals will be at the mercy of a
self-appointed, radical, unaccountable legal fraternity whose
interpretation of the laws of war has but a glancing relationship with
the laws of war.
As Mazuz explained its interpretation back in 2007, “The laws of war, or
international humanitarian law doesn’t concern itself with relations
between two states, but with the relationship between civilians and
states. That is, it places the two warring states on one side of the
divide and the citizens of the two states on the other side, and the
goal of international law is to protect the citizens of the two states
and to say: You’re big kids. You want to fight, go fight, you have
rules… and the rules aim to minimize as much as possible the
consequences of the war.”
In other words, just as the civil administration officers argued,
following international law means caring more about enemy populations
than you care about your own. Civilian and military leaders who seek to
secure Israel are now being subordinated to lawyers whose primary
concern is the enemy.
This is a recipe for disaster.
Read the whole thing. Glick - and Shakespeare - had it right.
Labels: Caroline Glick, lawyers, Mavi Marmara, war crimes
The ridiculousness of gag orders in the age of the internet
This might be the only country in the world that still thinks that they can block the publication of names of celebrities who have been accuses of crimes. And they can. At least from the public airwaves in Israel.
A famous Israeli singer (and draft dodger) is being investigated for taking advantage of underage girls. If you use Google, read blogs or Facebook (where I saw two identical pictures of him in the same place - one with his face scrambled), read anything from the Jewish community overseas, or watch Israel's Channel 1, you already know who this is.
But if you missed it, Channel 1 told the world last week. Let's go to the videotape.
Figured it out yet?
There's a blog in the US that has published that picture without the blurriness. You can search for it on Google. But if, like me, you're an Israeli, you're stuck publishing banal stories like
this one from the Jerusalem Post.
Almost
a week after a scandal involving a famous Israeli singer and
allegations of sex with underage girls broke, the singer, his father,
and two other men were brought in for questioning on Wednesday, Tel
Aviv police said.
In addition to the singer, those being investigated include the manager of a well-known radio station and a Tel Aviv promoter.
The case,
which broke last week and has dominated the media since, involves one of
Israel’s most famous singers and a complaint made by one 15-year-old girl that
she had sexual relations with him on more than one occasion.
The media has been rife with reports that
people close to the singer “scouted” girls at his concerts and invited them to
the parties, a report that police would not confirm on Sunday.
That
allegation has been followed by testimony from other girls believed to be linked
to the case, which was first opened months earlier.
In the meantime, the Israeli blogger who broke the story has been 'called in for questioning'....
Figured it out yet? Here's another hint.
The singer, for his part, said during a concert in Tel Aviv on
Thursday night that “I had a difficult day, I could have canceled, but music
conquers all.”
Hmmm.
Don't get me wrong - there is still a place for gag orders in society. For example, earlier this week it was disclosed that Israel has been holding an al-Qaeda specialist in biological weapons for the last three years. The news broke when the terrorist appealed to the Supreme Court to be released because he has not yet been placed on trial. The Supreme Court
refused to free him.
But a gag order is only in place when Israel's security is involved. When what's at stake is the (already sullied) reputation of a teen idol, the gag order is out of place. Better that the girls should be warned about him. The age of Big Brother 'protecting' us should have ended a long time ago.
UPDATE 3:55 PM
Eyal Golan's name has now been cleared for publication.
Labels: blogosphere, crime, internet regulation, Israeli national security, lawyers
Just what we need
Like this country isn't overloaded with lawyers already....
Labels: lawyers
Haifa U legal aid clinics aid terrorists
I guess we shouldn't be
surprised. A report by the Im Tirtzu organization has found that legal aid clinics at the University of Haifa, support terror organizations at the Israeli taxpayer's expense (Haifa being a state university). Instead of reacting with shame or horror or vowing to clean the clinics up, the university is
defending their actions.
lan Yavelburg, a spokesman for
the university, described the report as "manipulative and biased" and
deemed Im Tirtzu an "extremist political organization."
Haifa University's legal clinics are
apolitical, he said, adding: "Im Tirtzu are the ones who are crudely
injecting politics into the academy for the sake of their own
publicity."
The report focuses on three clinics in
particular: the Clinic for Prisoners' Rights, the Clinic for Human
Rights in Society and the Clinic for the Rights of the Arab-Palestinian
Minority. It says the causes chosen by these clinics are part of the
"Arab nationalist struggle against Zionism."
These causes, according to
the report, include undermining the status of the national anthem,
providing legal aid to Arab-Israeli security prisoners and opposing
Jewish settlement in Acre and Meron. Furthermore, the clinics use public
funds and enlist unsuspecting, well-meaning students towards an Arab
nationalist agenda, the report says.
Out of more than 20 legal cases that the
clinics have handled since 2009, only two were for Jews, the report
stated. In all the other cases, the clinics represented Arabs against
the State of Israel (in one case the recipient of legal aid was not even
an Israeli citizen). And while out of more than 10,000 prisoners held
in Israeli jails only 132 (just over 1 percent) are Arab-Israeli
security prisoners, eight out of the 10 cases handled by the Clinic for
Prisoners' Rights involved security prisoners, the bulk of whom are
terrorists.
Yavelburg said that most of the specific cases
described in the report ended several years ago and that in many cases
the courts themselves approached the clinics to offer representation.
"The legal clinics receive thousands of
queries each year on a wide spectrum of issues including education,
women's rights, single mothers and more. It is no accident that Im
Tirtzu chose to ignore this wide range of activity and to spotlight, in
an intentional and biased way, just one narrow issue among many,"
Yavelburg said.
Reacting to Im Tirzu's report, Almagor, the
terror victims' organization, sent a letter to the president of Haifa
University on Monday.
"The feeling among the bereaved families and the wounded is sadness, anger and outrage," the letter said.
"In Haifa, there is a population of terror
victims and bereaved families who in the past joined our legal battle to
prosecute terrorists who hurt us, and we did not see the University of
Haifa offer us its services, which it offers, ironically and
unfortunately, to some of these terrorists.
"Therefore we ask you to stop providing legal
assistance to the terrorists, or alternatively, to establish a clinic
that will achieve justice for victims, according to the victims' rights
law. Today we have no clinic that helps us to face the attorneys of the
murderers, as well as government bodies working for plea bargains with
ridiculous punishments, to shorten their punishments or to give them improved conditions in prison.
"We hope that in response to this letter you
will shut down the track that allows terrorists to receive aid from the
university. We would be happy if you would agree to meet with us," the
letter said.
The fact that Im Tirtzu is even raising the issue is a major step forward for this country. But I am sure that the organized bar - which I am required to join in order to hold myself out as a lawyer - will be out with a statement defending the clinics just as soon as they're done planning their next weekend 'seminar' in Eilat at the expense of the vast majority of lawyers who have no interest in attending.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Israeli Arabs are a fifth column, lawyers, Palestinian terrorists, University of Haifa
