1.4K

The Official Project Censored Show

Exposing Prison Conditions and the Fight for Palestinian Rights

Play Episode


Pause Episode

Mute/Unmute Episode


Rewind 10 Seconds

1x

Fast Forward 30 seconds

Advertisement

00:00
/

Advertisement

Advertisement

In the first half of the show, Eleanor Goldfield speaks with incarcerated journalist Jeremy Busby who joins us from prison to talk about his powerful work in exposing horrendous prison conditions and the sadistic treatment of prisoners. Jeremy speaks of extreme retaliation that he’s faced from prison officials for his work, and his unwavering determination to show the world what life on the inside is really like in the hopes that more awareness will catalyze change. Seth Stern, Director of Advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation also joins us to contextualize Jeremy’s work and mistreatment in the larger fight for press freedoms. In the second half of the show, we welcome back Palestinian legal expert Hassan Ben Imran to discuss the most recent ICJ advisory opinion with regards to Israel’s unlawful presence in occupied Palestinian territory – what does this mean not just for Palestinians but for how the world engages with the ongoing genocide in Gaza? Hassan also outlines the ICC case against Netanyahu, myriad US and UK road blocks, precedent for sanctions and action against Israel and more.

Notes:

Jeremy Busby can be reached at Secures website using his name Jeremy Ladon Busby #00881193 and by clicking state (Texas) and the preceeding to put in Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Video of the Interview with Hassan Ben Imran

Below is a Rough Transcript of the Interview with Hassan Ben Imran

Eleanor Goldfield: Thanks, everyone, for joining us at the Project Censored radio show. We’re very glad to welcome back to the show, Hassan Ben Imran, who’s a member of the Governing Council of Law for Palestine and a PhD researcher in law at the University of Galway, Ireland.

Hassan, thanks so much for joining us again.

Hassan Ben Imran: Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be back with you.

Eleanor Goldfield: So I wanted to start out with earlier this month, the ICJ, the world court, ruled that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and should come to an end, quote, as rapidly as possible. Nawaf Salam, the president of the ICJ in The Hague, read out the non binding advisory opinion issued by the 15 judge panel on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory on Friday, July 19th.

Now, Hassan, I wanted to start with some obvious questions here. When they say occupied Palestinian territory, do they mean from the river to the sea, or are we talking about little chunks here and there that have been sliced and diced via such prior rulings like the Oslo Accords?

Hassan Ben Imran: That’s a very interesting question.

And I’m going to come back to the issue of non binding. I will, remind me to come back to the description of non binding to this advisory opinion. So as you can see, the court is the UN court. So it is bound by the law created within the UN, by international law, by the principles of international law, jus cogens the preemptory norms, as we call them, the norms that precede and dominate every other agreement or convention on earth.

So the court is bound by certain principles of international law, but also by certain agreements. Now that the Israel has been established by the, or let’s say the idea was put forward through a UNGA resolution in 1947. And then you had the UN Security Council Resolution 242 which became the basis of the partition idea, partitioning Palestine, historic Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state back then in the days.

So the basis, the premise of the application that reached to the court was this basis. So, the court cannot, on its own, discuss something beyond this limitation. The court is limited. The premise of the conversation is limited. So there is no way, it’s mathematically impossible. In the mathematics of law, we can say, arithmetically impossible that the court can reach to a different finding when it comes from the river to the sea.

However, except with one thing, which is in its scope, and hopefully at some point we can come to it, which is the Apartheid Convention. It is something within the mandate of the court. Apartheid includes the whole territory and what’s outside the territory. Because apartheid is not just about the land, it’s about the people.

It’s racial domination or hegemony in that sense. And whom are we talking about? We’re talking about a group that some part of it is in the West Bank, some part of it is in Gaza, some part of it is in the rest of historic Palestine, in Israeli, modern day Israel, what they call Israel proper. And some of them are in Lebanon. Some of them are in Jordan. Some of them are in Syria. Some of them are nowhere to be found in the Mediterranean when they were trying to cross to Europe. Some of them are in Latin America, so on and so forth. I am one of those who are from outside. So the apartheid conversation is something that can be reopened at the court and something that can be from the river to the sea.

Eleanor Goldfield: So with that, I want to get into the non binding aspect because I actually, as soon as I read that, I was like, oh, I have to ask Hassan about this. So previously when we had you on the show, you talked about some steps that the UN could take to address, not just the genocide in Gaza, but the continued violence and ethnic cleansing in places like the West bank.

And you mentioned tapping the Security Council to take military action. So what does this non binding advisory opinion really mean?

Hassan Ben Imran: So for the sake of the conversation, let me start by saying that it is binding. It is law. It is international law. The ICJ, whether through its judgment on contentious cases or advisory opinion, creates the law.

And by creates, I don’t mean in the legislative sense. They construct the interpretation of the law. That’s the job of the court. So the court constructs or like says that this law means this. And hence, this must be done. And that is exactly what a judgment is. Now, the technicality between a judgment and an advisory opinion is about the mechanism of enforcement.

A judgment is supposed to have a very clear mechanism of enforcement, and an advisory opinion lacks that. And so the whole argument of non binding, and by the way, way before the advisory opinion came out, you could see that the Hasbara machine was working everywhere to say that this is going to be non binding.

I came across one document where they say if the decision comes like this, then we say that, basically we deal with the merits of the case or like we discuss it, but if it goes bad, like we just dismiss it as non binding because there’s nothing we can do about it. So let’s just call it non binding.

It’s not. And advisory opinions have history of changing facts from the ground in the sense of pushing for certain realities that happened in Namibia. The advisory opinion was one of the basis of dismantling the South African occupation of Namibia back in the days in what’s called the Namibian exception.

And there have been other incidents as well. So besides the issue of the legal technicality, which I will not busy you with, about non binding and advisory opinion and, judgment, who requested this decision or this ruling from the ICJ? The UNGA, the United Nations General Assembly voted on the request or on the application to the ICJ to decide on this matter.

What does that mean? If I go to a court to ask for the court’s opinion, I am directly bound by this. Maybe others are not. I mean, let’s go by that argument. Others might not be, or like, let’s say, it’s possible to argue that in law. Nothing is black and white, but this is black and white, in my opinion. It was the UNGA, the United Nations General Assembly, that submitted the application to the ICJ.

Which is the request for advisory opinion on the legality of Israeli occupation in the occupied Palestinian Territories, which the court called as territory. That means directly that the UNGA, the UN General Assembly is bound by this decision. The UNGA has voted on. Everyone that voted with yes or no should be bound by this decision.

Eleanor Goldfield: And I want to get into the should be bound question because of course, as we’ve seen, there are a lot of shoulds in this kind of situation, but so what does that mean in terms of next steps then? I mean, it’s been, we’re recording this on July 29th, so it’s been 10 days since that advisory opinion was put out.

What are next steps then for the UNGA on this?

Hassan Ben Imran: Before we talk about the hows, we’re going to talk about what the shouldbes. I don’t want to disseminate any of my frustration or disappointment, and I don’t want to call it hopelessness as well with the system and with what’s going on. But let’s first talk about what should happen. Then we talk about how.

What should happen? Logically speaking, after an advisory opinion that talks about an unlawful occupation that, by the way, made very clear reference to 1948, at least in the separate opinions, but also in the text. The text was very clearly hinting towards settler colonialism. It was, it was not using that term. It did use the word, the term of apartheid, for example, in the context of Article 3 of ICERD, but it did not specify the word of settler colonialism, but it did indicate it.

This advisory opinion is historical. Historic in so many ways, in the reference to, in terms of reference to Nakba, at least in the separate opinion of Judge Salam, in the very clear reference to settler colonialism, at least also in the separate opinions, in the very clear reference to apartheid in the text, as well as in the separate opinions, including the South African judge, who started his statement by saying that I lived under apartheid. I know what apartheid is by law and by living. He made a very worth reading argument in his separate opinion as well, Judge Tladi.

So the judgment or the ruling was quite progressive within the limitations of the court within the structural limitations and the statutory limitations. It was quite helpful, I would say, in so many ways. How to translate this into action, in my opinion, simply starts by taking this to the UNGA in three directions. One is political sanctions, and I will come back to this. The other one is economic sanctions, and I’ll come back to this. The third one is military sanctions.

All of this sounds too big. Impossible. I understand. We live in a very imperfect world if I am to put it mildly. But political sanctions, for instance, we’re not talking about something that never happened before against a power that has been adopted by certain powers, especially the UK and the US. Here we’re talking about apartheid South Africa.

Of course, there was an effort to completely unseat South Africa from the United Nations. And by that, I mean, the full suspension and termination of membership in the United Nations, because that’s not a peace loving country, you know, the Charter of the UN talks about peace loving country, and South Africa, which was establishing an apartheid system over the people of South Africa, killing them, murdering them, causing them every act of persecution in the book, in the least, we can say that South Africa was not peace loving. So it was very justified to ask to remove South Africa from the United Nations. Or maybe we need to amend the Charter otherwise.

Hence, what happened is, the UK and the US were definitely against this, so it did not go to the United Nations Security Council. What happened in that case, it went to the UN, to the General Assembly in what became known as the Bouteflika, the previous president, the Algerian president in the nineties, if I’m not mistaken.

So he pushed for this to activate the powers of the United Nations General Assembly to unseat the members of Israel from the UN. So Israel could not be removed. Sorry, South Africa, you know, I’m equating the two in my mind because there is so much similarity. I

Eleanor Goldfield: wish that’s what happened, but

Hassan Ben Imran: it can.

We’ll come to this. So eventually, South African diplomats, ambassadors, members of the diplomatic missions were removed from the UN, were not able to participate or attend any UN events. So technically South Africa was unseated from the UN. By name it was there because that was in the pocket of the Security Council, which was paralyzed because of these two votes.

But in practice, South Africa was outside the UN, was unable to interact and navigate within the UN, which is in diplomacy, in politics, that’s one of the major tools of diplomacy that states operate within. That did affect South Africa badly. It really isolated South Africa.

It made them realize how much of, I’m trying to pick proper words for this, but to understand that they don’t belong in that room, to say the least. So the same can happen to Israel. I understand the structural complexities behind it. Israel, unlike South Africa, is not only supported or adopted by certain countries.

Israel somehow is an extension of those countries. There is a colonial structure. This past year has changed so much of my convictions, which I don’t think is a good idea to share many of them right here in the discussion. But I did come to see that this is not a struggle against an apartheid system in Israel or against a racist ideology.

This is a full clash between or like with what has remained of colonialism, with a system of colonialism that is trying to revive itself.

So, to conclude my point, I think despite this complexity of Palestine standing against a colonial imperial structure that is trying so hard to survive, and that is trying so hard to make sure to eliminate any sort of opposition, and including protests that were happening before the Congress when Netanyahu was trying to enter to deliver his phenomenal speech that we can come to and comment on in a bit.

There is a way to pressure Israel further because as much as I am leaning towards losing so much of the bit of hope that has remained, I still do see so much of light at the end of the tunnel. I do see the pressure, the pushback from people all around the world. Nobody has accepted this status quo as legitimate.

Most people are making sure that this status quo has to change. It’s not legitimate. It’s unlawful. It’s immoral. And it has to change.

Eleanor Goldfield: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that whatever mask remained for many people, I think the mask has absolutely come off and I think that connection to settler colonialism has meant a lot, particularly in the United States.

Drawing that connection between what was done in the creation of the United States and then the creation of what I would really call a US colony, which is Israel, it’s the same. It’s the same action. It’s the same playbook. And I think that that’s meant a lot for people in terms of engaging with this issue.

And I wanted to shift a little bit, shifting courts as it were, I know that this is something that you’ve been working on. Last week, the UK announced that it was dropping a previous objection to the ICC’s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and will not be challenging the decision as the previous UK administration said it would.

So I’m curious, first of all, what does this mean with regards for Netanyahu and also his support in the so called West?

Hassan Ben Imran: So it means they’re buying more time. They’re trying to buy more time to see what to do with this court, to shut it down, cut funding or find a way to cancel these arrest warrants.

It’s a very malafide application. It’s the definition of bad intention in international law. You know, according to the rules and procedures of the court, there are, there is reference about bad intention submissions, bad intention moves or bad intention applications. I think this is the definition of bad intention, what the UK is doing.

So the UK and the previous government, and I’m not exempting this government because this government just simply withdrew, did not at least submit an opposite application to say, no, the court has to continue. That is the moral thing to do. So if you want to correct the mistake of the previous government, you don’t just withdraw after the damage has happened because the damage has happened.

The objection as a procedure is going on. There are 87 probably, or 86 applications that has been made, requests for leave to submit applications. And the court is going to look into 70 applications. Imagine how much time is going to be lost within these corridors of the procedures. Anyway, so, the UK submitted an objection to say that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Palestine.

The situation in Palestine as it is called. The basis for this objection was the Oslo Accords. The basis of the UK application or objection to the ICC was that Palestine signed an agreement with Israel in 1995 or 1994, the second Oslo agreement. And one of the provisions, article 17 of that agreement says that Palestine cannot try Israeli nationals unless otherwise stated in this agreement, in that agreement 30 years ago.

So that means Palestine has no jurisdiction to try or to sue, to prosecute Israeli nationals, Israeli leaders. And the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court is built on the jurisdictions of the member states. And that’s called complementarity, which means when the state cannot, is unable or unwilling to prosecute, it’s one of the two, or there is no active situation, it’s not a genuine prosecution, what happens is this investigation is taken to the ICC and the ICC prosecutes.

So the UK is saying, is digging deeper into that old ancient document that you can’t find a good copy of it, by the way. All the copies online are very bad quality copies, to see how valuable of a document it is. So, the UK went all the way back and to say that since this clause exists in Oslo, that means Palestine has no jurisdiction. That means Palestine cannot delegate this jurisdiction to the court.

It’s in my opinion, a complete malafide, a complete bad intention application. It’s a waste of time. It’s quite disrespectful to the victims and quite disrespectful to the court as well, considering that in 2019, the court settled this question.

All of these questions were presented to the court about the jurisdiction. Also, tens of applications were made. Amicus curiae, they call it, friends of the court. Eventually, the court decided that it has jurisdiction. Now, why did the court allow the UK to resubmit an objection last month is a question mark that I am not the person to answer.

I think it’s the court that has to answer. The court could have turned down the UK objection, but the court allowed the UK to make this objection. And now we’re going to waste the time of the victims. Arrest warrants are going to wait for many, many months. I hope I’m wrong, but, each application is going to be 10 pages. You’re talking about 70 applications, 80 applications. The court has to go through them. The court has to decide on them. They might not be related to the UK objection. There might be new objections.

And interestingly, by the way, we have two friends of the court, besides the UK, who are submitting amicus curiae, which means in Latin, friends of the court.

So we have two friends. The one, one is the U. S. government, which is submitting a friend of the court submission to the court. And another one is Lindsey Graham, another friend of the court who one month ago, roasted the court on his Twitter and trashed the court in every possible way in his tweet.

So now he’s becoming a friend of the court and submitting to help the court construct a law.

Eleanor Goldfield: I didn’t realize that individuals. could submit.

Hassan Ben Imran: Yeah. Individuals, entities, representatives of the victims, and states can submit.

Speaking of representatives of the victims, the ICC denied the Palestinian representatives of the victims from submission. Raji and others, Chantal Meloni, they were representing Gaza victims before the ICC.

They requested to submit. Because before you submit you have to request and the court has to send you an official confirmation that yes, you are permitted. That’s what happened in our case for instance. So they submitted on behalf of the victims, and the court denied them. They said this is not the room for it This is not where the victims are.

So you want to tell me that the victims of Gaza cannot have a say in a conversation about their fate, and the U. S. and Lindsey Graham can have a say in this conversation. They are permitted to submit an amicus curiae. And c

oincidentally, I was just reading a random read, some paper that came across my way when I was here reading. It talks about the victim strategy of the ICC. And it says specifically here, and I’m quoting, that the victims are a vital actor in the justice process rather than a passive recipient of services and magnanimity. So basically, this means that the victims are supposed to play an active role in the court, in constructing, like they’re not just the victims who stand behind the docks and waiting for the court to serve them justice, they play an active role.

And I read this and I sent it to the lawyer who was denied submission. And I was like, the victim strategy states very clearly, and it’s from 2012. I mean, like, it’s not an old document. It’s a joke. It’s a joke. There is no way that the rules are okay with the US, which is not a member to the court, it’s not a state party to the court. It does not recognize the court in the first place and was threatening to sanction the court, which is in itself a very interesting concept to think of. And Lindsey Graham, who just used every inappropriate word to describe a word to describe the court and its prosecutor, they are all permitted to submit and communicate with the court to help them decide, but the victims in Gaza cannot and the representatives cannot.

Eleanor Goldfield: I mean, people definitely have this picture of the ICC as this force for good. But this, this and other things in its history, of course, the fact that it’s a very colonialist court, but this really flies in the face of that.

So is there actually an arrest warrant that’s active now for Netanyahu or no?

Hassan Ben Imran: So the prosecutor requested, the decision comes from the pretrial chamber because the court is a democratic structure. The prosecutor can’t have all the powers. So the pretrial chamber which is usually the body that decides on jurisdictional matters, as well as these matters like arrest warrants, is supposed or was supposed to decide on permitting or like confirming the request of the prosecutor, which meant that we were supposed to expect it in a few weeks.

Then the UK came to serve the court and to help the court understand its job and submitted that objection. And now we’re in that game. We are in that loop. As someone used to say, they’re playing us. That’s something that is, that is the least that could be said.

About the court being colonial , that’s the dominant, predominant perspective in Africa.

When I was in Kenya, when I talked to African lawyers, everyone keeps saying the same thing. When you push back against it, like you say, for example, in Uganda, in other countries it was African countries that approached the court, not the other way around. Then they would tell you that how the, how the strategy was with the dictators of different countries and how they initiated proceedings against Kenya and Sudan without either being a member.

Sudan is not a member state, is not a party is the state party to the Rome statute yet somehow there was a case against them and the same thing happened, almost the same thing happened in Kenya, but aside from this say framework or this conversation about the court,

I do see that the court is not having it easy. I understand the judges are humans. The judges are people with families, with life. And when you have the, like, two of the greatest powers on earth, the U. S. and the U. K., especially the U. S., threatening their life, threatening their future, threatening their bank accounts.

I’m not just making up stories. I’m talking about things that happened and things that have been documented online by the Guardian and others, and even Israeli newspapers. I think The Times of Israel documented one of those incidents. So when you have the judges being threatened in their daily life, in their future, in their source of income, in their bank accounts, their visas, if they have access to the US, the judges become hesitant.

It’s not that they’re doing this based on bad intention alone. If we’re assuming bad intention, it can’t be only bad intention alone. I hope it’s not present in this case. I hope it’s just them being cautious about the pressure. But I am here recognizing that there is a massive pressure.

There are certain individuals and certain powers that are acting like thugs against, and trying to bully the court. However, the court claims to represent the victims. and to represent justice and to end impunity. So we’re holding the court accountable to its own standards, as well as practice in Ukraine.

If you think that pressure has to be a reason for to stop something, then then I mean, how do we justify what happened in Ukraine? If the court, let’s say, is cautious, the court has to be careful, what happened in Ukraine, I think, if it is not handled appropriately in other scenarios will be an indictment of the court.

The court in one year issued arrest warrants against the Russian president without sufficient evidence on some elements. The elements of genocide, other elements, it turned out to be that the evidence is very unsolid in those incidents. So what I want to say is that the court is having pressure, but that in no way is a justification for delaying justice.

Eleanor Goldfield: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you said, if Putin can be on their list for what’s happening in Ukraine, then Netanyahu should be on the list tenfold. And I want to kind of circle back a little bit because you’d mentioned military sanctions and something else that came in the news last week went with the UK announcing the dropping of its previous and objection.

There were also some mutterings about restricting weapons sales to Israel from the UK. Now as of yet, that hasn’t happened. And I want to make clear that UK is responsible for a whopping 0. 02 percent of Israel’s weapons imports while the U S is responsible for 69%. And Germany is responsible for 30% followed by a distant third, Italy at 0.9 percent.

And so Hassan, I wanted to ask you and get your take on this: what kind of mandate would countries like the UK or indeed the US or Germany, which always seems to be on the wrong side of genocide, what kind of mandate do those countries around the world have with regards to specifically weapons exports to Israel?

Hassan Ben Imran: There was the famous case that we all heard about, Nicaragua versus Germany before the ICJ. Germany played perfectly the game of procedural law. The whole German argument was about procedural law. And by the way, the case is not dismissed, only the request. The Nicaraguan request for provisional measures was dismissed.

The case was about Germany’s supply of arms to Israel, besides the diplomatic, political, and economic support for Israel in this genocide. And Nicaragua quoted the Genocide Convention as well as the Geneva Conventions and others. So it was a more inclusive conversation, more expansive conversation than just genocide.

The court, the ICJ, which is the top court on earth ,it’s the UN court, the world court, it’s the most serious court or like the biggest court on earth in terms of legal value decided that the evidence is not sufficient to issue provisional measures. So they dismissed the Nicaraguan request for provisional measures, but rejected the German request to dismiss the case.

They did see a basis to keep the case on the table until Nicaragua submits, presents better evidence. And I did read the Nicaraguan application. It could have been framed better. There is some hard work that needs to be done in terms of evidence. So the arguments are fine. The arguments are solid. They’re very justified. And the court did say somehow, not in this language, but in this meaning, that if Nicaragua proves in the evidence, the claims are going to be established. So what the court was saying is that the claims are very legitimate under international law. So if you have these claims with the right evidence, absolutely, they’re going to be accepted by the court.

And hence Germany will be indicted. And hence there’ll be punitive measures against Germany by the court. So I started with this one to explain how it goes with the other countries.

Israel is facing genocide charges before the ICJ. Israel has been indicted for unlawful occupation and arguably apartheid and racial segregation by the ICJ. And it was accused of complete annexation also by the ICJ, which is the top court. Now there is a parallel process where Israeli leaders individually are facing arrest warrants orders. Which means they have to be arrested and submitted, handed over to the Hague, to the court in the Hague, the ICC here in this case.

So we’re talking about a state that is directly involved in the perpetration of crimes, in the least descripti,on with the recognition of the courts, if I’m not going to say with the confirmation of the courts, because it is a confirmation, but let’s go with the softer language and say with the recognition of the court of these crimes.

So we’re not talking about human rights reports about these crimes. We’re not talking about individual reports. We’re not talking about individual opinion pieces, accusing Israel of war crimes. We’re talking about well established evidence, recognized by the top courts on earth, besides the other courts, regional courts and domestic courts around the world that are already discussing this.

So now we have a very legitimate claim. When a state, including Germany, the UK and the United States, supply arms to those countries, they are directly taking part in the perpetration because they are aiding or abetting in the least, if they are not taking part in conspiracies.

The U.S. did take part in conspiracy. What happened in Nusirat camp, when 400 people, it was like almost every report confirmed that it was the U.S. forces on the ground in the collection of information, the planning, that’s conspiracy. That’s an act of conspiracy, or at least planning.

The floating, uh, docks, what do you call them?

Pardon my English, it’s, I keep missing out on that term.

Eleanor Goldfield: The pier.

Hassan Ben Imran: The pier. The pier, yeah. The pier was the basis for that operation. It started from the pier, ended in the pier. So that is a part of taking action. So what we are saying here is that any support, any military support is a direct involvement in this perpetration of a crime.

What needs to be done for this to be completely confirmed by a court is to provide the right evidence. And by the right evidence is to bring the direct evidence. For example, the bombs that have been used, to document them, to bring them, to bring the full measures, the full description, to bring sufficient evidence online and direct evidence about the supplying of these weapons and that these weapons were used in the specific time frame of the perpetration of crimes because you know, Germany could argue that yes, we supplied them for weapons, but just for self defense in case Iran attacks them.

So there are many ways to discuss the arguments

To be honest, I don’t see a scenario where these three countries will be indicted because if they are indicted by the court, they’re gonna cut the funding to the courts because at the end, in a way, these systems, structures are maintained by their funding. If they cut the funding of the court, the court collapses.

You have no longer any court to judge or rule in favor of this or that.

Eleanor Goldfield: Yeah. Which seems to me a bit of a flaw in the construction of the court to be dependent on those perpetrating genocide.

So Hassan, I want to wrap up here with just a final note on how, and you’ve touched on this a little bit, but how law can be so twisted for the means of those perpetrating genocide and their supporters.

Something that I saw, the UK Prime Minister Starmer supposedly ” reiterated his ongoing support for Israel’s right to self defense in accordance with international law.”

But as you’ve mentioned on the show before, these are mutually exclusive ideas because Israel has no right to self defense in accordance with international law. And so wrapping up here, I just wanted to ask if you could talk a little bit about like how these conflicting ideas are used by those perpetrating genocide and their supporters to suggest that international law is actually on their side.

Hassan Ben Imran: To be honest, if they think that international law can be on their side, that I don’t know how to describe that, but if they truly believe that international law is on their side, then there must have been an error in the colonial construction of international law. They must have missed something while they were creating the law.

They know too well that international law is not on their side. It’s just international law in its current format was developed in certain geography. So that certain geography masters the tools of that law. There is an interesting article by Ralph Field called destructing the master’s house with the master’s tool, and he was trying to deconstruct the foundation, certain foundations of international law.

I would say that, now the situation is changing simply because even people, lawyers and experts within those geographies are mastering those tools, are understanding the gaps of this. For example, there is one major trend in international law called third world approaches to international law.

Maybe the title is not very interesting, but it’s a very well known approach to international law called TWAIL, third world approaches to international law, TWAIL. It’s mainly discussed, developed, and studied in the West. Mainly in the West, more than the rest of the world, even though it is, it represents the approaches of the rest of the world, like the deconstruction of the colonial foundations.

So you can see that the master’s house in that sense is no longer on consensus. There is no longer unanimous agreement on subjugating or twisting the law. However, I believe international law is not the problem. International law is full of problems.

It has its challenges. It needs to be fixed. It needs to be amended. It can be easily twisted by people like those who were discussing, having the conversation about self defense and presenting their not minority opinion, their very illegitimate opinion, at least as far as any court is concerned, presenting them as, you know, like mainstream ideas.

So they present the American perspective about permissive approach to self defense as a legitimate conversation. No court will look seriously at such an argument, like even an American court will not look seriously at such an argument. They present it as a major thing.

But back to the point, international law has so many issues, but the problem is not international law. The problems is the imperial, the colonial mindsets that try to subjugate international law, to twist it, to play with it, and to bully the courts that are supposed to construct the law, or at least to pronounce the law.

They are the only ones who are allowed to pronounce the law determinatively. So when you bully them, then the problem should not be that the law is flawed. It is flawed. Everyone knows it’s flawed. Everyone knows that it was developed through colonial context, but it does uphold certain ideas, principles, and values that every human agrees on.

Every human agrees on the criminalization of genocide, on the criminalization of apartheid, and the criminalization of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Everyone agrees that killing babies is wrong.

And I, on this note, I really like the comment of, one lawyer tweeted about an attack on a Ukrainian hospital, children hospital, and this was circulated in major news and everyone was condemning it. This happened a few days after an attack on a Palestinian hospital as well. So the caption was like, I’m really happy that killing babies is bad again. So everyone agrees on that. There is no way that we can twist the law to do that.

I have spoken too much, but to conclude my point, the journey is difficult. It’s long, it’s frustrating. We have every reason to give up on hope. We have every reason to feel frustrated and to lose hope. But, we don’t have that luxury, unfortunately. Losing hope is the luxury that we can’t claim.

Eleanor Goldfield: Well, beautifully put. And, I’d say that oftentimes hope walks with despair. They are very close. So, Hassan, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us again, and contextualizing this morass of international law. Really appreciate it.

Hassan Ben Imran: My pleasure, Eleanor.