IDF: War crime charges over Gaza op are 'legal terror'

[bemildred]

War crimes charges brought abroad against Israeli soldiers and officers involved in Operation Cast Lead are nothing but "legal terrorism," Col. Liron Liebman, who heads the military prosecution's international law department, said Wednesday.

Liebman, who recently replaced Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, was speaking at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem about the role of the law in fighting terror.

There is little chance that war crimes charges abroad will end in conviction, or, for that matter, in acquittal, since procedural issues will end up derailing the allegations before they reach that stage, Liebman told Haaretz. But that doesn't much matter to those bringing the charges, he said. "The goal is achieved when the charges are publicized," Liebman said. "The objective is to cause damage to morale, more than legal damage."

In Spain, for instance, legal charges are being brought over the Gaza war. Liebman says this is no coincidence: The country was the site of major protests against Israel while the fighting was taking place.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1065338.html

[Howardx]

1. "legal terror"

whats that word im thinking of, im sure most israelis know it. chutzpah i think it is.

[Alamuti Lotus]

2. Statements like this are "verbal terror"

Really, how ridiculous can the abuse of language go?--I'm hoping for "a lot more", on account of the entertainment..

[bemildred]

3. I'm waiting for "mental terror".

A lot of ways you can go with that idea.

[Alamuti Lotus]

5. I like it, a modern revision for "thought crime"

[bemildred]

6. Well, it's "thoughtcrime" in Orwell's 1984, or "crimethink" in Newspeak, but yeah.

It means you are an enemy of the state, according to the state, and there is no appeal.

But anyway, I think "legal terror" is definitely a form of Newspeak.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Perhaps a better term would be "Barratry"

in the civil/criminal vice admiralty law context

[Violet_Crumble]

9. That'd be just as wanky a term...

But *legal terrorism* just gives so much more mileage in the taking the piss out of it side of things.

[oberliner]

7. What is the quote?

What did he actually say?

Is there a transcript of his remarks anywhere?

The only part in quotes are the words "legal terrorism" - would like to see the full sentence he uttered containing those words.

[Violet_Crumble]

8. Why? Do you think the journalist is lying?

I doubt it very much. I publish media releases at work and it's common for something like 'the head honcho said that we'll all get more money and 'an atmosphere of cooperative compliance' will emerge to be written by the media boffins. If I'd not dropped out of journalism after the first unit, I'd know what they call that technique, and usually it's done because of a word limit on the article and that the full sentence itself was too long-winded and needed to be shortened. I'd only really want to see the original transcript if I had grave doubts what was being quoted was said or it was being twisted. In this case, I don't see why anyone would think like that...

[oberliner]

10. I'd like to see the full remarks rather than what was lifted for this article

I've often found myself reading the transcript of, say, an Obama speech, and then looked at how those same remarks were characterized in a news article and found that there was a serious disconnect between the two.

The "typical white person" quote comes to mind.

[bemildred]

11. Google News produces only that story on a search for "legal terrorism".

If you google the web for that, you get lots of stuff, from India, and some other places, so it looks sort of borrowed, not a pure invention.

Edit: The problem is the use of the term "terrorism", which means intimidation by violence, when what is indicated is just "intimidation", as in "legal intimidation". Here in the USA we call them SLAP suits, as in "strategic lawsuits against public participation", popular for corporations resisting regulation and the public will.

[azurnoir]

12. This comment was interesting

ndeed, international law expert Yoram Dinstein said at a conference at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv late last month that a ratio of three or four civilian deaths per combatant death was the norm in most wars.

especially considering IDF is claiming close to the reverse in civilian vs combatant deaths