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WORK TITLE: The Wall and the Gate
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1972
WEBSITE:
CITY: Tel Aviv
STATE:
COUNTRY: Israel
NATIONALITY: Israeli
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1972, in Jerusalem, Israel; son of Leon and Anna Sfard; married; children: two sons.
EDUCATION:Hebrew University of Jerusalem, LL.B; University College London, LL.M.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Lawyer, political activist, and writer.
MIILITARY:Israeli Defense Forces, reservist and active duty as paramedic.
WRITINGS
Has published articles in Haaretz, the London Independent, and the London Observer.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael Sfard is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, whose parents emigrated from Poland to Israel when they were expelled from the country after engaging in student uprisings. Growing up in the Arab section of Jerusalem, he did not interact with the Palestinians who were his neighbors. Then Sfard served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a reservist and as a paramedic. His experiences in the army, along with the influence of his politically engaged parents, helped form his views. He told an interviewer online at Just Vision: “The feeling I had after [serving in] the army was that we had been deceived all along.” Most of his service was spent in Lebanon, where he witnessed the harsh realities of occupation. “In the army, I didn’t feel like we were the few against the many, the weak against the strong, the victims against the bad guys. I felt the opposite.”
Sfard studied at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University College London, receiving both a bachelor and a master of law degree. As a lawyer, he has become a political activist specializing in international human rights law and the laws of war and represents various human rights and peace organizations. He is also a vociferous defender of Palestinian rights. YNet quoted Sfard: “I’m not a Palestinian freedom fighter. … I’m an Israeli human rights attorney who fights to strengthen human rights in Israel and in the territories it occupies.” According to the New York Times, he has said, “If I stay here, I have to fight against things being done in my name.”
Sfard has written several books on the topic of the law as it relates to the West Bank and the Occupied Territories, including The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights. Writing online at RightsViews, Olivia Heffernan summarized the picture Sfard paints in The Wall and the Gate, citing the “numerous ethical dilemmas” Sfard faces in his work. “In Israel, Palestinians seeking redress for abuse are often reliant on the Israeli High Court of Justice—which, according to Sfard, is adjudicated by judges often unsympathetic toward the plight of Palestinians.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Israel ratified, considers “denial of equality and fair hearings” a violation. In a lecture at Columbia Law School, stated Heffernan, “Sfard lamented the contradictory foundations on which Israel was founded.” He told listeners that “Israel was ‘built on a premise of raging nationalism, militarism, the Zionist idea that a Jew would never again be a victim even at the expense of victimizing others’.” In Kirkus Reviews, a critic commented that Sfard claims that the “treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is equivalent to apartheid.” The reviewer found the book an “unsparing indictment of Israeli racism, oppression, and injustice” and a “moving, well-documented testimony to lawyers’ tireless battles against a nation’s inhumanity.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2017, review of The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights.
ONLINE
Christian Science Monitor, https://www.csmonitor.com (May 17, 2012), Ben Lynfield, “Interview: Michael Sfard, the Israeli Lawyer Battling Illegal Settlements,” author interview.
Jewish Post, http://www.jpost.com (September 18, 2009), Dan Izenberg, “Young Israelis of the Year: Michael Sfard, 37: A Lawyer and a Gentleman,” author profile.
Just Vision, https://www.justvision.org/ (March 19, 2018), author interview.
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com (July 27, 2012), Jodi Rudoren, “A Champion for the Displaced in Israel,” author profile.
NGO Monitor, https://www.ngo-monitor.org (February 9, 2015), “Michael Sfard, NGOs, and Government Funding,” author profile.
RightsViews, https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu (March 1, 2018), Olivia Heffernan, “Does the Israeli High Court Uphold Palestinian Rights,” description and review of The Wall and the Gate.
YNet, https://www.ynetnews.com (December 23, 2013), “Lawyer Michael Sfard Is Effective voice for Palestinians,” author profile.
Michael Sfard
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Michael Sfard (Hebrew: מיכאל ספרד; born 1972), is a lawyer and political activist specializing in international human rights law and the laws of war. He has served as counsel in various cases on these topics in Israel. Sfard has represented a variety of Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organizations, movements and activists at the Israeli Supreme Court.[1][2]
Contents [hide]
1
Life and work
1.1
Legal activities
2
Reception
3
Books
4
References
5
External links
Life and work[edit]
Michael Sfard was born in 1972 in the Rehov Brazil public housing complex in Kiryat HaYovel, Jerusalem.[3]
Sfard is the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. His parents had been expelled from Poland for their involvement in the University of Warsaw student uprisings against the Communist Government in 1968.[4][5][6] When he was five, his family moved to an apartment building in Ma'alot Dafna that was home to many journalists.[3][7]
Sfard completed a law degree (LLB) at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[8]
He was a reservist for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the Gaza Strip while at law school.[9] He served in the Nahal Brigade of the IDF, mostly in Lebanon, as a military paramedic.[1][7] According to Sfard, before his reserve duty in Gaza, he believed "left-wing soldiers" should agree to patrol the Palestinian territories "to stop bad things from happening" rather than be conscientious objectors.[9]
While serving in Gaza his views changed, and in a later reservist session, Sfard became a conscientious objector and spent three weeks in military prison due to his refusal to serve as escort for Israeli settlers in Hebron.[1][9][10] He was released from the army in 1994 and attended a course on Jewish-Arab encounters at Neve Shalom. He started his legal apprenticeship with Avigdor Feldman in 1998 and worked with him for several years as an attorney.[7]
In 2000, Sfard and his wife moved to London so that he could pursue a master's degree, but he says it was also "to get away" from Israel.[7][9] He studied international human rights law, "discovered the subject [he] wanted to work in" and returned the following year having decided that emigration from Israel was "a tragedy".[7][9]
He completed his Master of Laws at University College London.[8] Shortly after Sfard returned, he attended the first conference of the group Courage to Refuse, "saw 200 people who thought and felt like [he] did", and decided to be an activist.[7] In early 2004, Sfard opened his own office in Tel Aviv.[9]
Sfard has described Shulamit Aloni as a "major influence" who introduced him through her activities to the world of human rights in Israel.[7]
Sfard's has expressed his views on the role the media play in his work. He feels that "the media are an important part of the work. They are a tool." In addition, he said that media can influence or create the debate. But, he also said that "I, as any lawyer, have a fear of cameras entering the sanctified zone between the lawyer and the client."[7]
Articles by Sfard have been published by Haaretz,[11] The Independent[12] and The Observer.[13]
Sfard is the grandson of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and writer Janina Bauman on his mother's side and of Communist Yiddish author David Sfard and Cinema Studies Professor Regina Dreyer on his father's side.[14] His father Leon is a mathematician and his mother Anna Sfard is a Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Education at the University of Haifa.[15]
His parents emigrated to Israel from Poland at the end of the 1960s, after they were involved in the University of Warsaw student rebellions against the Communist Government in 1968.[9]
Legal activities[edit]
Sfard has represented a variety of Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organizations, movements and activists at the Israeli Supreme Court.[2] His clients are "mostly Palestinians who live in the West Bank and need permits to come into Israel."[1]
According to the New York Times, he has brought many cases to challenge the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, represented hundreds of Israeli soldiers who have refused to serve, with the work mostly being financed "by Israel's premier left-wing nonprofit organizations, which in turn are financed in part by European governments".[1] Sfard and his law office provide legal counsel for Yesh Din.[16] Sfard is legal counsel for Peace Now.[9][17]
Cases which Sfard has handled include:
Sfard filed a petition on behalf of a group of Israeli Human Rights organizations against the IDF decision to reduce the size of the humanitarian "safety zone" during bombardments of Gaza.[18]
Sfard has litigated a case on behalf of the Israeli human rights organization "Hamoked for the protection of the individual", against the "permit system" which governs the area between the separation fence and the 1949 armistice line.[19]
Sfard represented Peace Now in a petition against settlement outposts. Sfard litigated the case for the demolition of nine houses built illegally on Palestinian private land, in the outpost known as "Amona".[citation needed] He also litigates the case in which Peace Now demands to evacuate an outpost called "Migron".[20]
A case involving the International Solidarity Movement's Brian Avery, who was wounded during the course of his activities in Jenin. Avery was injured in the head by IDF soldiers. Avery accepted a settlement for NIS 600,000 (USD $150,000) from the state of Israel in exchange for dropping the lawsuit. Shlomo Lecker was his Israeli lawyer and Sfard represented him as well.[citation needed]
Sfard and co-counsel Carmel Pomerantz, represented 17 Bedouin, who live near Beer Sheva, claiming the land they are on, including Al-Araqeeb, belongs to them rather than to the State of Israel. The judge ruled in favor of the State saying that the land was not "assigned to the plaintiffs, nor held by them under conditions required by law", and that they still had to "prove their rights to the land by proof of its registration in the Tabu". Furthermore, the judge said that the Bedouin knew they were supposed to register, but didn't, saying "the state said that although the complainants are not entitled to compensation, it has been willing to negotiate with them ... it is a shame that these negotiations did not reach any agreement." The court ordered the Bedouin to pay legal costs of 50,000NIS.[21]
Reception[edit]
The New York Times described Sfard as "the left’s leading lawyer in Israel".[1]
The New America Foundation described Sfard as "Israel's pre-eminent legal expert on settlements and the challenges posed by the broader infrastructure of Israeli occupation to the daily life of Palestinians, to the two-state solution, to American policy and to Israel's democracy" and "Israel's most respected human rights lawyer".[22]
In 2011, a settler from Kiryat Arba was indicted after calling for his assassination in an Internet posting.[1] Israeli Knesset Member Danny Danon says that Sfard is "trying to bypass democracy", and that he uses the Israel "legal system because his ideas are not welcome in Israeli society."[9]
Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said that Sfard "sees the courts as the way to force the changes that he perceives as necessary for Israel, [b]ut he doesn't convince the Israeli public. In any democratic process, you can't use just the legal system to impose an ideology."[1]
Naftali Balanson, Managing Editor of NGO Monitor, said Sfard "is at the center of the NGO industry that exploits the rhetoric of human rights in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict."[9]
Books[edit]
Dov Hanin, Michael Sfard, Sharon Rotbard, editors, The Refusenik Trials: The Military Prosecution of Hagai Matar, Matan Kaminer, Noam Bahat Shimri Tsameret, Adam Maor. The Military Prosecution of Yonatan Ben-Artzi, Babel, 2004.
The Last Spy (2007), the biography of the Soviet spy Marcus Klingberg, written by Klingberg with Sfard.[23]
Homa v'mehdal (English title The Wall of Folly) (2008), about the West Bank barrier, written by Reserves Brigadier General Shaul Arieli and Sfard.[24]
The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights (2018)[25]
A Champion for the Displaced in Israel
The Saturday Profile
By JODI RUDOREN JULY 27, 2012
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“I don’t see emigration as something that can be happy, only a tragedy. But if I stay here, I have to fight against things being done in my name.”- Michael Sfard
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Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
TEL AVIV
UP two steaming, dingy flights in an aging Bauhaus building here, Michael Sfard imagines that his is one of the few law firms with no parking spaces. The young lawyers and interns who toil inside dressed in T-shirts and shorts always walk or bike to work, and visitors are rare.
“Our clients either aren’t allowed to come or they’re behind bars,” Mr. Sfard explained.
Mr. Sfard’s clients are mostly Palestinians who live in the West Bank and need permits to come into Israel. Suing the state generally does not ease the path to getting such a permit, which is often a big problem.
One recent afternoon, Mr. Sfard was dealing with just that reality: The mother and cousin of a protester killed by Israeli soldiers were denied a permit, although they were the key witnesses in a Supreme Court hearing scheduled the next day demanding an investigation. The government considers relatives of those killed by Israeli forces high security risks for seeking revenge.
“I have many cases where I’m alone there without my clients,” he sighed.
At 40, Mr. Sfard, the son of Polish dissidents who came to Israel in the late 1960s, has emerged as the left’s leading lawyer in Israel. He has brought scores of human rights and land-use cases challenging Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories it acquired in 1967, and represented hundreds of soldiers refusing to serve.
He sees his work as a mission to save the prospect of a two-state solution and preserve Israeli democracy. But he has at times unwittingly undermined his own agenda, when his microvictories in court prompt the right-leaning government to produce political macrovictories for his adversaries — leading to the legalization and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
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This summer, for example, 30 homes in an outpost known as Ulpana were evacuated after a Sfard petition claimed they were on private Palestinian land; Israel pledged to build 800 settler homes in exchange.
This week, Mr. Sfard’s chief adversary, the settler movement, bestowed on him honorary citizenship in “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical names for the West Bank, with a mock certificate noting that he “may have come to curse and cause damage” but had ended up “raising the morale and gladdening the hearts of those who love the Land.”
Most of his work is financed by Israel’s premier left-wing nonprofit organizations, which in turn are financed in part by European governments.
“He sees the courts as the way to force the changes that he perceives as necessary for Israel,” said Gerald Steinberg, who runs NGO Monitor, a right-leaning group that examines organizations like those that support Mr. Sfard. “But he doesn’t convince the Israeli public. In any democratic process, you can’t use just the legal system to impose an ideology.”
Mr. Sfard makes no apologies for his dual role as legal advocate and political activist. His representation of conscientious objectors came after he served 21 days in a military jail in 1998 for refusing to do reserve duty in the disputed city of Hebron. His office shelves are lined with the works and likenesses of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His parents met during the student uprisings at the University of Warsaw in 1968.
Mr. Sfard’s maternal grandfather, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, was kicked out of the university and labeled a traitor for supporting the students. His father, Leon, spent three months in a Polish prison, and avoided trial only by leaving the country.
THIS legacy is ever-present for the younger Mr. Sfard: in his firm’s conference room hangs a large photograph he took of four Soviet-era Polish police cars that were on display in Warsaw when he went there on a trip to explore his roots two years ago. The police cars were much like the ones in which his father was taken from his home in the middle of the night.
“It reminds me time and again what am I doing, and what are the dangers of being a dissident,” Mr. Sfard said. “For him, I should be a bit more thankful that this is a democracy and I have freedom of speech and I can do what I do. For me, this is the starting point, not something that I have to appreciate every day.”
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Once in Israel, his father became a high-tech consultant, his mother an education professor. They raised Michael and his younger sister in a Jerusalem neighborhood filled with journalists, who debated the issues of the day in their salon. In high school, he rallied for movie theaters to be open on the Sabbath, and for peace with the Palestinians.
He served in the army as a combat medic, mostly in Lebanon, and chose law because “I don’t have what it takes to be a politician.” A side passion is literature — especially Polish poetry — and he co-wrote “The Last Spy,” a 2007 biography of Marcus Klingberg, a Polish-Israeli client of the first lawyer he worked with, who was convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union.
Mr. Sfard and his high school sweetheart have 7-year-old and 15-month-old sons, whom they adopted for social-consciousness reasons. He spent a year studying in London, a self-imposed exile from the land with which he has a love-hate relationship, but could not stay away.
“This is my place: this culture is my culture, this language is my language,” he explained. “I don’t see emigration as something that can be happy, only a tragedy. But if I stay here, I have to fight against things being done in my name.”
Since it opened in 2004, Mr. Sfard’s firm has grown from a solo practice in one and a half rooms to a combined three apartments — his wife, a fashion designer turned social worker, did the interiors — with eight employees and two subletters.
HIS signature is on many of the major cases decided in recent years by the Supreme Court: successes include the rerouting of the separation barrier around the village of Bilin, the 2005 demolition of nine settler homes in Amona, the impending move of the outpost called Migron and the recent evacuations in Ulpana.
These and others have made him an enemy of the right: last year, a settler from Kiryat Arba was indicted in connection with an Internet posting that called for his assassination and included his address. But Mr. Sfard’s court statements and legal wisdom are respected by judges and adversaries. And clients praise him for adopting their causes as his own.
“He didn’t treat me as a customer,” said Bassam Aramin, the father of a 10-year-old girl killed in a 2007 protest, whose petition forced an investigation, though not an indictment. “He treats this like his own daughter.”
David Zonshein, founder of the advocacy group Courage to Refuse, recalled Mr. Sfard’s taking him aside during the push in one case for a full military trial, which risked a long jail sentence, to say: “Don’t do it for other people. Other people will not take the consequences.”
His office walls are at once a chronicle of the movement and his personal history. There is a framed 1958 map of Israel he found at the Jaffa flea market, “the only map you can find today where there are no settlements and the Palestinian villages are all marked,” he said. There is also a framed search warrant for his files in a case concerning interviews with dissident soldiers.
In back, a small room is filled with a rainbow of three-ring binders, files of the roughly 500 cases the firm has fought over its eight years. They are, often, not legal genius, more a matter of spending the money and time to find, say, Palestinians with landownership claims. But even the victories are often bittersweet. In Bilin, the separation barrier took over half the village’s land; a fight lasting years returned about a quarter of the land.
“The process is no less important than the result,” he said. “I am addicted. It’s not a question of whether it’s depressing or not, but whether I can live without it.”
Correction: August 1, 2012
A headline last week on the Saturday Profile article, about Michael Sfard, the left’s leading lawyer in Israel, who has brought scores of cases challenging Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, referred imprecisely in some editions to Mr. Sfard’s relationship to the country. While his parents, Polish dissidents, moved there in the 1960s, Mr. Sfard was born and raised in Israel; therefore it is not his “adopted land.”
Michael Sfard is an Israeli attorney who represents various Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organizations, movements and activists. He is an expert in international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
Interview: Michael Sfard, the Israeli lawyer battling illegal settlements
Michael Sfard has won two key rulings in Israel's supreme court that are applying some pressure against Israeli expansion in the West Bank.
By Ben Lynfield, Correspondent May 17, 2012
Sebastian Scheiner/AP/File
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Tel Aviv — Young lawyer Michael Sfard has achieved something that the White House and left-leaning Israeli political leaders could not. His legal work on behalf of Palestinian clients is compelling Israel in at least two instances to roll back back Jewish settlements.
Mr. Sfard won two significant supreme court decisions that, if implemented, will bring about the demolition of the unauthorized West Bank settlement outposts of Ulpana and Migron by July 1 and August 1 respectively. The outposts are to be torn down for being built on private Palestinian property, though at least in the case of Ulpana, the Israeli government is still seeking an alternate outcome.
The settlements contravene Israeli as well as international law. By turning to the supreme court, Israeli opponents of the occupation that began with Israel's capture of the West Bank during the 1967 war are enjoying a modest but noteworthy degree of success. Critics of the approach, however, argue that Sfard's actions go against the will of the elected majority in parliament, where support for the settlers is strong.
Recommended:In Pictures Israelis and Palestinians: A tense coexistence
Interviewed in his Tel Aviv office, which is adorned with a map of Israel from 1958 when the country did not occupy the West Bank, Sfard, 40, says he is concerned by the Israeli government's efforts to find a way around the legal rulings.
In Pictures Israelis and Palestinians: A tense coexistence
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''Our society's underlying values are at risk, real risk,'' asserts Sfard, defining these as encompassing respect for human rights and the right to property.
''I am talking about Thou Shalt Not steal. What is more basic than that?'' adds Sfard, who attributes his work on behalf of Palestinians partly to his knowledge of what Jews suffered historically as a persecuted minority. ''I have an allergy to situations where the strong, the majority is exploiting and maltreating the weak, the minority,'' he explains.
Court holding firm
The hearing on Ulpana was held after attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein backed away from a state commitment a year ago, that was enshrined as a supreme court ruling, to demolish 30 settler apartments for being built on private Palestinian property. With the clock ticking on the May 1 demolition deadline, the state last month asked the court for time to formulate a new position and to reopen the case so that the homes would not have to be demolished. The court rebuffed the request, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apparently still does not see that as the final word on the matter.
His spokesman, Mark Regev, told the Monitor Wednesday that the premier is still ''searching to see if there is a way legally to not dislocate all those people who bought apartments there.''
While the international community views all of the settlements housing half a million Israelis as illegal for violating the Fourth Geneva Convention, the 96 smaller outpost communities violate Israeli law too because they were never formally authorized by the government.
Sfard says the government's conduct is alarming.
''When the attorney general is ready to ask the court to reopen a case already ruled just because the government doesn't like it and I have to protect the respect for court decisions, than we are at risk. I have to convince the court that court orders should be kept? This is crazy,'' Sfard says.
Retroactive legalization of outposts
Sfard is now worried that to assuage the settlers the government will throw its weight behind proposals by right-wing legislators for a law that would retroactively legalize outposts, including Migron and Ulpana. ''This contains the seeds of destruction of our legal environment,'' he warns.
Regev says it is ''just not true" that the government is disregarding core legal values.
''The prime minister has always said Israel is a country of the rule of law, that the rule of law will prevail and that supreme court decisions will be implemented,'' he says.
The decisions this year were not the first time that Sfard, legal counsel for the Yesh Din (there is law) NGO, has scored successes on behalf of Palestinians. In 2007, he convinced the supreme court to reroute Israel's separation barrier so that farmers in the village of Bilin could be reunited with their land. It took four years and two contempt of court motions by Sfard for the decision to be implemented.
Filling opposition vacuum
Sfard views Yesh Din's legal activity, along with the work of other NGOs, as filling the role of opposition to the occupation that was once played by left-wing parties in parliament that have in recent years declined in both numbers and influence.
''I don't have any illusions that through court proceedings you can end the occupation or abuse of Palestinian rights but court proceedings are a good vehicle to bring issues to the fore and in specific cases to bring justice,'' he says.
Sfard recalls that he has always been against the occupation though his understanding of it has deepened through his work in recent years. In 1998 he was jailed for three weeks for refusing a call up to serve as a reservist in the West Bank.
Although Israeli right-wingers often attack the supreme court for, in their view, upholding Palestinian rights, Sfard does not see it that way at all. The supreme court, he says is ''one of the cornerstones on which the occupation rests, it's not a rubber stamp but rather an active player that builds the foundation of the occupation.'' Sfard has ''misgivings'' that his court actions add to the legitimacy of the court, but he says the individual interests of his clients trump this concern.
''When I represent Palestinians it's a great priviledge,'' Sfard says. ''I always tell my clients I am very proud and humbled to be your lawyer because I am seen as being a member of the dominating group that is breaching their rights. Every time I get a power of attorney, for me, it's something to be proud of.''
Critics: Go through politics
However, Yesh Din's critics charge that its activity is far from benevolent.
''Michael Sfard has discovered that through the legal system he can advance his goal of two states for two peoples. But it isn't proper to do this through the legal system, it should be done through politics,'' says Itai Hemo, spokesman for Migron settlers.
Gerald Steinberg, director of NGO Monitor, a group often critical of NGOs, faults Yesh Din for ''supporting the Palestinian narrative. That Israel stole the land is the principle behind all this and that the occupation is the source of the conflict rather than the result. These positions make Palestinians feel they don't have to compromise,'' Steinberg says.
But Harbi Hasan,a Palestinian landowner on whose property the settler buildings in Ulpana – or Jebel Artis, as it is known in Arabic – were constructed, praises his Israeli lawyer for doing ''an excellent job.'' Hasan, 71, who grew up in the village of Dura al-Qara and recalls his family growing grapes on the land on which the settlers built, says: "From Dura, I can see the buildings of the settlers on my land. Just imagine the feeling. Getting it back will mean everything.''
Lawyer Michael Sfard is effective voice for Palestinians
Sfard is Israel's most prominent human rights lawyer, known for his high profile cases, one of which resulted in rerouting of separation fence. 'I'm not a Palestinian freedom fighter,' Sfard says, 'I'm an Israeli human rights attorney who fights to strengthen Israel'
Associated Press|Published: 12.23.13 , 00:43
Growing up in Jerusalem, Michael Sfard had no contact with Palestinians who lived just across the street from him in the Arab part of the city. In high school, he studied French and English, not Arabic. It was a fairly typical Israeli upbringing, largely insulated from the harsh realities of Israel's half century of rule over the Palestinians next door.
Michael Sfard (Photo: AP)
Yet since opening his own law practice, Sfard has emerged as one of the most effective defenders of Palestinian rights, arguing and winning high-profile cases in Israel's Supreme Court. Major victories include forcing the government to dismantle a large rogue settlement in the West Bank and rerouting Israel's separation barrier along some stretches to restore farmland to Palestinian villages.
Related stories:
Palestinians: IDF sanctions land theft
State to court: IDF to halt use of phosphorous shells
High Court orders Migron eviction by 2012
The unlikely champion of the oppressed says he is trying to make Israel better, not advance the Palestinian national cause.
"I'm not a Palestinian freedom fighter," Sfard said. "I'm an Israeli human rights attorney who fights to strengthen human rights in Israel and in the territories it occupies and represents my clients the best I can."
It's an outsider's role in a country where a majority seems either indifferent to what happens in West Bank and east Jerusalem or supports the government's settlement expansion on the lands the Palestinians want for a state.
But it's a role that suits Sfard's temperament. "I was always this wise guy who needs to tell people off," said Sfard, whose grandparents survived the Holocaust and whose father was jailed fighting for democracy in Communist Poland in the 1960s.
His legal activism grew out of the crisis that befell Israel's peace camp after the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the outbreak of an armed Palestinian uprising in 2000. After those twin setbacks, the center-left lost power and many Israelis lost faith in the possibility of a partition deal. "We don't have a partner for peace" became a widespread — some might say somewhat self-serving — lament, even on the Israel left.
Grassroots groups began to fill the political vacuum. Some joined weekly Palestinian protests against the separation barrier that slices almost 10 percent off the West Bank. Israeli women founded the group Machsom Watch, standing at Israeli army checkpoints to monitor the treatment of Palestinians.
Sfard started his practice in 2004. A year later, Sfard and several Machsom Watch women set up Yesh Din — Hebrew for "There is a law" — to take the human rights battle to the courts.
The Supreme Court often has ruled in favor of the Israeli government, especially when security arguments were raised to defend controversial policies, such as targeted killings of suspected militants.
But it also has served as a last resort for human rights defenders.
"I think my personal experience shows it is possible to get at least some remedy, even in the occupier's court," Sfard said.
Sfard continues a tradition begun decades earlier by legendary lawyers Felicia Langer and Leah Tzemel, still widely respected among Palestinians for their dedication.
But increasingly, Sfard's for-profit practice in gritty south Tel Aviv is becoming the go-to address for important cases, especially against settlement outposts and the separation barrier. His biggest clients include Yesh Din, funded by European governments, as well as settlement monitor Peace Now and Breaking The Silence, a group that collects testimonies from soldiers about their West Bank service.
Hilltop outpost
On a recent morning, Sfard appeared before the Supreme Court in the case of Amona, one of the largest and oldest of dozens of hilltop outposts settlers have established in the West Bank since the late 1990s without formal approval of the government, but with its tacit blessing and financial support.
The large sun-lit courtroom was filled with Amona settlers and their children. Resident Hillel Vidal, 31, said he considers Sfard a menace to his way of life.
'I'm not a Palestinian freedom fighter' (Photo: AP)
"He is a man who earns a living by trying to destroy my home," Vidal said. "He wants to bring down the Jewish people as much as possible and raise up the Arabs."
The government isn't disputing that Amona was built illegally on private Palestinian land. In 2006, troops razed nine Amona homes after clashes with some 5,000 settlers and their sympathizers, but several dozen trailers have remained.
The government has put off dismantling the rest of the outpost, despite court deadlines. In a new complication, settlers said they bought some of the land the outpost sits on, a claim Sfard alleged is based on forged documents.
Six of Sfard's clients couldn't get to last week's hearing because he said Israel didn't issue them entry permits for Jerusalem, a requirement for all West Bankers.
Two others, Ibrahim Yakoub, 51, and Atallah Hami, 61, made it to court. After the hearing, Sfard answered their questions, his Hebrew comments translated into Arabic by a Yesh Din volunteer.
Abdel Rahman Saleh, mayor of Silwad, one of the villages that lost land to Amona, said he has faith in Sfard because "he is a son of the system and knows the keys."
A state of conflict
Sfard acknowledged that being male, Jewish and Ashkenazi — traditional attributes of the Israel's elite — has helped him in court. Yet people like Israeli lawyer Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, a leading litigator against Palestinian terror organizations, say Sfard's fight for Palestinian rights is misguided.
"In a state of conflict, you can't give both sides equal rights," Darshan-Leitner said. "Sometimes it comes to a situation of either them or us. If he comes to defend them, he certainly hurts us."
While still passionate about human rights law, the married father of two said he might branch out.
He recently helped The Block — one of Tel Aviv's biggest night clubs — to stay open after police tried to shut it down over suspicions of drug dealing on the premises. Said Sfard: "I got more Facebook invitations for friendship after this case than all of my human rights cases ever."
Michael Sfard, NGOs, and Government Funding
February 09, 2015
Introduction
According to Israeli news outlet NRG, Israeli attorney Michael Sfard will testify as an expert witness for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) before the Southern District of New York federal court. The case, Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization, relates to damages sought by family members of terror victims killed by alleged PLO attacks that occurred between 2001 and 2004.
Sfard previously provided paid testimony on behalf of the PLO (Saperstein v. Palestinian Authority 2010).
He has also received direct and indirect foreign government funding for his legal and pseudo-legal work. As seen below, this is in conjunction with funding for Israeli NGOs.
As a leading Israeli figure in the global “lawfare” movement, Sfard has stated that “International law obligates all states in the world to investigate [war crimes] and prosecute them if there is enough evidence. If not Israel, then England. If not the Supreme Court, then the House of Lords” (“If not HCJ, then the UK,” Haaretz, September 19, 2005).
NGO Connections
Sfard serves as legal counsel for Yesh Din and Breaking the Silence. Both groups receive the bulk of their funding from European governments.
Yesh Din is a leader in attempting to portray Israel and its security forces as unaccountable to the rule of law. This is part of a wider strategy of prosecuting Israeli officials in foreign courts and in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “war crimes.”
Breaking the Silence is instrumental in disseminating false “war crimes” accusations against Israel.
Sfard represents Peace Now, an openly political NGO, before the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ).
Together with his associate Emily Schaeffer, Sfard authored a European Union-funded report “No Home, No Homeland” (2011), on behalf of radical Israeli organization the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
Sfard has also represented the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement and the Human Rights Defenders Fund, both funded by foreign governments.
Sfard worked with Al-Haq, a leading anti-Israel “lawfare” NGO funded by European governments, on a lawsuit filed in Canada seeking a judicial declaration of Israel’s guilt in committing “war crimes” and deeming the security barrier illegal.
The case was dismissed with partial costs (September 18, 2009).
In February 2013, Sfard submitted a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee against the government of Canada, alleging that Canada violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) when its courts ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the case.
Sfard served as an expert witness in the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Barcelona – a kangaroo court that found Israel “guilty” and promoted the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. (“Conclusions of the First International Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine” March 1-3, 2010.)
Michael Sfard: Laws of conflict do not allow for killing civilians in this way
Israel conducted an armed operation in the most populated civilian area in the world
Wednesday 3 February 2010 00:00 GMT
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If this commander's quote represents the rules of engagement as they were applied during Operation Cast Lead, then it is a smoking gun because it proves the case that Israel was charged with. It proves the main revelations in the Breaking the Silence report. When I read the testimonies in that report – some of which were difficult to read – what was common to them was a change to rules of engagement so that either there were no rules, or they allowed soldiers to shoot anything that moved in the vicinity.
If the quote is true, that means that Israel has abandoned the main safeguard that makes sure that combatants realise the most basic principle of international humanitarian law: the principle of distinction between combatants and civilians. That principle confers a duty to target only combatants and military objects and prohibits the targeting of civilians and civilian objects – unless and for such time as they are actively engaged in hostilities.
Means and intention are the most customary parameters for considering that a person is a combatant or that he or she is engaging directly in hostilities. If you delete them, or even delete one of them, you are providing combatants with a licence to kill civilians.
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Leaflets urging civilians to leave an area can be a very positive way of reducing the danger and harm caused to civilians, if there is a no-war zone to which they can go. In Gaza there was no such zone.
Secondly there may always be people who despite the leaflets decide not to leave their homes, perhaps because they have young children or elderly relatives, or perhaps because they have simply decided not to leave their homes, perhaps because they have been refugees before and have vowed that they never will be again.
The laws of armed conflict do not allow the killing of civilians just because they chose not leave their homes which became a war zone.
Of course there is a dilemma for soldiers confronting an unarmed man in civilian clothes who may have some other means of threatening their lives. But that is a risk of combat. International law requires that combatants run risks to reduce harm to civilians.
The principle of distinction is not a suggestion but the product of the experience of the whole of humanity throughout centuries of bloodshed and a means of putting some limitations on warfare as it affects civilians.
The writer is an Israeli human rights lawyer
On a recent roots trip to Poland, from where his parents immigrated in 1968, Michael Sfard found a lithograph which summed up in one picture what his professional life as a human rights lawyer is all about. "The picture showed a haredi man holding his son's hand and gesturing to a soldier as if to say, 'But why can't I?' The soldier, with his back to the viewer, indicates with his arms, "You just can't. That's all there is to it.'" The lithograph was too expensive to purchase, Sfard said, but if he could have, he would have hung it at the entrance to his office in an old building on Rehov Ahad Ha'am in downtown Tel Aviv so that anyone who entered would know what he could find there. Sfard is only 37 and has only had his own law office since 2004. Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to describe him as an up-and-coming lawyer because he has essentially up-and-came. He is one of the most, if not the most, sought-after human rights lawyers in the country and his name can be found on any number of High Court petitions connected to the defense of Palestinian rights in the West Bank. Sfard was born in 1972 in the Rehov Brazil public housing complex in Jerusalem's Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood. His parents were Polish intellectuals who moved here after unrest in Poland which the government blamed on the Jews. When he was six, the family moved to an apartment building in Ma'alot Dafna which was largely inhabited by Israel Radio journalists. "Our house was like the UN where the journalists came to make up with each other after quarrels," he said. "There were social occasions all the time where everyone talked and argued. It was very formative." Sfard never thought about becoming a lawyer. He had always liked computers and figured he would study them at university. However, when he applied, he had to make three choices. For his second choice, he decided on law because it was more practical than political science, his natural preference. Then he thought to himself that since law was hard to get into, he had better make it his first choice. And so a lawyer was born. One reason why law had never been a consideration was because his grandfather had told his father that one could not be a lawyer and be ethical. "The question of morals was very important in my family," he said. "It was the core of my education." Sfard said that he would have liked the main goal of his work today to be putting an end to institutional and systematic violations of human rights. However, he added, this could not be done without an end to the occupation, as he describes the military and civilian presence in the territories. In the meantime, however, what he finds himself doing instead is fighting a rearguard battle to prevent this from becoming an apartheid state vis-Ã -vis the Palestinians. "We are already at the gates of such a state," he warned.
Michael Sfard
Lawyer
“There are serious things taking place here, things that are done in my name, things that I am responsible for not only because they are done in my name, but because I pay taxes, vote in the elections, because I’m part of this collective called the State of Israel. I can’t live in peace and I can’t sleep at night if I am not . . . struggling against these things. Here I belong and here I am responsible.”
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Lives in: Tel Aviv Was born in: Jerusalem Year of birth: 1972 Identity: Jewish Type of work: Human Rights/Advocacy Website: Works at Human Rights Defenders Fund Interviewer Anat Langer-Gal Date of Interview 2011
Born into a politically engaged family with very clear positions on human rights and democracy, today, Michael Sfard is a dedicated international human rights lawyer and activist. He represents Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, communities, committees and individuals. Sfard's cases deal directly with the Occupation, and range from those dealing with the route of the Separation Barrier to defending conscientious objectors and Palestinian prisoners.
My parents immigrated to Israel from Poland in 1968, three years before I was born, under circumstances of forced emigration.1 My mother’s family was forced to leave because her father was a sociology professor at the University of Warsaw, and my father’s family because my father was active in the university’s student committee and was a central activist in the 1968 students’ struggle. Both families were driven out – sacked from their jobs, thrown out of university, became outcasts, enemies of the nation – because of the pro-democratic activity they engaged in. In the home I grew up in there was a very present allergy to the persecution of opponents of the regime, of those who had different opinions. There was an allergy to the limitation of freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Unlike in many homes of people who had come from the Eastern bloc2– who, as a result of the years they spent living in the Eastern bloc were afraid to express their opinion, afraid to speak against the opinion of the authorities – in my home it was exactly the opposite. It was present throughout my childhood and has undoubtedly had an influence on me. Many journalists lived in the Jerusalem neighborhood where I lived, near the famous Ohr Somayach Yeshiva, from the age of five. In fact, I think we were the only ones who weren’t journalists. Life in the shadow of these journalists turned my parents’ house into a kind of United Nations. Journalists constantly quarrel and make up, and there are jealousies and squabbles, and everyone used to come to our place to argue and make peace. They trusted my parents and told them all their secrets. The house was very involved in matters of current affairs. Since as far back as I can remember, there were always discussions at home about political issues and subjects on the public agenda. At an early age I was part of all that. It was a very politically, engaged home, with very clear positions about democracy and human rights.
’ve always been5n an activist. I was an activist as a high school student, continued to be an activist as a university student, and am an activist today. Today, I have another tool for my activism, the legal tool, and that’s wonderful. I feel that I can contribute, that I have a relative advantage that goes beyond participating in demonstrations. I also demonstrate if necessary. I am lucky to be earning a living doing what I would have liked to do after work hours if I had a different job.\
First and foremost, my parents, of course. Shulamit Aloni is also a major influence. Today, I know how much of the world of human rights exists in Israel because of her. I was introduced to this world through her and through her activity. In a more professional sense, Avigdor Feldman,3 who I did my apprenticeship with and later spent several years working for as an attorney. I learned a lot from him, beyond law. Working alongside him mainly developed my critical thinking. He is a person who is highly aware of power structures, and with his help I learned how to analyze things. Today he is a personal friend.
The army was a crisis. The feeling I had after [serving in] the army was that we had been deceived all along. I served in the Nachal.4 I was a military paramedic. I spent some time in the Territories, but that was marginal. The majority of my service was spent in south Lebanon, which was under a much crueler and harsher occupation,5 in my view, than the Territories. I started peeling off layers of education – school, television, what they tell us, the Day of Remembrance – and I started realizing that things are a bit more complicated than the simplistic way in which they are presented in the trajectory that a Jewish-Israeli child follows from birth until he completes service in the army. There is a kind of trajectory, a well-oiled machine that burns into our consciousness a certain narrative. A lot of the things are difficult to look at as an absolute truth. I started being introduced to that under all kinds of circumstances while in the army. After the army, when I did a course in Neve Shalom on Jewish-Arab encounters, I went through some processes. In the army, I didn’t feel like we were the few against the many, the weak against the strong, the victims against the bad guys. I felt the opposite. You are in uniform, against a civilian population, whether it is in Lebanon or in the Territories, and it doesn’t sit well with the whole image for which you went to a combat unit in the first place. It didn’t sit well together and it caused a real identity crisis. The identity crisis was increasingly exacerbated through the 1990s. I was released from the army in ’94 and in ’98 I started my apprenticeship. I worked as a lawyer with Avigdor for a year and in 2000 I ran away to London with my wife, feeling as though I was a refugee. I come from a family of immigrants and I know that emigration is actually a tragedy. I went away to do a master’s degree. That was the pretext. The truth is that I went away feeling exiled in my own country and feeling as though I didn’t really have a community to relate to. It was an amazing year, a year of perspective, a year of meeting people from all kinds of different countries. I remember arriving in London and buying a copy of the Guardian6 and reading, and turning on the television and seeing that all the main headlines were about Congo – main headlines about foreign news, about a country in Africa. You realize that there is life in other places as well. Professionally speaking, although studying was the pretext, the experience nevertheless changed my life. I studied international human rights law and discovered the subject I wanted to work in. When I came back [to Israel] – and when I left I wouldn’t have put money on me coming back, nor on the reverse – the group Courage to Refuse was just being founded. Several weeks after I got back I went to the first conference. I entered the room and I saw 200 people who thought and felt like I did. From that moment on it was clear to me that I needed to be an activist.
It’s important for me to win. A lawyer who doesn’t think about victory and doesn’t want to win, shouldn’t be a lawyer. But I’m aware that victory comes in all shapes and sizes. There is one kind of victory in which you receive a ruling that gives you the remedy you sought; there is another in which one follows a procedure that provides the remedy without a ruling; then there are cases in which a loss is a victory. I say this [last scenario] in the clearest way possible, a loss in the formal sense – the court denies you – but in reality the case stirred up a public debate and conveyed a message. I know of several formal victories that were losses in the long run. Lawyers have a very narrow outlook. They look through the lens of the legal argument and the end result in court. I try to understand and be aware of more than that. I think, and this is reflected in the list of things that I have been involved with, that in many of the matters I am active in, it is wrong to only have a legal procedure. A legal procedure supports public action and vice versa, public action supports the legal procedure. To put all the stakes on only the legal procedure is a gamble that is often irresponsible. I know of struggles that have resulted in nothing because ultimately they only concentrated on the legal procedure. I think law is one part of a whole array of instruments for social change, sometimes an important part, sometimes less so. In the area of social change, law never stands on its own.
I have had many important cases. I’m thinking of Bil’in, which ended successfully. It’s true that the village didn’t get all its land back, but Bil’in has become a symbol, and ultimately the court did not only order the route of the fence to be changed, but actually said what we – myself, the Bil’in village council and the Palestinian public – had been claiming all along: "You are lying. The fence is not a security fence, its route is determined by considerations relating to the expansion of settlements." In addition to the physical return of hundreds of dunams of land, I see this [statement] as a great success, It was a very important case and also a successful one.7In the fence case of five villages in the Alfei Menashe enclave, which was brought before a panel of nine judges following the decision of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the court also ruled that the fence was illegal and had to be moved.8 Three villages that had been inside the enclave were taken out of the enclave. That’s also an important case. I represented the Aramin family,9 whose daughter, Abir Aramin, was shot dead by a border policeman in Anata while she was in the street during school recess. Soldiers in a border police Jeep simply shot in all directions without any justification. I began handling the case from the day she was killed. Bassam,10 who is an amazing man, was surrounded by the support of Israelis, also impressive people, who never left him, especially after his daughter’s death. I became very emotional about this story. It’s a case that has touched me. I had just become a father myself when it happened and it severely affected me. I’m proud to say that over the years, Bassam and I have become close friends. In my opinion there were many successes on the way and there was a failure in the end.11 But, even when the result at the end of such a case is not the remedy I sought, there is something [significant] in the process. In the procedures I am involved with, when I represent Palestinians, there is something healing in the process itself. The overriding philosophy of the period is separation – a separation fence, all the different kinds of separation – and displays of solidarity between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians – these are small triumphs over this separation.
The case of Jonathan Ben-Artzi12 which went from being a case in which the military judges a guy who refuses to enlist under the claim that he is an egotist who is not willing to enlist, into a case in which the military is judged for failing to understand what pacifism is. I questioned the person who headed the Conscientious Objectors Committee13 at the time, and the questioning showed that he was completely ignorant about pacifism. According to him he would not have exempted Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi. These were small successes but there was also a big success. In the end, Jonathan was released, albeit, not as a conscientious objector, but because the army had, had enough of the struggle and his sentence was struck off. I felt I did well in the case and it was important to me. It was one of my first cases after starting my own practice and the conscientious objector aspect is close to my heart, since I was an objector myself. When you help people fight for their rights they start saying, "I’m entitled to that and I’m going to fight for it." It’s empowerment. The small successes are there in the souls of people whom I’ve met and have gotten to know over the years. I feel that being able to help people have such an experience is one of my immense privileges.
This is a big question and there’s endless research related to it. Is it possible to change social conventions and is it possible to implement social change through the legal system? When there’s a groundbreaking ruling in the area of the freedom of speech, in the area of gays and lesbians, in the area of animal rights, is it the legal system that’s leading the public or is the public already there and the legal system is only now recognizing it? It’s a very difficult question, especially in the State of Israel where there is no such thing as a public – there’s the conservative public and the liberal public, there’s the public in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem. We sent a woman who had been a man14 to the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and at the same time we threaten not to allow a photographer who wants to photograph people in the nude15 in the Dead Sea into the country. This is our society. It’s very hard to say what the public’s position is. On the subject of the fence and the legal struggle, there is a difference between the legal struggle in Israel and the one abroad. I wrote an article that dealt with the question: "What is the price you pay for internal resistance to a massive violation of human rights?" There’s a difference between internal and external resistance. Internal resistance takes place within the structures of the authorities that are performing the human rights violations. To appeal to the court in The Hague, to try and obtain international pressure, is external resistance. There is a price to pay for internal resistance. We come to the [Israeli] Supreme Court of Justice and need to get a security-led justification for the construction of a barrier. The question is what is the correct route that the barrier should take? Is accepting the language, accepting its use, and legitimizing the basic idea a worthy price to pay? I think that the court’s behavior over time on the subject of the fence has really intensified our dilemma because there’s been some success in relation to the fence. The legal procedures in Israel led to a situation in which, thanks to the Supreme Court rulings and their resulting changes,16 we have gone from a fence that was supposed to eat into 20-25% of the area of the West Bank to a fence that eats into 8.5% of it. [The rulings were] made by the State out of an understanding that the reality would not stand the test of the Supreme Court. There are people whose livelihoods have been saved, and there are entire families whose lands have been saved. But there is also another side – the legitimacy that has been granted and the lands that have been confiscated [through those court rulings]. Now, there’s that public in Israel who can tell themselves that they can sleep in peace because the court checks when things are going too far, and because of this they don’t take to the streets. On the other hand, let’s say the Supreme Court was banned, the Palestinians said, "We are no longer appealing to the Supreme Court," and [Israel] built a system in which the Seam Zone was 20% of the West Bank. Then 100 villages would not have suffered, but 300 villages, and 10,000 Palestinian residents would not have found themselves on the wrong side of the fence, but 100,000, and the bureaucratic apparatus of the permits would have become monstrous. Would it have even been possible to manage this thing? Have we not, with our appeals, made this thing turn into something manageable? Alongside the security forces that are responsible for the fence, there are parts of the fence for which I am also responsible because I influenced its route. It’s become a joint project of human rights organizations and the security forces. These are terribly difficult questions and it’s a dilemma that exists beyond the context of the fence. For me this dilemma has been reconciled. As a human rights lawyer, as a human rights activist, I can’t sacrifice the individual for the sake of some collective good. A client comes to me and says, "They’re going to take away my grove." Will I tell him: "Listen, but the Palestinian people need, it’s better that…"? No! I have to act on his behalf. You need to leave these questions to the academy and mainly be conscious of them. It’s true that there are red lines here, too. The villages of Azzoun and Nabi Eliascame to me. The fence seized 1,200 dunams of their densely planted olive groves for no reason. It turned out that in this case17 the State deceived the Supreme Court and didn’t tell the truth about its rationale for the route. [The State] claimed that it was for security reasons, when, in fact, they planned on building an industrial area for the settlement of Tzufim there. The leaders of the [Palestinian] council met with me and I started telling them: "Listen, it seems illogical to me, we can try and demand that they change the…." They looked at me with total mistrust and said: "Listen, all we need is a gate which we can go through to reach our land." In my mind, I immediately said that the day I ask for a gate, I get a gate. That’s exactly what the army wants. For them this is my role, to enable the management of this system. I must say that if [the council leaders] had insisted on not wanting to appeal against the fence itself, but only to demand a gate, I would have found it very difficult to represent them in the case, because for me that is virtually collaborating with and aiding the system in building the best fence. Fortunately for me, as well as for them, they agreed to file a petition against the fence. We won this petition and the route of the fence was changed.
I have no doubt whatsoever that without Bil’in’s public struggle we wouldn’t have gotten to the Supreme Court. And I have no doubt that without the Supreme Court the popular activity wouldn’t have moved the fence by one millimeter. These are two activities that fully complimented each other. The activity of the people of Bil’in, like earlier of the people of Budrus and later of the people of Ni’lin, Nabi Saleh and other places, is innovative and unique. Its power stems from a number of factors: the first and most important one is nonviolence. The second is the fact that they don’t only agree, but are happy to have Israelis participate in the struggle. The power created from the combination of these two factors is enormous, and in the first years it certainly caught the IDF, the Shabak and the border police by surprise. Having to deal with a Palestinian who is not armed with a dynamite vest created an unfamiliar situation for the authorities. They did all they could to push [Palestinians] back to the place of terrorists in an armed struggle and for six years they haven’t succeeded. It’s amazing. And truth be told, in the history of the Palestinians this is also a new phenomenon.17In the past, there were attempts at civil struggles but their scope was very narrow – boycotting taxes and things like that. But as far as I remember, there hadn’t been any joint nonviolent struggles18 with Israelis before Budrus and Bil’in.19Without Molotov cocktails, without weapons, nonviolence is an immense power. The Israeli reaction to it was very helpful. The excessive use of force the State of Israel instituted against the organizers of demonstrations, as if they were organizing suicide bombings, presented the State in a very bad light.20 Bil’in’s visibility made it a symbol. It’s very healthy to get to a court hearing when the judges think that there is something special about the case. In the end, the ruling is the strongest ever given against the security forces. Chief Justice Beinish wrote that not only was the route that went along the bottom of the valley not there for security reasons, it actually sacrificed security interests in order to promote the additional neighborhood. The public struggle was crucial, and the creativity and nonviolence – all these things created empathy and also [effectively] conveyed the Palestinian story for the first time.
Michael Sfard, Israel’s leading human rights lawyer, was educated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and University College, London. A former conscientious objector, he received the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award and an Open Society Fellowship. Sfard has also taught human rights law and his writing on the subject has appeared in New York Times, Haaretz, The Independent, and Foreign Policy. He lives in Tel Aviv.
Sfard, Michael: THE WALL AND THE GATE
Kirkus Reviews. (Nov. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
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Sfard, Michael THE WALL AND THE GATE Metropolitan/Henry Holt (Adult Nonfiction) $35.00 1, 23 ISBN: 978-1-250-12270-4
A Tel Aviv-based human rights lawyer forcefully argues that Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is equivalent to apartheid.
Sfard, who represents Palestinian victims of civil rights violations, makes his literary debut with an unsparing indictment of Israeli racism, oppression, and injustice. Drawing on case documents and interviews with lawyers, peace activists, and human rights workers, he chronicles the legal battles in which he and his colleagues have been engaged: deportation; the construction of Jewish settlements, separation barriers, and unauthorized outposts; use of torture in interrogations; imposition of administrative detention; demolition of homes of families of suspected terrorists; and "targeted killings" or assassinations. The author fervently believes that litigation is a tool for social change, although the complexities of legal struggles sometimes make it difficult to know how to measure success: "The effect that litigation has on politics, on the media, and on social perceptions means that the judicial rulings...are only one element in the matrix of litigation's outcomes." Sometimes, remedy for his client grants legitimacy and positive publicity for the occupier; in other cases, achieving justice for a client has an impact on broader policy decisions; and, most ambitiously, legal fights may change the nation's moral and ethical values. Israeli settlements clearly violate international laws of occupation, which hold that the occupied population must "resume their normal lives as much as possible." Nevertheless, Israel continues to seize Palestinian land, arguing that the nation is not building new settlements but merely expanding those already established. Furthermore, Israeli courts repeatedly insist that settlements, barriers, torture, and killings are justified because of security needs. Palestinian villagers cut off from their farms, parents unable to take a sick child to a doctor, tankers barred from delivering water: all these result from draconian rules of entry. The "security charade," Sfard asserts, continues to serve Israel "in its quest for a belligerent, unilateral solution to its conflict with the Palestinians" and gives its courts "standing and legitimacy in world opinion."
A moving, well-documented testimony to lawyers' tireless battles against a nation's inhumanity.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Sfard, Michael: THE WALL AND THE GATE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514267808/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7e2c454e. Accessed 19 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A514267808
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Does the Israeli High Court Uphold Palestinian Rights?
Posted by Editor · March 1, 2018 · No Comments
By Olivia Heffernan, a blog writer for RightsViews and a M.P.A. candidate at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer representing Palestinian victims of civil rights violations, has encountered numerous ethical dilemmas in his work. In his newly published book, “The Wall and the Gate: Israel Palestine and the Legal Battle for Human Rights,” Sfard offers “a radically new perspective on a much-covered conflict and a subtle, painful reckoning with the moral ambiguities inherent in the pursuit of justice.” Speaking at Columbia Law School in February, Sfard opened his lecture by posing to the audience the ethical dilemma that was the impetus for his book: “By working in the Israeli courts, am I a naïve and involuntary collaborator to the scam that Palestinians have recourse to justice?”
In Israel, Palestinians seeking redress for abuse are often reliant on the Israeli High Court of Justice— which, according to Sfard, is adjudicated by judges often unsympathetic toward the plight of Palestinians. Despite these sentiments about the legal system, he fights tooth and nail to provide fair and equal representation to Palestinians.
But, the divide between Israel and Palestine is not only as explicit as physical walls and fences, it is also evident in the rights each population is granted, Sfard says: Israelis are granted civil and political rights, while Palestinians are frequently denied these and more.
Denial of equality and fair hearings, for example, is in direct violation with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 10 states, “Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.” Reports from the region indicate that the basic human rights of Palestinian prisoners— many of whom are youths— are routinely denied, with prisoners being illegally detained and subjected to abusive treatment. One youth, Fawzi al-Junaidi, a 16-year-old Palestinian, reports he was beaten and denied care after being charged with throwing stones at a group of armed Israeli soldiers. Another, Ahed Tamimi, turned 17 in an Israel detention facility after being detained from her home in the middle of the night.
The wall built by Israel in Abu Dis, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. // Flickr
Equating the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the South African apartheid, Sfard is passionate about his work but can’t help but feel discouraged by the results of it.
“Where there is a hegemony and an elite, a community of those who have next to a community of those who have not— it’s only natural that an apartheid community will be created,” Sfard said.
Ido Dembin, an attorney from Israel and a blog writer for RightsViews, noted that it is important to understand that the Israeli courts are stuck between a rock and a hard place: “On one hand, it’s an institution of the State of Israel that was never meant to be the flag-bearer of justice in the occupied territories but only areas where Israeli law applies (it does not apply in the West Bank or Gaza). On the other hand, it is perceived as a last-ditch option for those, like Sfard, who have given up on winning elections and changing the government in favor of minor, step-by-step court-sanctioned progress,” he said. “In this sense, the court is expected to balance Israeli national narratives as well as fears and security concerns, with the rights of three million Palestinians in the West Bank who, in turn, have no other system to go to and rely on it for solutions. The court needs not only balance justice and law, but also individual rights with group rights.”
Sfard lamented the contradictory foundations on which Israel was founded: Israel was “built on a premise of raging nationalism, militarism, the Zionist idea that a Jew would never again be a victim even at the expense of victimizing others,” he said. “The thought was, if we have to choose between being victims or victimizing others, we will choose the latter. A disregard for those who are paying the price of national revival and independence makes racism a part of this issue.”
Dembin added that “paradoxically, the more the government shifts to the right, the more the courts are forced to counteract— thus pushing it slowly out of mainstream Israeli consensus and risking its position as an authority and important part of the checks and balances system.”
“The Wall and the Gate: Israel Palestine and the Legal Battle for Human Rights,” written by Michael Sfard, was published in 2018. // Amazon
The Israeli court system as the predominant means through which Palestinians can seek justice begs the questions: what justice, whose justice, and is justice delayed really justice at all?
In response to these unanswerable and multifaceted queries, Sfard emphasized the importance of choosing one’s battles and avoiding defeatist mentalities.
“The Israeli High Court is an occupier’s court and it does not provide justice, but from time to time it does provide remedy. We have a role from within even though there is a fight being waged from outside,” he said. For Sfard, facilitating remedies for the Palestinian people, even if only incrementally, is progress in the right direction.
His review of over four decades of human rights litigation in Israel pertaining to the occupation, which serves as the primary content of his 500-page book, has led him to a few conclusions. The first is that while law cannot be the primary vehicle to ending the occupation, it does have a role in advancing political movement for change. Secondly, it is important to refrain from dichotomizing the legal system: not every court victory leads to success and not every court defeat leads to failure. If court decisions are measured by bringing an end to a civil regime, then one risks overlooking the importance of remedies facilitated through the court. Finally, and certainly not last, while lawyers must master language, human rights lawyers must also invoke values through identifying rights violations and means of remediation.
It is for this reason that Sfard believes human rights activists are at the epicenter of the movement to end the occupation.
Olivia Heffernan is a student at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs concentrating in social and urban policy and specializing in journalism. She is president of the Criminal Justice Reform Working Group (CJR) and has previously worked for human rights-related nonprofits. She is originally from Washington, D.C., but she has spent multiple years living abroad. Olivia is a blog writer for RightsViews.