Dopey Op-Doc at NYTimes

At the NYTimes, you can see an op-doc by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, writer and director of “The Law in These Parts,” which is screening at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He lives in Jerusalem and teaches film at the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film and Television School and read this introduction:

Israel’s Supreme Court is the body that provides checks and balances to the country’s executive and legislative powers, upholding constitutional standards...

¶ In the four decades since the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the court has become a stage for an escalating conflict between two very different world views.

¶ Israel is the only modern state that has held territories under military occupation for over four decades. It is also unusual for a nation to allow residents of territories under a military occupation to petition its Supreme Court and request intervention in acts of state.

¶ Since the early years of the occupation...[rather] than functioning as the bastion of human rights that it was established to be, it has instead become the entity responsible for balancing the needs of a state engaged in a prolonged occupation with basic principles of democracy.

¶ This Op-Doc expands on one of the themes explored in my new feature documentary, “The Law in These Parts,” and asks about the role of the Supreme Court in the legal underpinnings of the longest military occupation in modern times.

I left this comment there:

RA is being petulantly picayune writing: "Israel is the only modern state that has held territories under military occupation for over four decade". Really?

Consider:

Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara has “only” lasted three plus decades. Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus – a mere 37 years. But Russia’s occupation of the Kuril Islands began in August 1945…

And Tibet has been occupied by China since 1949.

And many consider Northern Ireland occupied, even after the 1998 arrangements of an Executive.

But I suggest the term is "belligerent occupation", resulting from an Arab war of aggression in 1967 and by acting in defense, not only does Israel have the right to retain all or most of the territories it now administers, but as Schweible, Rostow and other international law experts claim, Israel has a better right than anyone to remain there in Judea and Samaria based on, at the least, discussions, declarations and decisions of Balfour 1917, the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, the San Remo Conference of 1920 and the League of Nations 1922.

And isn't it amazing that none of this legalese was ever voiced when those territories were invaded by, illegally occupied by and illegally annexed to Jordan all through 1948-1967?

I left out Kashmir.


UPDATE

It is up.

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