One law for Israel, another for everyone else
December 17th, 2009Today’s decision to make the issuing of arrest warrants of suspected war criminals subject to the approval of the Attorney General is a constitutional, legal and political outrage. It is a constitutional violation of the fundamental doctrine of the separation of powers since the Attorney General is not an independent Law Officer, but a Cabinet member with a high political profile (as shown by the recent interference in the SFO prosecution of BAE for corruption) and a political figure subject to Prime Ministerial pressure (as was seen in the ‘persuasion’ of the former Attorny General, Peter Goldsmith, to change his mind about the legality of the Iraq war). It is a legal outrage because decisions to take proceedings against those alleged to have committed very grave offences under the Geneva Conventions Act of 1957 should be exclusively a matter for the courts. It is a political outrage that the UK Government has shown itself more concerned to protect Israeli leaders against the application of universal jurisdiction in any country in respect of genocide, torture and war crimes rather than to uphold the international rule of law against those who have perpetrated such heinous crimes, in this case the killing of 1,400 defenceless civilians in the Gaza bloodletting. And the eagerness of Gordon Brown and David Miliband to apologise to the Israelis and to change British law at their behest is cringing to behold.
