April 27, 2010
The Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust hosted an all-day conference entitled “The UN’s Goldstone Report: Lawfare, the Defamation of Israel, and the Threat to American National Security in the Age of Terrorism.”
The Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust hosted an all-day conference entitled “The UN’s Goldstone Report: Lawfare, the Defamation of Israel, and the Threat to American National Security in the Age of Terrorism.”
The event was co-sponsored with the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists along with a number of other co-sponsors. The day’s events included four expert panels and a keynote address by the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, Ambassador Gabriela Shalev. The day’s events included four expert panels and an address by the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, Ambassador Gabriela Shalev.
The day began with a panel entitled “The Goldstone Report: The Defamation of Israel and Human Rights Distortions.” The panel was chaired by Anne Bayefsky, Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. The panel featured: Shmuel Trigano, a Professor at Paris X University Nanterre; Martin Kramer, a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center and the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Trevor Norwitz, a partner at the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School; and David Matas, the Senior Honorary Counsel of B’nai Brith, Canada, and nominee for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
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| Stephen Greenwald, Elizabeth Defeis, William C. Banks, and Larie Blank |
The day’s second panel was chaired by Elizabeth Defeis, a Professor of Law at Seton Hall, and was called, “The Goldstone Report: Undermining Self-Defense in the Age of Terrorism.” The panel featured presentations by: Lt. Col David Benjamin, a former Director of the Strategic and International Branch of the International Law Department of the Israel Defense Forces; Laurie Blank, the Director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory Law School; Abraham Bell, Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and member of the Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law; and William C. Banks, the Director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University.
The third panel, “Legal Weaponry: The Perversion of International Jurisprudence and Institutions,” chaired by Samuel Edelman, the Executive Director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. This panel included: Kenneth Marcus, Ackerman Visiting Professor of Equality and Justice in America at Baruch College; Ed Morgan, a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto; and Peter J. Haas, the President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
The day was concluded with the fourth panel, “International and Domestic Legal Recourses: Responding to ‘Lawfare’ and the Goldstone Report,” chaired by Herb London, President of the Hudson Institute. This panel featured: Nicholas Rostow, University Counsel and Vice Chancellor of the State University of New York and former legal advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations; Allan Gerson, the Chairman of AG International Law, PLLC; Nathan Lewin, Partner at the law firm of Lewin and Lewin in Washington DC; Malvina Halberstam, Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law; and Brooke Goldstein, Director of The Lawfare Project.
