Middle East Forum Legal Project | Apr 29, 2009
By Brooke Goldstein, Aaron Eitan Meyer
Are American authors who write about terrorism and its sources of financing safe? Are counter-terrorist advisors to the New York City Police department safe? Are U.S. congressmen safe when they report terrorist front groups to the FBI and CIA? Are cartoonists who parody Mohammad safe from arrest?Must a Dutch politician who produced a documentary film quoting the Koran stand trial for blasphemy of Islam in Jordan? Is anyone who speaks publicly on the threat of radical Islam safe from frivolous and malicious lawsuits designed to bankrupt, punish, and silence them? These days, the answer is no.
Lawfare is usually defined as the use of the law as a weapon of war [1], or the pursuit of strategic aims through aggressive legal maneuvers.[2] Traditionally, lawfare tactics have been used to obtain moral advantages over the enemy in the court of public opinion,3 and to intimidate heads of state from acting out of fear of prosecution for war crimes.[4] Al-Qaeda training manuals instruct its captured militants to file claims of torture or other forms of abuse so as to reposition themselves as victims against their captors.[5] The 2004 decision by the United Nation’s International Court of Justice declaring Israel’s security fence a crime against humanity, which pointedly ignored the fact that the fence contributed to a sharp decline in terror attacks, is another example of lawfare aimed at public opinion.[6] Continue reading
