If you want to know what a floor sweeper masquerading as law
professor sounds like, read the article that was written by Eugene Kontorovich
and published on April 24, 2013 in National Review Online. It has the title:
“Abbas's Bogus ICC Concession” and the subtitle: “His threat to challenge
Israeli settlements in court is completely empty.”
When you read the thing, you come out the experience with
the feeling that the man who says he is a professor at Northwestern School of
Law, has a void in his skull, and a volcano in his belly. And I mean it is an
absolutely empty skull devoid of even a tiny brain; and it is a volcano that is
spewing molten lava, not just an ordinary fire in the belly. The man also says
he is a fellow at the Lawfare Project – whatever that is, and whatever it is
supposed to be doing.
It seems that no one told Kontorovich it is one thing to
want to defend someone; it is another thing to botch the case so badly you
leave them worse off. You prove them guilty of the charge you sought to defend,
and guilty of all the other charges. This, in fact, is what he does at the
start of his presentation. First, he foams a half truth at the mouth, then
builds a shaky case upon it. He says that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas
offered to refrain from bringing Israeli officials before the International
Criminal Court (ICC) “for charges related to housing construction in
settlements” which – he goes on to say – was the motivation behind the effort
to gain recognition at the UN General Assembly last Fall.
But the fact is that the Palestinian case against the
Israeli occupation is not only the question of settlements; it is that of war
crimes, and of crimes against humanity. If Abbas goes to the ICC, it would be
for all these reasons, and not just the settlements. Thus, when the
self-appointed defense lawyer neglects all that to concentrate on a small part
of the case, he loses the part he took up by incompetence, and loses the rest
of the case by default.
The truth is that already now, several Israeli officials
would not travel to European capitals because they would be arrested for war
crimes, and for crimes against humanity. And what is valid in Europe is also
valid in The Hague which happens to be in Europe.
Setting all this aside, the fired up and brainless floor
sweeper masquerading as law professor makes his point based on what he sees as
a possible technical consideration. It is that “the court would have no
jurisdiction over settlements issue,” he says. Well, well, well. The man loses
the case right here because to say something like this is to say, in effect,
that the client he is defending is guilty as charged but that he is beyond the
arm of law enforcement.
And this means that the thing calling itself Kontorovich was
stupid enough not to see that by pleading the “outside your jurisdiction”
article, he did what every lawyer in America tries to avoid – pleading the
“Fifth Amendment” of the Constitution – the one pertaining to the refusal to
incriminate the self. It looks like the shadow lawyer has managed to put his
shadow foot in the mouth of a client that never retained him officially in the
first place. Will he now be sued for malpractice? Or will he be subjected to
something else?
What he does after all that bumbling is lay the blame not on
himself or Israel but (get this now) on the American Secretary of State John
Kerry. I'm not making this up for; this is what he says: “By taking Abbas's
noises about the ICC seriously, Kerry's diplomatic efforts inadvertently lend
credibility to the notion that the ICC would have jurisdiction.”
And why would he not want the ICC to have jurisdiction?
Because “this undermines America's ability to avoid such charges against its
servicemen in the future.” What? What the f**k is this brainless asshole
saying? Is he saying American servicemen are running around building
settlements in occupied territories? This thing is so dangerously retarded, it
ought to be locked up, not let loose on the public. Someone please catch him
and commit him to an institution.
Having dabbled in all those idiocies early on, the rest of
the article consists of destroying every point he makes by making another
contradictory one. Read it and be sickly entertained by the flimsy performance
of an aspiring impersonator still in training.