Gerald M. Steinberg

Soft Powers Play Hardball: NGOs Wage War against Israel

The campaign of terror that began in late 2000, following the collapse of the Oslo peace process, was accompanied by a full-scale political campaign, aimed at de-legitimizing and isolating Israel internationally. This strategy was articulated at the UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism and Xenophobia that took place in September 2001, in Durban, South Africa. The Durban conference crystallized the strategy of de-legitimizing Israel as ‘an apartheid regime’, through international isolation based on the South African model. This political warfare based on ‘soft power’ 1 has been conducted through a number of frameworks, and in different venues, including the media, the UN, and other diplomatic institutions. In many of these campaigns, powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the main actors, providing the platform, the funds, and the political slogans. The funding is generally provided by governments (particularly in Europe and Canada), as well as philanthropic groups such as the Ford Foundation. Although these NGOs and their patrons generally use the rhetoric of human rights, humanitarian relief, and international law, their actions are primarily political. In contrast to the universality of these norms, in practice the language is exploited to promote particular political and ideological goals. This attack is spearheaded by global NGO ‘superpowers’—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, the International Commission of Jurists, and Oxfam. The vast resources and large number of employees at their disposal provide access to the media, diplomats (including direct involvement in UN proceedings) and other public relations channels for pursuing their anti-Israel agendas. In addition, hundreds of smaller pro-Palestinian NGOs, often linked together in associations such as PNGO (the Palestinian NGO Network), and closely tied to the PLO political leadership, have formed partnerships with the global NGOs. This provides the smaller local NGOs (often consisting of not much more than a website and a few employees) with funds, credibility

The Framing of Political NGOs in Wikipedia through Criticism Elimination

This article introduces criticism elimination, a type of information removal leading to a framing effect that impairs Wikipedias delivery of a neutral point of view (NPOV) and ultimately facilitates a new form of gatekeeping with political science and information technology implications. This article demonstrates a systematic use of criticism elimination and categorizes the editors responsible into four types. We show that some types use criticism elimination to dominate and manipulate articles to advocate political and ideological agendas. We suggest mitigation approaches to criticism elimination. The research is interdisciplinary and based on empirical analysis of the public edit histories.

The UN, The ICJ and the Separation Barrier: War by Other Means.

This article compares the Hobbesian realist and Kantian idealist analyses of international law and organizations with respect to the UN General Assembly resolutions and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on Israels separation barrier. From the realist perspective, this case highlights the exploitation of moral claims in support of a particularist political agenda. In contrast, the idealist approach interprets the advisory opinion and resolutions as important normative expressions in the developing global system of governance based on universal human rights principles and treaty obligations. The analysis begins with a detailed comparison of the ideological and intellectual foundations of these core approaches to international law and organizations, the evolution of this debate in the post Cold War international system, and the impact on protracted ethno-national conflicts. This provides the basis for examining the impact of both schools in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The specific case of the UN and ICJs involvement in the question of Israels separation barrier is then analyzed in detail from both the realist and idealist perspectives. The implications of this debate are of major importance, not only with respect to the specific challenges posed by terrorism and the necessary responses, but also in the wider context of the crisis in the international system at the beginning of the 21 st century. The analysis concludes by noting the degree to which this case illustrates a wider process in which international legal principles are manipulated in a manner that contributes to conflict and justification of violence, conforming to the realist interpretation. While still pursuing idealist objectives, wishful thinking cannot conceal the abuse ofuniversalist claims of morality in the pursuit of war by other means.

Realism, Politics and Culture in Middle East Arms Control Negotiations

The history of arms control efforts in the Middle East consists of numerous initiatives, but very limited results. From the first efforts to negotiate WMD limits and non-proliferation arrangements in the 1960s, through various regional initiatives, frameworks, proposals, dis- cussions, and negotiations, the obstacles to agreement on mutual limitations remained dominant. Frequent discussions in the UN of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone (MENWFZ), the multi- lateral Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) talks initiated during the 1991 Middle East Peace Conference, and the regional dimensions of global frameworks such as the NPT, CWC, and CTBT have all failed to produce results. Detailed analysis of these efforts highlights the impact of realist security-based factors, the structure and process of the interactions, as well as the cultural and domestic political dimen- sions. The existential conflicts, reflected in protracted territorial disputes and denials of legiti- macy and compounded by a fundamental asymmetry, created a zero-sum framework in the region. The region is characterized by a great deal of instability and competition; this situation, in turn, contributed to the efforts to acquire WMD. In terms of domestic politics, the regional cooperation required for arms limitation is often inconsistent with the dominant articulated political interests and regime perspectives. In addition, misunderstandings and misperceptions frequently occur due to the complexities of cross-cultural communications in the Middle East. Numerous dialogues have not narrowed the gaps or transformed the zero-sum frameworks into cooperative ones. Hopes for the creation of successful regional mechanisms for limiting arms depend on overcoming the obstacles encountered in past efforts.

Parameters of stable deterrence in a proliferated Middle East: Lessons from the 1991 Gulf War

Professor Gerald Steinberg is the Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution and Negotiation and a member of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. His recent publications include “Israel and the US: Can the Special Relationship Survive in the New Strategic Environment” in The US and Its Allies in a Changing World (Frank Cass, forthcoming); and “The Middle East” in Entering the New Millennium: Dilemmas in Arms Control (Sandia National Laboratories, 1999).

Comparing technological risks in large scale national projects

In policy debates concerning large scale R&D efforts, the achievements of the Manhattan and Apollo projects are frequently cited as evidence of “Yankee ingenuity” and the ability to overcome technical obstacles. In this article, the factors which contributed to the success and failure of large scale “crash” development projects are analyzed systematically. Successes are distinguished from failures according to two criteria. First, while the successes are marked by “parallel” development of technological components which began only after the basic scientific and technical obstacles had been overcome and the basic feasibility had been demonstrated, in the failures, parallel development began much earlier. In addition, the successful “crash” projects, such as the atomic bomb effort and the moon program, were designed to meet static technical goals and did not depend on overcoming countermeasures. The unsuccessful projects, such as the Safeguard ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, failed in the face of changes in Soviet military technology.Using these criteria to analyze the Reagan administrations space-based ballistic missile defense program (SPBMD), the author concludes that despite the claims made by supporters, this R&D effort is not similar to the Manhattan or Apollo projects. Rather, like the Nuclear Airplane and Skybolt missile, parallel developments have begun prior to proof of feasibility, and like the Safeguard BMD, the SPBMD must adapt to countermeasures.

From Durban to the Goldstone Report: the centrality of human rights NGOs in the political dimension of the Arab–Israeli conflict

Disproportionate and unsubstantiated allegations of human rights violations, war crimes and racism have been employed as a form of political warfare designed to isolate Israel internationally. This strategy, based on the model used to defeat the apartheid government in South Africa, was adopted in 2001 at the NGO Forum of the UN-sponsored Durban Conference on racism, in which 1500 organizations participated. Since then, as demonstrated in this article, many human rights NGOs have consistently supported the political agenda of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), whose members dominate the UN Human Rights Council. In the decade following the Durban conference, the NGO network has issued frequent condemnations of Israel based on false or unverifiable allegations of human rights abuses and ‘war crimes’. The NGO campaigns, led by international groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, are central in this process, from Jenin (2002), through the UNHRCs Goldstone Report on the Gaza war (2009). Journalists, academics, diplomats, political leaders, and legal officials in liberal Western democracies frequently cite these generally unsubstantiated allegations in condemning Israeli policies, reflecting the ‘soft power’ of these NGOs acting to reinforce the Palestinian narrative and the objectives of the OIC.

IHL 2.0: Is There a Role for Social Media in Monitoring and Enforcement?

This article will examine the opportunities and limitations of using social media in the execution of legal duties relating to the monitoring and enforcement of IHL. The article will first provide an overview of social media. Next, it will briefly summarise the normative framework of IHL as well as the legal duties of the primary actors and promoters of IHL (for example, states, the UN, NGOs, the International Committee of the Red Cross and courts) to monitor and enforce these rules. The article will then address specific legal obligations relating to IHL monitoring and enforcement and the impact of social media on meeting these requirements.Throughout, the article will use case studies from several conflict zones, including Sudan, Uganda, Mexico, Somalia, Gaza and Libya. The article will conclude that social media can play a critical role in promoting IHL education, and monitoring for potential violations. The benefits of this technology, however, are less clear for carrying out legal obligations related to the enforcement of IHL, such as fact-finding, arrest and prosecution. It is essential, therefore, that clear guidelines for utilising this quickly evolving technology, particularly in official fact-finding and judicial frameworks, be established.

Postcolonial Theory and the Ideology of Peace Studies

The origins of ‘peace studies’ (including conflict resolution, conflict studies) as an academic discipline can be traced to the late 1940s, and the field has beendeveloping steadily since then.By2000, thenumberof academicpeace studies and conflict resolution programmes numbered in the hundreds, located all over theworld, andorganized in professional frameworks suchas the Peace Studies section of the International Studies Association and the Political Studies Association (UK). As of 2005, there were approximately 250 such programmes in academic institutions in North America alone. The peace studies approach to international relations and conflict was founded by a groupof scholarswith backgrounds in economics and the social sciences, includingKennethBoulding,HowardRaiffa, andAnatolRapaport. The backdrop of the Cold War and the political reaction to the threat of nuclear war provided amajor impetus for the growth of peace studies, which many people saw as an antidote to programmes in strategic and war studies that had been founded on many campuses during this period. This process was also reflected and amplified by the policies of the US government under the Kennedy Administration, through the creation of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). ACDAwas seen as a means of ‘balancing’ the influence and power of the Defence Department and Pentagon. In the context of increasing emphasis on arms control negotiations, and the transformative game theory approach developed by influential academics (many of whom served as government advisors on these issues) such as Thomas Schelling and Roger Fischer, the links between government and academia in the area of peace studies were strengthened. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and the concern that the policies of strategic deterrence had brought the world to the brink of

A farewell to arms? NGO campaigns for embargoes on military exports: the case of the UK and Israel

International human rights NGOs utilize soft power resources to shape discourse on state compliance with the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC), as well as related policy decisions. The NGO impact is generally due to perceived expertise, credibility and commitment to universal principles. This article examines these factors in the NGO campaign in the UK calling for an arms embargo against Israel. NGO reports and activities created the basis for the July 2009 decision by the British government to cancel five military export licences. However, as shown, these reports contain problematic methodologies, inaccurate claims, and controversial interpretations of international law.