June 16, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
One of the most disturbing aspects of American
foreign policy since 9/11 has been the assumption
that decisions made by the United States are binding
on the rest of the world, best exemplified by
President George W. Bush’s warning that “there was a
new sheriff in town.” Apart from time of war, no
other nation has ever sought to prevent other
nations from trading with each other, nor has any
government sought to punish foreigners using
sanctions with the cynical arrogance demonstrated by
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The United States
uniquely seeks to penalize other sovereign countries
for alleged crimes that did not occur in the U.S.
and that did not involve American citizens, while
also insisting that all nations must comply with
whatever penalties are meted out by Washington. At
the same time, it demonstrates its own hypocrisy by
claiming sovereign immunity whenever foreigners or
even American citizens seek to use the courts to
hold it accountable for its many crimes.
The conceit by the United States
that it is the acknowledged judge, jury and executioner
in policing the international community began in the
post-World War 2 environment, when hubristic American
presidents began referring to themselves as “leaders of
the free world.” This pretense received legislative and
judicial backing with passage of the
Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 (ATA) as amended in 1992
plus subsequent related legislation, to include the
Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2016 (JASTA).
The body of legislation can be used to obtain civil
judgments against alleged terrorists for attacks carried
out anywhere in the world and can be employed to punish
governments, international organizations and even
corporations that are perceived to be supportive of
terrorists, even indirectly or unknowingly. Plaintiffs
are able to sue for injuries to their “person, property,
or business” and have ten years to bring a claim.
Sometimes the connections and
level of proof required by a U.S. court to take action
are tenuous, and that is being polite. Suits currently
can claim secondary liability for third parties,
including banks and large corporations, under “material
support” of terrorism statutes. This includes “aiding
and abetting” liability as well as providing “services”
to any group that the United States considers to be
terrorist, even if the terrorist label is dubious and/or
if that support is inadvertent.
The ability to sue in American
courts for redress of either real or imaginary crimes
has led to the creation of a lawfare culture in which
lawyers representing a particular cause seek to bankrupt
an opponent through both legal expenses and damages. To
no one’s surprise, Israel is a major litigator against
entities that it disapproves of. The Israeli government
has even created and supports an organization called
Shurat HaDin, which
describes on its website how it uses the law to
bankrupt opponents.
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The Federal Court for the
Southern District of Manhattan has become the
clearing house for suing the pants off of any number
of foreign governments and individuals with
virtually no requirement that the suit have any
merit beyond claims of “terrorism.” In February
2015,
a lawsuit initiated by Shurat HaDin led to the
conviction of the Palestinian Authority and the
Palestine Liberation Organization of liability for
terrorist attacks in Israel between 2000 and 2004.
The New York Federal jury awarded damages of $218.5
million, but under a special feature of the
Anti-Terrorism Act the award was automatically
tripled to $655.5 million. Shurat HaDin claimed
sanctimoniously that it was “bankrupting terror.”
The
most recent legal victory for Israel and its friends
occurred in a federal district court in the District of
Columbia on June 1st, where Syria and Iran
were held to be liable for the killing of American
citizens in Palestinian terrorist attacks that have
taken place in Israel. Judge Randolph D. Moss ruled that
Americans wounded and killed in seven attacks carried
out by Palestinians inside the Jewish state were
eligible for damages from Iran and Syria because they
provided “material support” to militant groups Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The court will at a future
date determine the amount of the actual damages.
It should be observed that the
alleged crime took place in a foreign country, Israel,
and the attribution of blame came from Israeli official
sources. Also, there was no actual evidence that Syria
and Iran were in any way actively involved in planning
or directly enabling the claimed attacks, which is why
the expression “material support,” which is extremely
elastic, was used. In this case, both Damascus and
Tehran are definitely guilty as charged in recognizing
and having contact with the Palestinian resistance
organizations though it has never been credibly asserted
that they have any influence over their actions. Syria
and Iran were, in fact, not represented in the
proceedings, a normal practice as neither country has
diplomatic representation in the U.S. and the chances of
a fair hearing given the existing legislation have
proven to be remote.
And one might well ask if the
legislation can be used against Israel, with American
citizens killed by the Israelis (Rachel Corrie, Furkan
Dogan) being able to sue the Jewish state’s government
for compensation and damages. Nope. U.S. courts have
ruled in similar cases that Israel’s army and police are
not terrorist organizations, nor do they materially
support terrorists, so the United States’ judicial
system has no jurisdiction to try them. That result
should surprise no one as the legislation was designed
to specifically target Muslims and Muslim groups.
In any event, the current court
ruling which might total hundreds of millions of dollars
could prove to be difficult to collect due to the fact
that both Syria and Iran have little in the way of
remaining assets in the U.S. In previous similar suits,
most notably in June 2017, a jury deliberated for one
day before delivering a guilty verdict against two
Iranian foundations for violation of U.S. sanctions,
allowing a federal court to authorize the U.S.
government
seizure of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. It was
the largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture in United
States history. The presiding judge decided to
distribute proceeds from the building’s sale, nearly $1
billion, to the families of victims of terrorism,
including the September 11th attacks. The court
ruled that Iran had some culpability for the 9/11
attacks solely based on its status as a State Department
listed state sponsor of terrorism, even though the court
could not demonstrate that Iran was in any way directly
involved.
A second
court case involved Syria, ruling that Damascus was
liable for the targeting and killing of an American
journalist who was in an active war zone covering the
shelling of a rebel held area of Homs in 2012.
The court awarded $302.5 million to the family of
the journalist, Marie Colvin. In her ruling, Judge Amy
Berman Jackson cited “Syria’s longstanding policy of
violence” seeking “to intimidate journalists” and
“suppress dissent.” A so-called human rights group
funded by the U.S. and other governments called the
Center for Justice and Accountability based its
argument, as in the case of Iran, on relying on the
designation of Damascus as a
state sponsor of terrorism. The judge believed that
the evidence presented was “credible and convincing.”
Another American gift to
international jurisprudence has been the Magnitsky Act
of 2012, a product of the feel-good enthusiasm of the
Barack Obama Administration. It was based on a narrative
regarding what went on in Russia under the clueless
Boris Yeltsin and his nationalist successor Vladimir
Putin that was peddled by one Bill Browder, who many
believe to have been a major player in the looting of
the former Soviet Union. It was claimed by Browder and
his accomplices in the media that the Russian government
had been complicit in the arrest, torture and killing of
one Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant turned whistleblower
working for Browder. Almost every aspect of the story
has been challenged, but it was completely bought into
by the Congress and White House and led to sanctions on
the Russians who were allegedly involved despite
Moscow’s complaints that the U.S. had no legal right to
interfere in its internal affairs relating to a Russian
citizen.
Worse still, the Magnitsky Act
has been broadened and is now the Global Magnitsky
Human Rights Accountability Act of 2017. It is being
used to sanction and otherwise punish alleged “human
rights abusers” in other countries and has a very low
bar for establishing credibility. It was most recently
used in the Jamal Khashoggi case, in which the U.S.
sanctioned the alleged killers of the Saudi dissident
journalist even though no one had actually been arrested
or convicted of any crime.
The long-established principle
that Washington should respect the sovereignty of other
states even when it disagrees with their internal or
foreign policies has effectively been abandoned. And, as
if things were not bad enough, some recent legislation
virtually guarantees that in the near future the United
States will be doing still more to interfere in and
destabilize much of the world. Congress passed and
President Trump
has signed the
Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act,
which seeks to improve Washington’s response to mass
killings. The prevention of genocide and mass murder is
now a part of American national security agenda. There
will be a Mass Atrocity Task Force and State Department
officers will receive training to sensitize them to
impending genocide, though presumably the new program
will not apply to the Palestinians as the law’s namesake
never was troubled by their suppression and killing by
the state of Israel.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is
Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle
East. Website is
https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its
email is
inform@cnionline.org.
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