Sounds like your typical, Muslim fundo on the WA Forum - aka, sounds like me;~) However, she is Marwan Barghouti’s lawyer - and a Jew. i thought i would post this up just as a reminder, for all of us (myself included), that not all Jews are pro-Zionists. The amount of work that this Jewish lady is putting into assisting Marwan Barghouti, and therefore by extension helping the Palestinian cause, should force us to ask ourselves whether we, as Muslims, would do the same for others regardless of their religion.
**An unlikely alliance**, Ori Golan, The Guardian, 12 August 2003
One day when she was 16, Gisèle Halimi decided to test God. Brought up in an observant Jewish home in Tunisia, where her grandfather was a rabbi, she had been made to believe that only if she prayed for God’s blessing and observed his laws would he grant her success in school. That morning, on leaving home to take a French exam, she deliberately did not kiss the mezuzah, the parchment on the doorposts of Jewish homes, as observant Jews are obliged to. Would He punish her for her defiance? Would she fail her exam? In class the following day, her teacher announced the results: “The highest grade goes to Gisèle - as usual.” And that was that. God, she concluded, had lost. She could get by without Him.
Sixty years on, she still gets by without God. Elegant, poised and defiant, this celebrated lawyer, prolific writer and champion of women’s causes remains an irredeemable iconoclast who continues to challenge authority with the conviction and tenacity of a rebel.
In her Paris office, Halimi explains why she is currently representing Marwan Barghouti, leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Palestinian militant group that has killed and maimed an estimated 200 soldiers and civilians. Barghouti, 43, is the highest-profile Palestinian to be tried by Israel. Once considered a likely successor to Yasser Arafat, he was seen as a moderate Palestinian and a supporter of the peace process. He speaks Hebrew fluently and was involved in a number of initiatives between Israelis and Palestinians following the Oslo peace accord. Which is why many Israelis were astonished at his transformation into a radical.
For 19 months, Barghouti managed to avoid arrest and an assassination attempt by Israel’s security services. Then, in April last year, he was caught in a raid on a house in Ramallah and charged with leading and conducting suicide attacks on Israeli targets; pre-meditated murder, abetting murder, soliciting murder, attempted murder, conspiring to commit crimes, activity in a terrorist organisation, and belonging to a terrorist organisation.
Halimi, who has met him twice recently in Israel, says: “He is an intellectual, a political leader and a humanist. He is someone who suffers from the situation in his country. He would condemn all terrorism against Israel as soon as Israel ends its occupation of Palestine.”
Those familiar with Halimi’s professional trajectory will not be surprised at this alliance between a rabbi’s granddaughter and a Palestinian militant. In the 1960s she acted as counsel for the Algerian National Liberation Front and represented Algerian militants seeking to end French rule; in Spain she pleaded for Basque separatists; and she fought the corner of four leftwing militants who had acted to overthrow the government of President Marien N’Gouabi in the Congo. In 1967, she presided over the Russell Tribunal which investigated American crimes in Vietnam, and two years later, with Simone de Beauvoir, she founded Choisir, a body that defended the 343 French women who had publicly admitted to having illegal abortions.
“I condemn terrorism when it hits innocent people,” she says. “But there are innocent victims for the best causes in the world. In Algiers, in Dresden… in Israel, too, before its creation, there was terrorism. It’s important to ask the right questions. You say: ‘Why terrorism?’ I say: ‘Why occupation?’ As long as there is occupation contrary to international law, you can expect terrorism. Once there is an end to the occupation, not only will I condemn it, but there will be no terrorism.”
In numerous public statements Barghouti has claimed that his trial was staged purely for political reasons. Halimi agrees: “Generally speaking I think the Israeli internal system is democratic. But from an international law viewpoint, Israel is an outlaw. The main question is: does the Israeli court have the right to judge Barghouti? I say no; the Israeli civilian tribunal is not competent to judge him. First, the Geneva convention prohibits the kidnapping of an individual from an occupied country. This constitutes a war crime. Second, as a member of the Palestinian National Council, he enjoys parliamentary immunity from prosecution. This judicial process contravenes international law, the signed bilateral accords between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israeli jurisprudence.”
An Israeli military source calls these arguments “selective and cynical”. “Agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been repeatedly breached by the Palestinian side. In particular, the Palestinian Authority has flouted its obligations under the interim agreement of September 1995 requiring it to ‘act immediately, efficiently and effectively against acts or threats of terrorism, violence or incitement’. Barghouti is a terrorist with blood - a lot of blood - on his hands.”
The question of Israel’s legitimacy to try Barghouti was considered by Israeli state prosecutor, Dvora Chen, who stated that the interim agreements signed between Israel and the PLO in no way prevent Israel from arresting and trying people who live within the Palestinian Authority for crimes carried out in Israel or on Israelis.
Halimi insists that Barghouti is a peace-seeking man. “The prosecution says it has testimonies from Palestinians implicating him in a number of terrorist attacks, but in April these witnesses revealed that the statements were extracted from them by force. I don’t believe that Barghouti planned or instigated any terrorist attacks, or that he has paid money to commit crimes - I don’t believe it. He has no blood on his hands.”
Although France has the highest number of incidents against Jewish targets in Europe, Halimi does not believe there is a rise in anti-semitism in the country. It is racism, she says, which can be imputed to events in Israel. “The problem is that most people see Jews as unconditional supporters of Israel, and helping an unfair cause. If there was a solution to the Middle East problem then the problem of anti-semitism will disappear.”
“As a lawyer, Halimi has every right to defend what she considers a just cause,” says Marc Knobel from the highest official Jewish institution in France, the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France. “All the same, we feel that she tends to totally exonerate the Palestinian Authority from its own responsibilities and faults, and, at the same time, all too easily vilify Israel.”
Indeed, in more than an hour of conversation, Halimi does not mention Palestinian terrorism, or pass any judgment on Palestinian corruption, incitement or duplicity.
“There is nothing surprising in her defence of Barghouti,” says feminist and sociologist Dr Liliane Kandel from the University of Paris. “Like many other French intellectuals on the left, Halimi has signed many petitions condemning Israel. Many people inside the Jewish community - and even out of it - refuse such a one-sided point of view, and deplore seeing people like Gisèle Halimi involved in those campaigns.”
Halimi makes no bones about her relationship with Israel. “I don’t have any particular solidarity with Israel,” she says. “Israel is a state like any other. I don’t think the religious aspect of it is a good thing; it’s very dangerous for democracy.”
As she expounds on her atheist convictions, one cannot help but wonder what trajectory her life would have traced had she not passed her French exam that day at school.
Much appreciated, truly.