Eugene Kontorovich on America and the Settlements

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On November 18, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a momentous announcement: The United States does not consider Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria—the West Bank—illegal or illegitimate. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Israeli building in the territories it captured in 1967 is a violation of international law. But after a process of many months, the Trump State Department has decided to return to an understanding of the Geneva Convention once embraced by the Reagan Administration, and to recognize that the status of Israeli building in Judea and Samaria is a political and diplomatic question, not a legal one.

In this podcast, Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver is joined by one of the world’s foremost scholars on Israel and international law. Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, a director at the Kohelet Policy Forum, and author of of “Pompeo Busts the ‘Occupation’ Myth,” published in the Wall Street Journal on November 9, 2019. In this conversation, he makes the case for the legality of Israeli settlements and explains how an erroneous and hypocritical interpretation of international law became the conventional wisdom about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble, as well as the original Broadway cast recording of Fiddler on the Roof and “Above the Ocean” by Evan MacDonald.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Last week on November 18th, American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave remarks in the press briefing room at the State Department.
0:16.0	He discussed protests in Iran, America's ongoing commitments in Iraq, protests in Hong Kong, Bolivia's expulsion
0:23.5	of Cuban officials, and in the midst of all this, made an astonishing statement to the effect
0:29.3	that Israeli settlements on the disputed territories of the West Bank, Judea and Samaria,
0:34.7	are not inherently illegal or illegitimate. The conventional wisdom, of course,
0:39.4	is that Israeli building over the green line established by Israel's War of Independence in 1948
0:44.7	is illegitimate. But after a process of many months, the Trump administration has decided
0:50.7	to return to an earlier understanding of the Geneva Convention Statute,
0:55.4	the earlier understanding that was operative during the Reagan administration,
0:59.0	not to take any legal judgment on any particular settlement,
1:02.1	but instead to make clear, in Secretary Pompeo's own words,
1:06.3	that Israeli construction is not per se inconsistent with international law. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your
1:13.4	host, Jonathan Silver. This week, I've invited back the most intelligent guide to the question of
1:18.7	international law's hypocrisy when it comes to Israel. Eugene Kantorovich is a law professor at the
1:24.6	Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, and a director
1:28.6	at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Israel. This is his second appearance on the Tikva podcast,
1:33.6	and in this conversation, he explains how, in his view, the erroneous conventional wisdom
1:39.2	came to be accepted and offers a more careful look at the statutes and history involved.
1:44.0	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on and offers a more careful look at the statutes and history involved.
1:49.5	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on iTunes, Stitcher,
1:54.9	Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at
2:00.5	at Tikvafund.org.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tikvah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tikvah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.