Enter 9 Bedford Row International

Three years after the GC4I meeting, members of the barristers’ chambers 9 Bedford Row International (9BRI) shared with Jonathan Turner a work proposal “to further Israel’s interests within the field of international criminal law (ICL) and transnational criminal law”. The entire text of the proposal was among the documents recently leaked from the Israeli Ministry of Justice.

The proposal suggested the establishment of “a rapid response unit to correct false narratives articulated by NGOs and intergovernmental organisations” regarding Israel’s discriminatory and disproportionate policies in Palestine.

According to the proposal, the “corpus of material capable of being deployed in international litigation against Israel and/or its citizens at the ICC” was growing. 

Such corpus included Human Rights Watch’s 2017 report on “50 years of Occupation Abuses”, and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law’s 2008 report on the Palestine Question, according to the proposal.

“There is an identifiable pattern whereby such reports, when unanswered, form a canon of material which is utilised to build an evidential case against defendants at The Hague [where the ICJ and ICC sit],” the document stated. 

The aim was then to set up such a unit to counter the narrative developing from the increased scrutiny into Israel’s discriminatory policies arising from its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The proposal was shared with senior officials in the Israeli ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, including Dr. Roy Schöndorf, Israel’s Deputy Attorney General for International Law at the time, and Dr. Gilad Noam, his replacement at that post since June 2022.

When asked about the proposal, UKLFI’s Jonathan Turner said that “false information about Israel produced by NGOs and credulously adopted by UN bodies and officials is indeed a major problem.”

“As an association of lawyers supporting Israel, seeking truth and upholding the law, this is a matter of great and legitimate concern to us. We do what we can, with the limited resources we have, to point out some of the inaccuracies,” he added.

Steven Kay QC, who heads 9BRI, told Mondoweiss that the proposal “was within the scope of our professional competences”. “I, in particular, have been involved in many international legal trials where this [i.e. false narratives on facts and law] has been a matter of great concern,” he added.

“Ultimately,” Mr. Kay said, ”this engagement was not taken up by UKLFI”.

Nevertheless, involvement from UKLFI and 9BRI’s barristers in activities organised by the Israeli government increased starting from this point, based on the leaked material.