ENDOWMENT FOR MIDDLE EAST TRUTH PRESENTS


** Thursday, January 23rd
12-2pm on Capitol Hill
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On November 18, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shook up the Washington political establishment by stating, among other things, “ After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan. The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”

Many people throughout the world have latched onto facile and superficial mantras in regard to the rather complex issue of Israeli settlements in the land that Israel was forced to capture in its defensive wars of 1967 and 1973.

Here to shed sunlight on this issue are three of the world’s foremost scholars on international law: Eugene Konotorovich, Douglas Feith and Avi Bell, in a critically important EMET Seminar “What, Actually, is the Status of the Legality of the Israeli settlements Under International Law?”

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Douglas J. Feith is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute, where he heads the Center for National Security Strategies. He is the author of the New-York-Times-best-selling memoir War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, published in 2008 by Harper. He was a professor of national security studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

As Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from July 2001 until August 2005, he helped devise the U.S. government’s strategy for the war on terrorism and contributed to policy making for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. His duties included managing the Defense Department’s international relations and representing the Department in interagency policy making.

Mr. Feith helped plan the worldwide changes in the U.S. defense posture, develop new U.S. strategic partnerships with India and Pakistan, promote NATO enlargement and reform and craft U.S. policy toward China. Mr. Feith advised President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on the range of national security issues, including the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, the counter-insurgency in Colombia and Palestinian-Israeli peace diplomacy.

Before President Bush appointed him in July 2001, Mr. Feith was for fifteen years the managing attorney of a Washington, D.C. law firm. In the Reagan Administration, Mr. Feith worked at the White House as a Middle East specialist for the National Security Council and then served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy.

Mr. Feith’s writings on foreign and defense affairs have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Commentary, Foreign Affairs, and elsewhere.

Avi Bell is among the world’s leading scholars of international law, economic analysis of law, property, and intellectual property. A Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and at Bar Ilan University’s Faculty of Law, Bell also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum and as Dean of the Tikvah Summer Institute: Law, Governance and the Foundations of Democracy in International Perspective.

Prof. Bell has served as a Visiting Fellow in the Project on the Foundations of Private Law at Harvard Law School, a Visiting Professor at the law schools of Fordham University and the University of Connecticut, and as Director of the Global Law Forum at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Prof. Bell is deeply involved in public service and diplomacy, assisting various non-profit organizations with training, legal advice, and strategic direction, and he has consulted with and given testimony to officials and committees of parliaments, governments and international organizations on six continents. Prof. Bell sits on the Board of Directors of NGO Monitor, and he has served in a voluntary capacity on the boards of, or in executive roles for Corridori Atlantici (Atlantic Corridors), CAMERA/Presspectiva, the Israel Law and Economics Association and Stand With Us.

Prof. Bell received his B.A. and J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago, and his doctorate from Harvard University, where he researched the economics of eminent domain law. During his studies, he was awarded a number of prizes and fellowships, including an Olin Law and Economics Fellowship and a Fulbright grant for legal studies in Israel. Prior to entering academia, Prof. Bell clerked for Justice Mishael Cheshin of the Supreme Court of Israel, and he practiced law for the administrative law department of Israel's State's Attorney and for an Israeli commission on the legal rights of persons with disabilities. He also worked for the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag and the New York firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich

Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law, and the director of its Center for International Law in the Middle East. Before coming to George Mason, he had been a professor at Northwestern University School of Law for 11 years. An expert in international and constitutional law, he has published over thirty academic articles in the leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. His scholarship has been cited in leading international law cases in the U.S. and abroad.

Prof. Kontorovich is also the head of the International Law Department at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem-based think tank, and is recognized as one of the world’s preeminent experts on international law and the Israel-Arab conflict. He "has emerged as a one-man legal lawfare brain trust for the Jewish state,” as well as “one of the cagiest commentators,” according to a recent essays in Haaretz.

Prof. Kontorovich also plays a leading role in many Israel-related policy matters, and is regarded as the “intellectual architect” of U.S. state laws regarding boycotts of Israel. In his work at Forum Kohelet, he regularly advises senior Israeli, U.S. and European officials on a variety of diplomatic issues.

He attended the University of Chicago for college and law school, and ultimately taught there for two years as a visiting professor. After law school, he clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In a previous career, he was a newspaperman at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and for many years at the Forward.

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