by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

April 2, 2009

As an insider who has represented Israel in many international legal forums, Daniel Taub said he has seen human rights organizations and other groups apply a double standard of morality to the Jewish state.

Taub has also found a lack of understanding about Israel’s conflict with its Palestinian neighbors.

“This conflict is not a territorial conflict,” said Taub in a luncheon appearance March 26 at Rutgers Hillel in New Brunswick. “If it were, it would have been over when Israel pulled out of Lebanon or Gaza.”

Rather, he said, the seemingly endless fighting is caused by extremists, some with Iranian backing.

Taub, the principal legal adviser of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stopped at Rutgers as part of a four-day excursion that has also taken him to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. The trip was arranged by the Anti-Defamation League as part of its Eugene Warner Middle East Lecture Series.

Taub said the international community conveys the message to Palestinians that they are treated as second-class citizens who can’t be held to the same standards as the rest of the world. Some of their leaders are so weak, he said, that supporting them amounts to “an affirmative action program.”

Meanwhile, members of Hizbullah and Hamas in the Palestinian or Lebanese parliaments are given a pass.

“States come to us and say [Israel has] to deal with Hamas or Hizbullah because they are part of democratically elected regimes,” said Taub. “There is no other country in the world that would allow a political party to have an armed missile in their back pocket and be prepared to use it.”

Solving the conflict, he said, means “creating a new culture” through effecting a change in a Palestinian self-identity that now glorifies extremism.

The groundwork may already be there, Taub suggested; an annual demographic study conducted by a Ramallah think tank has asked Palestinians what society they would like to model themselves on.

“You know what the number one response has been for several years now? Israel,” he said. “Palestinians know when they want to read a free paper, they read an Israeli paper. If they want a redress in court, they go to Israel. They are very appreciative of Israel.”

While Israel has struggled with the moral dilemmas of rooting out terrorists in populated areas, it has tried to use as little force as is necessary to protect itself.

“We have a very empty toolbox, and one reason the toolbox is so empty is that we’ve used all our tools over the last dozen years,” said Taub. “The Arabs hope they can take over by fighting and terrorism.”

Yet almost every move by Israel is met by criticism from the United Nations, which Taub said “has an institutional bias” against Israel and groups that strictly interpret “pristine” international law.

Having organizations and international courts spend so much time on Israel, said Taub, actually takes the focus off others caught in real humanitarian crises.

New Jersey ADL executive director Etzion Neuer said Taub brings an important perspective to the often heated Mideast debate on campuses, which include protestors alleging Israeli human rights violations.

“These charges need to be countered with legal responses,” said Neuer. Taub “brings a seasoned depth that allows him to speak at all types of venues.”

Shoshana Smollen, Hillel’s Israel advocacy chair, said the organization was happy to host Taub because “students get all kinds of responses and hear all kinds of things about Israel. We wanted to make sure students have the needed information to respond.”

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