Cosmopolitan justice: Gush Shalom given as example

Cosmopolitan justice - Gush Shalom given as example

Not many may have seen yet the book 'Law Against Genocide - Cosmopolitan Trials, by David Hirsh which appeared in April, in London and mentions Gush Shalom on one of the first pages.

Hirsh mentions that the emergence of ``cosmopolitan trials'' is the outcome of the general feeling that there should never again be allowed a Holocaust. Mentioning the two kinds of Jewish interpretations of "never again"- never again to Jews, i.e. the reaction of the ultra- nationalist camp in Israel vs. never again to anybody, he takes for the latter the example of the 2002 Gush Shalom warning letters to officers. (You may remember that we wrote to the officers who admitted to violations of International Law and the storm which those warning letters caused.)

Without seeing the emerging Cosmopolitan Criminal Law as a sure sign of humanity entering a higher form of civilization, Hirsh doesn't share the scepcticism of those who reject the possibility that any justice could ever come of it and that it's all only serving the interests of the internationally powerful.

David Hirsh' message is that certain phenomena, however partial they may remain, do constitute moral "sparks of light," and are providing some new tools in the struggle against the immunity of sovereign states when violating human rights. And indeed, our own warning soldiers that there exist international courts and the shock waves it caused, seem to support that point.

In this PhD study the writer describes in detail four different trials: two at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; the London trial of Andrei Sawoniuk in 1999 for crimes during the Holocaust, and the David Irving libel case.

Law Against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials. Author, David Hirsh. ISBN, 1904385044, Pages, 207 pp. Publication Date, April 2003. Glasshouse Press www.cavendishpublishing.com // To contact the publisher: info@cavendishpublishing.com To contact the author: d.hirsh@gold.ac.uk

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