The Lawfare Project is an American pro-Israel think tank, non-profit, and litigation fund. The Lawfare Project funds legal actions to challenge anti-Israel policies.[1] The Project is dedicated, in its own words, to fighting "the effort by enemies of the State of Israel to delegitimize Israel and impair its ability to defend itself."[2]
Human rights attorney Brooke Goldstein founded The Lawfare Project in 2010.[3][4] The Lawfare Project describes itself as "the world's only international pro-Israel litigation fund" and states that it "has launched more than 70 lawsuits and legal actions in 16 jurisdictions across the globe."[5] The organization states it "maintains an international network of more than 800 attorneys" to support its work.[6]
In 2016, The Lawfare Project’s director, Brooke Goldstein, was filmed asking Israel lobby leaders in New York, “Why are we using the word Palestinian? There’s no such thing as a Palestinian person.”[7] Goldstein also denies Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal and that the EU is violating international law by requiring products manufactured in Israeli settlements have accurate labels indicating their origin.[8]
According to law professor Orde Kittrie, The Lawfare Project has developed innovative legal arguments demonstrating the inconsistency of New York state laws with boycotts of Israel.[11]
Lawsuits
The Lawfare Project has had a longstanding legal battle against Kuwait Airways for its refusal to fly Israeli passengers.[12] The organization represented "an Israeli traveller who booked a ticket with Kuwait Airways to fly from Frankfurt to Bangkok, only to be refused at the last minute when it emerged that he was an Israeli citizen."[13][14][15][16]
Through January 2018, The Lawfare Project's Spanish attorney, Ignacio Wenley Palacios, had secured 46 writs of injunction and court decisions against the boycotts of Israel in Spain. A court issued an interim injunction against the city council of Castrillón for its boycott of Israeli products and a court in Barcelona annulled a boycott passed by the city council of El Prat de Llobregat. According to Palacios, The Lawfare Project had succeeded in establishing a legal doctrine that "boycotts of Israel infringe on human rights, violate free speech and are tantamount to discrimination on account of national origin and personal opinions."[17]
In June 2017, the Lawfare Project and the law firm Winston & Strawn filed a lawsuit against San Francisco State University (SFSU) on behalf of a group of SFSU students and members of the local Jewish community, alleging that the public school had fostered a climate of antisemitism "marked by violent threats to the safety of Jewish students on campus." The suit alleged "that the school has violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection, as well as a provision of the Civil Rights Act."[18][19][20] In addition to the federal lawsuit, the Lawfare Project and Winston & Strawn filed a second lawsuit in February 2018 against SFSU in the Superior Court of California for the County of San Francisco.[21] California Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer Jr. scheduled the trial to take place on March 4, 2019.[22]
In November 2017, The Lawfare Project supported a lawsuit by the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations (CCOJB) against a ban on shechita, the Jewish ritual religious slaughter of animals, in Wallonia, Belgium.[23] In January 2018, The Lawfare Project supported a second lawsuit by CCOJB for restrictions on shechita in Flanders.[24][25]
As of 2018[update], The Lawfare Project is preparing a lawsuit against the Irish Occupied Territories Bill, which, if enacted, would criminalize trade with Israeli settlers. It argues that the bill violates European Union trade regulations.[26]
Criticism
The Lawfare Project has been accused by legal scholars and free speech advocates of stifling support for Palestine.[27][28] In one open letter the president of San Francisco State University and the chancellor of California State University wrote: "We regard this lawsuit as a grave threat to academic freedom and to the constitutionally protected right to free speech. We believe that its real purpose is to intimidate SFSU's administration, faculty and students and thereby exert a chilling effect on the free and open discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus and beyond."[29]
The Lawfare Project also brings suit against individual American citizens—in one case, 16 residents of Olympia were sued for joining a boycott of Israeli goods.[30]
Several of its legal cases have been dismissed as frivolous. In dismissing one filing a judge wrote the Lawfare Project's submission "far too long, repetitive and full of barely relevant material."[31] The 2020 Protect the Protest task force, a group of over 20 organisations defending free speech and fighting against strategic lawsuits, awarded the Lawfare Project its "most outrageous SLAPP award".[32]
The Lawfare Project has frequently partnered with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) to file complaints against pro-Palestinian charities in Britain. The complaints are filed with the Charity Commission of England and Wales. None of the complaints resulted in corrective action by the Commission, but cost the charities losses in donations.[33] In one case the Lawfare Project filed a complaint against the charity War on Want stating without evidence that the charity was linked to terrorist groups and arguing that its work on behalf of Palestinians is not justified because Palestine is not as poor as areas like Sub-Saharan Africa and India. The Charity Commission found no issues with War on Want,[34] but the Lawfare Poject was able to pressure PayPal into banning the charity from using its services.[35]
↑ Parks, Lisa; Kaplan, Caren (2017). Life in the Age of Drone Warfare; chapter by Lisa Hajjar on "Lawfare and Armed Conflicts". Duke University Press. ISBN978-0822372813.
↑ Simons, Gregory; Chifu, Iulian (2017). The Changing Face of Warfare in the 21st Century; section on Lawfare and the International Criminal Court. Routledge. ISBN978-1317039006.
↑ Kittrie, Orde (2016). Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War. Oxford University Press. p.91. ISBN978-0190263577.
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