via
The Occidental Observer
It is a formidable challenge to criticize anti-terrorism measures
without seeming callous, naïve, or cynical. On the one hand, the use of
indiscriminate violence to achieve political or religious aims should
be condemned and the victims of such acts treated with compassion. On
the other hand, we must live in the real world. In that world, there
are persons and groups whose professed sympathy for victims of terrorism
is imbued with, one might even say masks, a large dose of narrow
self-interest — a self-interest that, put in action, dangerously skews
the enactment, interpretation, and enforcement of such laws.
Take, for example, the United States’ Anti-Terrorism Act, 18 U.S.C.
2333 (the “ATA”), and the uses made of it by what one might call the
Jewish Ethnocentric Network (“JEN”).
[1]
The ATA may have had commendable, albeit limited, purposes at its
creation, but over the last decade it has undergone a radical
transformation, to the point that it is now a potent weapon to advance
JEN causes at the expense of larger American interests.
The ATA is one of many American federal laws aimed at deterring “terrorism.”
[2]
The impetus behind its enactment stemmed from two terrorist act events
in the 1980s: the hijacking and murder committed by members of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization on the Achille Lauro cruise ship in
1985, which included the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly Jewish
man in a wheelchair who was thrown into the sea; and the bombing above
Lockerbie, Scotland, of Pan Am Flight 270 in 1988, killing 270. The
victims of these terrorist acts, bringing suit against the persons and
organizations that perpetrated, or allegedly perpetrated, them,
encountered jurisdictional and procedural hurdles. They therefore
lobbied Congress, and against this background Senator Charles Grassley
reintroduced the ATA in 1992.
[3] The Act, now codified at 18 U.S.C. 2333, provides:
Any national of the United States injured
in his or her person, property, or business by reason of an act of
international terrorism . . . may sue therefor in any appropriate
district court of the United States and shall recover threefold the
damages he or she sustains . . .
“International terrorism” is defined in 18 U.S.C. 2331 as activities that:
(A) involve violent acts or acts
dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the
United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if
committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily outside the
territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national
boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the
persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in
which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.
A notable aspect of this statute is that, on its face at least, it
provides only for primary liability, i.e., liability for the person who
committed the terrorist act, but not for secondary liability, i.e.,
liability for those who aided, abetted, or otherwise provided support
for the primary actor. This aspect is critical, for few terrorists have
the resources to pay substantial judgments. Accordingly, it is not
surprising that Senator Grassley and others among the ATA’s initial
proponents regarded it as having limited scope and as largely symbolic.
[4]
As one would expect given its limited reach, the ATA was rarely
invoked in the first decade after its passage; indeed, not a single
published opinion prior to 2002 even mentioned it. This changed
radically, however, as a result of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’
opinions (there are three of them) in the
Boim v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, et al. case.
In 1996, David Boim, a Jewish teenager living in Israel who was both
an Israeli and an American citizen, was shot to death by two men at a
bus stop near Jerusalem. His parents filed suit in federal court in the
United States in 2000, alleging that the killers had been members of
Hamas. The suit named as defendants, among others, the Holy Land
Foundation for Relief and Development, the American Muslim Society, and
the Quranic Literacy Institute. Boim’s parents argued that, although
these defendants had not committed the killing, they were nonetheless
liable under the ATA because they allegedly had contributed funds to
Hamas — in other words, that they were secondarily liable.
The Seventh Circuit panel (Judge Rovner wrote the majority opinion)
was sympathetic to the Boims but struggled to find legal grounds on
which to support the secondary liability the Boims sought. In the first
appeal, 291 F.3d 1000 (7th Cir. 2002) (an interlocutory appeal prior to
trial taken by the defendants from the trial court’s denial of their
motion to dismiss), the Seventh Circuit concluded, in a lengthy opinion,
that the defendants could be held liable on an aiding and abetting
theory borrowed from traditional tort law. The case then resumed in the
trial court, which granted summary judgment on liability to the Boims as
to three of the defendants and sent issues regarding both liability and
damages as to one defendant to a jury. The jury rendered a verdict of
$52 million against all defendants, which was trebled, in accordance
with the statute, to $156 million.
The defendants appealed again. Several Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, filed
amicus curiae
briefs in support of the Boims and a broad reading of the ATA. In this
appeal (511 F.3d 707 (7th Cir. 2007)), Judge Rovner again writing for
the majority upheld the holding of secondary liability based on an
aiding and abetting theory that the court had set forth in the earlier
appeal. Defendants then requested a hearing
en banc (of all
the judges in the Seventh Circuit), which was granted. Again, numerous
Jewish organizations, including the ADL, the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of
the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, filed amicus briefs
supporting the Boims and an expansive reading of the ATA. In this
third appellate decision (549 F.3d 685 (7th Cir. 2008)), Judge Posner
for the
en banc majority rejected the earlier panels’ reliance
on an aiding and abetting theory for secondary liability, finding no
support for it in the text or legislative history of the statute, but
approved a different secondary liability theory: that Section 18 U.S.C.
2333 (the ATA section) incorporated by reference two criminal statutes,
namely Sections 18 U.S.C. 2339A and 2339B.
The
en banc court’s holding that Section 2333 incorporates
Sections 2339A and 2339B is odd in many respects, not least the timing
of the enactment of these various laws. Section 2339A, enacted in 1994,
provides criminal penalties for those who provide “material support or
resources” with the knowledge or intention that the support is to be
used “in preparation for, or in carrying out” any of over two dozen
violent crimes.
[5]
Section 2339B, enacted in 1996 shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing,
provides criminal penalties of up to 15 years imprisonment plus
substantial fines for whoever “knowingly provides material support or
resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” as “terrorist
organization” is defined under Section 219 of the Immigration and
Nationality Act. Neither Section 2339A nor Section 2339B makes any
reference to Section 2333. Of more relevance to the Seventh Circuit’s
incorporation by reference theory, nothing in the text or legislative
history of Section 2333 suggests that in 1992, when the ATA was enacted,
Congress intended to incorporate by reference statutes, such as
Sections 2339A and 2339B, that did not then exist and would not be
enacted until years later. The Seventh Circuit reached this
logic-challenged result only by a contorted interpretation of the term
“international terrorism” as it is used in the ATA.
The Seventh Circuit’s approval of secondary liability under the ATA —
first on an aiding and abetting theory and then on an incorporation by
reference of the criminal material support statutes theory — opened the
floodgates for the use of the ATA in civil litigation. Since the first
Boim decision
in 2002, there have been well over a hundred published decisions
involving the ATA, and the number promises to get even larger. The
following lists several general traits of this wave of ATA cases.
First, most of the cases, like
Boim itself, involve Jewish
plaintiffs (often Israeli as well as Jewish). A review of the published
decisions annotated to Section 2333 in the United States Code Annotated
shows that approximately 70% of the annotated cases involved Jewish
plaintiffs. Examples include
Rothstein v. UBS AG, 798 F.3d 82 (2d Cir. 2013);
Licci v. Lebanese Canadian Bank, SAL, 673 F.3d 50 (2d Cir. 2012);
Kaplan v. Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2014 WL 3610784 (D.D.C. July 23, 2014);
Wultz v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 864 F.Supp.2d 24 (D.D.C. 2012);
Abecassis v. Wyatt, 785 F.Supp.2d 614 (S.D. Tex. 2011);
Gill v. Arab Bank, PLC, 893 F.Supp2d 474 (E.D.N.Y. 2012); and
Weiss v. National Westminster Bank PLC, 936 F.Supp.2d 100 (E.D.N.Y. 2013). Cases such as
In re Chiquita Brands International, Inc.,
690 F.Supp.2d 1296 (S.D.Fla. 2010), which involve neither Jewish
plaintiffs nor defendants that are avowed enemies of Israel, seem almost
anomalous in this context.
Second, the interpretation of the ATA to encompass secondary
liability, particularly on a “material support” theory, has brought
within the statute’s scope a wide array of defendants, including banks,
e.g.,
Rothstein v. UBS AG and
Gill v. Arab Bank, charities and educational organizations, e.g.,
Boim, businesses such as oil and gas companies, e.g.,
Abecassis, and media, e.g.,
Kaplan v. Al Jazeera,
2011 WL 2314783 (S.D.N.Y June 7, 2011). Many of these entities were
attractive as defendants because of their deep pockets. The ATA
lawsuits also, however, served the purpose of discouraging banks,
businesses, donors, media, and others from having transactions with the
alleged terrorist organizations, even though the banks, businesses,
donors,
et alia, may have had only tenuous connections to any
alleged terrorist aims or actions — as, for example, where banks engaged
only in purely commercial, arms’ length transactions or donors
earmarked their donations exclusively for humanitarian purposes.
[6],[7]
Third, if an ATA claim survives the initial motion to dismiss,
discovery — i.e., the pre-trial phase in civil litigation in which a
party can obtain evidence from the opposing party by means of discovery
devices such as requests for production of documents, requests for
answers to interrogatories, and depositions — often gives the
plaintiffs an enormous tactical advantage. Many ATA defendants,
especially banks and charities, have extraordinary confidentiality
concerns that can easily be compromised or violated by the invasive
discovery devices available in civil litigation. In the
Linde v. Arab Bank
case, for example, the bank was caught on the horns of a dilemma: on
the one hand, the district court supported the plaintiffs’ demands that
the bank turn over its banking records to the plaintiffs in discovery;
on the other hand, three foreign banking authorities threatened the bank
with legal action for violating national bank secrecy laws if the banks
did so. When the bank refused to produce the documents, the district
court sanctioned the bank by permitting the jury to infer from the
nondisclosure that the bank had knowingly provided services to a
designated foreign terrorist organization.
[8]
Fourth, if an ATA claim survives all pre-trial motions and goes to a
jury, the risks of a huge plaintiffs’ verdict are very great,
particularly in light of the ATA’s treble damages provision. To put it
mildly, juries do not like terrorists, or persons they have been
convinced are terrorists, and they are generally not well-disposed
toward foreign banks or Islamic charities. As mentioned, the plaintiffs
in the
Boim case received an award of $156 million after trebling. The plaintiffs in
Ungar v. Palestinian Liberation Organization received a damages award of approximately $116 million. The plaintiffs in
Calderon-Cardona v. Bank of New York Mellon, HSBC,
770 F.3d 993 (2d Cir. 2014), received compensatory damages of $78
million and punitive damages of $300 million. Other examples of
outsized awards could be provided.
Finally, even as defendants’ exposure under ATA claims widens, their
defenses are being narrowed. Many nations have heretofore been able to
invoke absolute immunity from ATA (and other) claims in accordance with
the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, but that will change if Senator
Charles Schumer succeeds in convincing Congress to pass his Justice
Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (“JASTA”). JASTA, indeed, would not
only remove sovereign immunity as a defense to ATA claims, but would
expressly incorporate secondary liability into the ATA, just in case
some courts decline to follow the
Boim decision as a matter of
precedent. Moreover, JASTA seems designed to weaken the requirement,
which many courts have read into the statute, of a substantial causal
link between the plaintiff’s injuries and the defendant’s alleged
actions. The act broadly states that its purpose
is to provide civil litigants with the fullest possible
basis, consistent with the Constitution, to seek relief against persons,
entities and foreign states, wherever acting and wherever they may be
found, which have provided material support or resources, directly or
indirectly, to foreign organizations that engage in terrorist
activities.
Impelled by Senator Schumer’s aggressive sponsorship, JASTA passed
the Senate in December 2014 and now awaits passage in the House.
Schumer has fulsomely proclaimed that his motives for sponsoring this
act are sympathy for victims of terrorism and revulsion of those who
support the terrorists, and he can be found posing ostentatiously in
many photographs with victims of the 9/11 attacks in support of the
act. Given, however, that Schumer believes he is on a mission from God
to be Israel’s guardian in the Senate
[9] and, it seems, has never publicly criticized Israel,
[10]
one can be forgiven the suspicion that he is fully aware that JASTA, if
it passes, will disproportionately benefit Jewish victims of allegedly
terrorist acts.
Connecting the dots above, a diagram emerges of the ATA as a powerful
weapon in the arsenal of JEN’s pro-Israel and anti-terrorism
campaigns. The
realpolitik import of the diagram, indeed, is
so self-evident that even elements within the JEN in moments of candor
acknowledge it. An August 2014 article in Reuters by Alison Frankel,
which describes Israel’s “sudden about-face” — one could also say
“doublecross” — in its support of the ATA claims brought by the parents
of Daniel Wultz, an American/Israeli teenager killed by a Jihad bombing
in Tel Aviv in 2007, provides an informative example.
[11]
The lawsuit alleges that Hamas was using Bank of China accounts to
launder money and names the Bank of China as a defendant. Initially, the
Israeli government supported the lawsuit; indeed, according to the
plaintiffs, the Israeli government supplied the specific information
about Bank of China transactions that is the backbone of their case.
Later, however, Israel’s economic ties to China became an issue,
particularly in light of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s planned state visit
to Beijing. The Israeli government then refused to cooperate with the
plaintiffs, who felt betrayed. Frankel writes:
The victims’ lawyers claim that the suits against Bank of
China would never have been filed had Israel not promised to support
the litigation — that, in fact, Israel considered U.S. litigation under
the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act an indispensable element of its national
security campaign to choke off terror financing. …
Filings in the litigation . . . amplify the record on Israel’s
initial support for the Bank of China litigation and its more recent
decision to handicap the cases. The filings detail Israel’s novel tactic
of using U.S. litigation to advance its national security objectives:
After Israeli diplomacy couldn’t convince the Chinese to shut down
suspicious accounts, Israeli operatives, according to the plaintiffs’
briefs, fed hard-won intelligence about alleged Bank of China terrorist
accounts to private lawyers, with the express intention of prompting
American victims to sue the bank. High-ranking Israeli officials
personally assured some of the victims’ families that private U.S.
litigation was in Israel’s national security interest. Yet when the
country’s strategy changed, Israel walked away from the litigation.
Frankel further notes how a “U.S. congresswoman hand-delivered [a
letter from the plaintiffs] to [Natanjahu],” trying, unsuccessfully, to
persuade the Israeli government to keep its initial commitment.
Conclusion
This article validates several conclusions. First, the Israeli
government, unsurprisingly, views US litigation under the ATA as “an
indispensable element” of its national security campaigns. Obviously,
the Israeli government’s involvement includes supporting ATA claims by
American or Israeli Jews; but it is a fair inference that this
involvement goes well beyond mere support — that the Israeli government
actively instigates and promotes such lawsuits, unless it concludes that
its national security objectives counsel otherwise.
Second, the Israeli government, despite its Schumer-like
protestations of sympathy for victims of terror attacks, will turn
against such victims if the government considers other objectives, such
as good economic relations with China, more important. If Israel will
withdraw its support even for Jewish victims, one can easily imagine how
little weight Israel gives to non-Jewish interests, such as those of
the American people who have opened their judicial processes to them,
with regard to ATA claims.
Finally, it is readily apparent that the uses JEN makes of ATA suits
encompasses a multi-focal approach, involving not only the American
judicial system but Congress, which enacts anti-terrorism laws and whose
individual congresspersons advocate on behalf of Jewish ATA plaintiffs,
and the Executive branch, which enforces these laws and also
promulgates politicized lists of countries and organizations that
sponsor or engage in terrorism.
[12]
So why should we care?
We should care if, as American citizens, we object to a foreign
country, such as Israel, using our judicial resources as a tool in that
country’s national security arsenal. ATA lawsuits are often complex;
even if the cases are resolved pre-trial, much judicial time and effort
must be expended addressing them, especially if appeals are involved.
The
Boim case, for example, went up on appeal three times.
Moreover, ATA claims that survive pretrial motions invariably involve
trials that last weeks or even months. Further, if the plaintiffs
receive a favorable judgment, American judicial resources must be
deployed to address the difficult issues that arise in enforcement of
the judgment. These burdens on our judicial system arise in the context
of present heavy caseloads and tight budgets for our courts,
particularly the federal courts.
We should care if we believe that our foreign policy should be
conducted, at least primarily, by our executive branch, as our
Constitution requires, and not by private parties bringing lawsuits
under the ATA. ATA claims, if successful, can result in huge judgments
against the defendants. If those judgments are against a country — and
if Schumer is able to get JASTA passed, countries will lose their
sovereign immunity defense in ATA cases — those judgments could well
impede the Executive Branch’s ability to give aid, negotiate treaties,
or otherwise develop relationships and resolve differences with the
country. And many, if not most, of the countries which have found or
will find themselves defendants in ATA actions are, uncoincidentally,
enemies of Israel.
We should care if we believe there are many innocent victims of
violence and oppression in the Middle East, who deserve food, education,
and a chance to live in peace. Cutting off humanitarian aid to such
persons simply because the aid is provided by an organization that has
been designated by our government as a terrorist organization, which has
been a general effect of ATA litigation (see Note 7 above), is
objectionable on several levels, including: the objectivity and
fairness of our government’s designation of organizations as terrorist
is subject to legitimate criticism; punishing persons for accepting
humanitarian aid from a “terrorist organization” when the persons are
not even members or supporters of that organization savors of reprisal
punishment, a violation of the Geneva Convention; and cutting off
humanitarian aid in this way fails to address that poverty, ignorance,
and despair can create conditions favorable to the recruitment of
persons to terrorist organizations.
We should also care if we believe that the depiction of the “sinned
by/sinned against” ratio between Israel and its enemies is badly skewed
in Israel’s favor by critical elements of our society, including our
Congress, much of our news media, powerful activist organizations like
the ADL, and the moguls who dominate our entertainment industries. ATA
litigation, as it has developed in the last decade or so, replicates
that imbalance in the judicial realm. Reading the ATA cases, one learns
much of the wrongs done to Jewish persons such as David Boim or David
Wultz, and one finds several such cases in which large judgments have
been rendered against the perpetrators. But one searches in vain for a
single instance in ATA or similar cases in which Israel has been held
accountable for its wrongs — for its illegal settlements,
[13]
its reprisal destruction of Palestinian homes, its use of excessive
force, its killing of Rachel Corrie, an unarmed peace activist (by a
bulldozer paid for by American funds)
[14], its shelling of a United Nations compound,
[15]
and many others. This disparity should offend anyone with a sense of
right and wrong, a patriotic love of the nobler aspects of the American
character, and a concern that America, having allowed JEN to sow the
wind for its self-serving purposes, will reap the whirlwind of hatred
and retribution.
Kyle J. Bristow is an attorney licensed to practice law in Michigan and Ohio, and he has filed
two amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the Traditionalist Youth Network,
LLC: Brief of Traditionalist Youth Network, LLC, as Amici Supporting
the Appellants, DeBoer v. Snyder, __ F.3d __ (6thCir. 2014)
(No. 14-1341) (Arguing that same-sex marriage is not a right) and Brief
of Traditionalist Youth Network, LLC, as Amici Supporting the
Appellants, Kolbe v. O’Malley, __ F.3d __ (4th Cir.
2015) (No. 14-1945) (Arguing that a ban on military-style weapons is
unconstitutional). His website can be viewed at www.KyleBristow.com.
Notes:
[1]
This acronym, admittedly, is awkward, but one needs a term broad enough
to encompass Jewish special pleaders such as the ADL and elements of
the Israeli government, yet narrow enough to exclude Jewish persons and
groups who oppose the excesses of Zionism and Jewish ethnocentrism.
[2]
There is, for example, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, 18 U.S.C.
43, undoubtedly passed at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry,
which characterizes as terrorists and provides criminal penalties for
those who “damag[e] or interfer[e] with the operations of an animal
enterprise.”
[3] The ATA was initially introduced in 1990.
[4]
For a summary of ATA’s legislative history, see Geoffrey Sant, “So
Banks Are Terrorists Now? The Misuse of the Civil Suit Provision of the
Anti-Terrorism Act
,” 45
Arizona State Law Journal, 533, 544-46 (2013).
[5] Section 2339A was rarely used as a predicate for a criminal prosecution prior to the 9/11 attacks.
[6]
See Sam Adelsberg, Freya Pitts, Sirine Shebaya, “The Chilling Effect of
the “Material Support” Law on Humanitarian Aid: Causes, Consequences,
and Proposed Reforms,”
Harvard National Security Journal 4, no. 2 (2013), 282;
see also Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project,
561 U.S. 1 (2010) (interpreting Section 2339B and holding that the
federal government may prohibit non-violent material support to
terrorist organizations, including humanitarian aid and legal services
and advice — such as advocating non-violent change — without violating
the free speech clause of the First Amendment.
[7] The ADL and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs submitted
amicus curiae briefs in the
Humanitarian Law Project
case in favor of the government’s right under Section 2339B to prohibit
non-violent support, such as food, medical assistance, and educational
materials directed to alleviating poverty, to groups designated by the
government as terrorist organizations, even if those organizations have
distinct arms dedicated to humanitarian purposes and peaceful change.
Organizations such as the Carter Center and Human Rights Watch filed
amicus briefs opposing the government’s right to prohibit such
non-violent support.
[8] Linde v. Arab Bank, 706 F.3d 92, 95, 98 (2d Cir. 2013).
[9]
M.J. Rosenberg, Blog, Huffington Post, posted July 2, 2010, “Schumer:
I’m On a Mission from God (to Be Israel’s Guardian in Senate).”
[10]
Steve Clemons, Blog, Washingtonnote.com, posted April 22, 2010, “Has
Chuck Schumer EVER Criticized Israel or its Leadership in the Way He
Just Unloaded on Obama?”
[11] Alison Frankel, Reuters, August 11, 2014, “Israel’s Conflicted Role in Bank of China Finance Case.”
[12]
The arbitrary and political nature of the State Department’s
designations of certain nations as sponsoring terrorism and of certain
organizations as foreign terrorist organizations merits another critical
article.
[13] In
Ahmad v. Christian Friends of Israel Communities, et al.
2014 WL 1796322 (S.D.N.Y May 5, 2014), the plaintiffs, thirteen men and
women who live in the West Bank, two of them American citizens, filed a
complaint under the ATA, alleging
, inter alia, that they had
been subjected to stoning, firebombings, shootings, beatings, and
destruction of property by Israeli citizens who have built settlements
in the West Bank in violation of international law. The defendants
included many organizations, both Christian and Jewish, who provided
financial support to the settlers. The court granted the defendants’
motion to dismiss, holding that it was not “plausible” that the
defendants provided the support knowing, or recklessly indifferent to
the possibility, that the funds would be used in support of the violent
acts. The plaintiffs, accordingly, were not allowed to conduct
discovery on these issues.
In
Doe I v. State of Israel, 400 F.Supp.2d 86 (D.D.C. 2005),
a group of Palestinians, most of them American citizens, brought suit
against Israel, several Israeli leaders and setters, and the settlers’
American supporters, alleging,
inter alia, genocide and war crimes. The court dismissed the suit on grounds of Israel’s sovereign immunity, among other grounds.
[14] In
Corrie v. Caterpillar, Inc., 403 F.Supp2d 1019 (W.D. Wash. 2005),
aff’d, 503 F3d 974 (9
th
Cir. 2007), the family of Rachel Corrie, an American citizen who was
killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003 when she was run over by an Israeli
Defense Force bulldozer manufactured by Caterpiller, Inc., brought suit
against Caterpillar. Corrie, an unarmed young women, was killed while
she was protesting Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes. It
emerged in the litigation that the United States had paid for Israel’s
purchase of the bulldozer that killed Corrie. The trial court dismissed
the suit on numerous grounds, including the political question doctrine
and the act of state doctrine (the “Act of State doctrine . . .
precludes United States courts from judging the validity of a foreign
sovereign’s official acts”), and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
affirmed. The Corrie family later brought suit in Israel. That suit was
also dismissed, after a trial that Rachel Corrie’s parents have
characterized as unfair.
[15] In
Belhas v. Ya’alon,
515 F3d 1279 (D.D.C. 2008), relatives of civilians who died when an
Israeli shell hit a U.N. compound in Lebanon, brought suit for war
crimes. The district court dismissed the complaint on grounds of lack
of subject matter jurisdiction and the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed.
