Will the next battleground in the Mideast take place in a courtroom?
Tel Aviv attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner posed that question in several Bay Area talks last week. Speaking Jan. 27 at Berkeley’s Congregation Beth El, she suggested that one of the most efficient ways to mitigate “Palestinian and Islamic terrorists” is through a hallowed American tradition — lawsuits.
Lots of them, in fact.
The 28-year-old attorney, who directs the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, has already successfully won a $13 million lien against Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s assets, in response to the lynching of an Israeli Defense Force soldier in Ramallah. The center has also filed suits against the governments of Iran and Syria, as well as the European Union.
Darshan-Leitner followed her Beth El talk with addresses to board members of the American Jewish Committee, students at U.C. Berkeley and members of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills.
Alternating between fiery rhetoric and terse legalese, Darshan-Leitner reserved some her harshest vitriol for the European Union.
“Sixty years after the Holocaust, Europe once again has Jewish blood on its hands,” Darshan-Leitner told representatives from AJCommittee. “When European visitors come to Israel, one of their first destinations is Yad Vashem (the Jerusalem Holocaust memorial). But the European tourists should be required to visit the gravesites of terror victims in Hadera, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“Jewish lives are being lost all over again, and European money has played a big role in that.”
Last year, Darshan-Leitner filed a $100 million lawsuit against the European Union on behalf of a client whose family was victimized in a drive-by shooting. She said that she intends to prove that the European Union, through a combination of sloppiness and deliberate ignorance, has allowed the Palestinian Authority to divert EU funds (roughly $10 million per month) to sponsor terrorist attacks instead of for infrastructure and municipal operations.
“So far, the European Union has not responded to the suit,” said Darshan-Leitner. “They are claiming diplomatic immunity — which is always the response of a guilty party. If you have nothing to hide, then come to court.”
When asked about the seeming incongruity of filing lawsuits against countries with historical animus against Western courts (and Israeli courts, in particular), Darshan-Leitner said the lawsuits weren’t that much of a logical leap. She cited Libya’s recent settlement on behalf of relatives from Pan Am flight 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
“Syria is desperate to get normalized relations with the United States, and to remove its name from the list of terrorist-watch countries. In fact, they have hired Ramsey Clark (the former U.S. attorney general) to represent them, so you know that the Syrian government takes these lawsuits very seriously.”
Earlier last year, Darshan-Leitner also won a judgment of $183 million against Iran for its role in training a suicide bomber who blew up a Jerusalem bus in 1996. Although she conceded that Iran was unlikely to respect the ruling of an Israeli court, nonetheless the verdict would have tangible ramifications, she noted.
“Iran is slowly making its way to [rapprochement] with the United States, and the lawsuits we’ve been filing against them — at least a dozen up to this point — have definitely captured the attention of the Iranian government.
“In fact, the U.S. State Department has adamantly opposed collecting on these lawsuits because they fear it will damage U.S.-Iranian relations. That only goes to show how much pressure the Iranian government has been putting on the State Department.”
The attorney’s visit was sponsored by Bridges to Israel-Berkeley, the Israel Relations Committee at Beth El, the Israel Task Force of the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay and the Beth Am Israel Action Committee.