In an in-depth, gloves-off interview, Professor Irwin Cotler discusses with Felice Friedson the international legal challenges facing Israel today.
These challenges test its fortitude both domestically and internationally as the events following October 7 have cast the Jewish state’s actions—which include allegations of war crimes—into the spotlight, where they are dissected and debated across the world stage.
Allegations of war crimes raise significant questions about Israel’s handling of its strategy concerning the International Criminal Court (ICC) and potential actions it could take against the Jewish state.
Speaking to The Media Line, respected human rights and international law authority Professor Irwin Cotler shared insights into the potential disruptions these actions might cause.
Cotler notes that the ICC situation reflects broader international dynamics, including what he calls “a laundering of antisemitism.” He argues that while Israel, like any nation, should be accountable for human rights violations, it is unfairly singled out for selective indictment.
International law, he emphasizes, is applied to Israel unevenly. This practice may not only undermine the principle of equitable treatment under international law but could also disproportionately skew public perception and policy against Israel.
“It can be very disruptive if, in fact, arrest warrants would be issued against the Israeli leadership,” he said, highlighting the emotional and legal turmoil such actions would generate, particularly for the families of hostages. “If you have arrest warrants against Hamas and arrest warrants against Israel, then you create this false moral equivalence.”
This equivalence, according to Cotler, obscures critical distinctions such as the aggressor versus the target and the difference between a democratic state and what he described as a “genocidal antisemitic statelet.” Cotler noted that the “arrest warrants will only serve to incentivize that anti-Semitism” while retroactively legitimating it.
In response to a question from The Media Line over criticism that Israel receives over targeted killings, Cotler clarified that targeted killings, within certain parameters, do not inherently violate international norms and that they “are themselves understood … [as] methods of last resort.”
“[It’s] our means, really, of a form of law enforcement where no other option is available in order to combat the horrific international terrorism and all that that implies. There are frameworks and responsibilities that are involved. You can’t indiscriminately engage in targeted killings.”
Cotler delved into the nuances of how arrest warrants from the ICC are issued and their potential impact, especially when they could be served without prior notice to figures like Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. He clarified the nature of these legal processes: “The implications there, I believe they will, it’ll become public. It’s not something that stays hidden. It’s like in any criminal investigation for a period that may not yet be known.”
Regardless, the former Canadian minister of justice spoke highly of Special Prosecutor Kareem Khan, reflecting on his long-standing acquaintance with him and his principled approach to legal matters, indicating a trust in Khan’s judgment and his understanding of what is best for the court.
He referenced Khan’s agreement with Venezuela, which serves as a precedent for how the ICC might handle situations with other nations. This arrangement, according to Cotler, demonstrates the ICC’s willingness to work cooperatively with nations that show a commitment to justice and governance, suggesting a similar potential pathway for Israel given its strong democratic foundations and independent judiciary.
While discussing the focus on accountability, Cotler emphasized the necessity of legal and moral consistency: “The indictments against Hamas are important,” he asserted. “In these matters, one has to, in fact, document the atrocities one has to hold. It’s a matter of pursuing justice for victims and holding the violators accountable. That’s what international law is all about.”
“It’s a moral imperative of the first order and a legal imperative,” Cotler says. People don’t understand that every day the hostages are in detention under Hamas “is a standing crime against humanity.”
Cotler asserted that the court is fundamentally one of last resort, tasked with addressing severe violations such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, to which he noted Hamas had been culpably linked. “They [Hamas] have been involved in a standing incitement to hate and genocide,” he explained.
“And what people don’t realize is that’s a stand-alone breach of the Genocide Convention, whether or not atrocities follow. So that means since 1988, they’ve been in breach of international law, in breach of the Genocide Convention, and not held accountable.”
Cotler was questioned about how different Israeli actions in response to the events of October 7 might have altered subsequent international perceptions. He noted that Israel operates within a limited timeframe to present its stance effectively, not only militarily but in a broader sense, adding, “At that moment, the narrative was understood in terms of Israel having been under assault. At that moment, that’s when Israel’s response time was able to be understood by the international community.”
“I know that, even then, there were those who were denying it, etc.,” he continued. “But I mean, there was that window frame. But I think when it’s gone on now for over six months, then you’ve had not only an attrition in the understanding of Israel’s case, but you’ve had an inversion of the narrative.”
Discussing the “day after” the war ends, Cotler expressed fears that while military operations might cease, challenges such as the misuse of international legal institutions and the surge in antisemitism would persist.
The “global explosion of antisemitism,” he said, was not just a threat to Jews but to all democracies. “It’s an assault on our common humanity. It’s a standing injustice. And to use that proverbial statement … while it begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews.”
Cotler noted that ensuring the safety of Jews is intertwined with safeguarding our democracies, a concept he termed “human security” during his tenure as Canada’s justice minister and attorney general.
He criticized the lack of moral and intellectual leadership against campus antisemitism, starting from the university presidents. Academics, he said, while “very comfortable in libraries,” are often uncomfortable in exercising moral and intellectual leadership.
Asked about Canada’s public position regarding the war and its affects, he said he thought it should have been more unequivocal. “There have been statements made by the government that have been important, and that have been condemnatory of antisemitism,” he said. However, “we need to go beyond words, we need to go into action.”
“Because what is happening on the campuses, in the streets, in the public square, represent at this point, you know, not only menacing, threatening, intimidating behavior, but threats to human security,” Cotler said. “And therefore, the government has got to be clear and unequivocal in its action in the protection of national security.”
He argued that academic freedom and freedom of speech have limits: “There is no academic freedom to engage in outright discrimination. There is no freedom of speech that comprehends … incitement, menacing, harassment, etc. of Jewish students and others.”
Cotler called for responsible leadership at universities and in government, advocating for a comprehensive approach that involves all levels of society and government.
Finally, Cotler addressed threats to himself that emerged immediately after October 7. Law enforcement agencies in Canada told him the threat to his life was “imminent and lethal” and put him 24-hour police protection, which was unprecedented before October 7.
The full transcript of Professor Cotler’s interview with The Media Line follows, including a personal story about his involvement in the Israel-Egypt peace negotiations, and how that led to him meeting his wife:
TML: The Oslo Freedom Forum called Irwin Cotler Freedom’s Counsel. His CV reads like a catalogue of awards and recognition available within the realm of human rights. His client list includes Natan Sharansky and Nelson Mandela.
His public service portfolio includes service as minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, plus years as a leading parliamentarian. Minister Irwin Cotler is the international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. And he still had time to act as the informal go-between between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, a relationship that led to the Camp David Accords in 1979.
Israel is reeling. Its famed resilience being tested on multiple fronts, not merely geographic, but deeply emotional challenges following the October 7 massacre and the myriad of ensuing matters. For a number of years, the International Criminal Court appears poised to move against Israel or prominent Israelis over conduct of the war triggered by the mass killing.
Professor Irwin Cotler, pleasure to have you here at The Media Line news agency.
Irwin Cotler: Pleasure to be here.
TML: After years of building Israel’s relations with the international community, the Jewish state is rapidly becoming a pariah state, accused of war crimes against humanity. In hindsight, did Israel handle the issue of the International Criminal Court well?
Irwin Cotler: Well, it’s not only in Israel’s hands, it’s the international dynamics that you’ve mentioned. As somebody who was present in the World Conference Against Racism and Hate in Durban in 2001 as a member of the Canadian delegation, I was witness then to the emergence of what has become a process of delegitimization, demonization and double standards, as Sharansky has called it, but has metastasized over the last 22 years. So what we’re seeing now is a phenomenon and an expression of it in terms of the International Criminal Court, which is just one example of what might be called the laundering of anti-Semitism, in a way, under the protective cover of the UN, the authority of international law, the culture of human rights, the very struggle against racism itself.
And a central theme in that struggle is the weaponization of international legal institutions singling out Israel for selective approval and indictment. Now I’m not saying Israel, like any other state, including any other democrat, is not accountable for any violations of human rights. It is.
But what is happening is the singling it out for selective approval and indictment. And so we have a phenomenon now where as we’re meeting, you have a situation where there may be prospective arrest warrants against Israel before the International Criminal Court. We have a case before the International Court of Justice taken by South Africa.
You have another parallel case before the International Court of Justice regarding Israel’s alleged illegitimate occupation of the West Bank. You have the ongoing resolutions of the UN General Assembly where annual you have some 18 resolutions singling out one member state happens to be Israel and some five resolutions against the rest of the world combined. You have the UN Security Council meeting in almost constant sessions with regard to Israel, whereas Sudan at this point experiencing a genocide. It took almost a year after the beginning of those atrocities for the UN Security Council …
In other words, you’ve got a massive weaponization of the international legal system with respect to Israel, of which the ICC is but one case study. And so when one looks at how Israel is handling it, what is missing in all this is a strategic appreciation by Israel that it’s not involved only in a military situation, but it’s involved in a diplomatic, legal, communications, etc., onslaught that it has to address.
TML: Why does Israel get it so wrong?
Irwin Cotler: I think, you know, they talked about the concept of the kind of mistaken military approach or doctrine. I think the problem has been the over-reliance with respect to the military dimension, not realizing it’s not just a multifront war in a military sense where Israel has assaults on several different military fronts. It’s a multi-front war in every other sense and in particular in the legal sense.
And it’s the legal sense where the weaponization is taking place. And that’s where Israel’s presence has been at its weakest.
TML: Some may argue that the indictments against Hamas leadership is sort of window dressing. Do you look at it the same way?
Irwin Cotler: No, I think that the indictments against Hamas are important because in these matters, one has to, in fact, document the atrocities one has to hold. It’s a matter of pursuing justice for victims and holding the violators accountable. That’s what international law is all about.
And in this instance, if we did not go after the perpetrators, the Hamas perpetrator and their enablers, etc., etc., we would be giving them a free pass.
TML: I’m talking about the ICC. Would the ICC look to do this so they show some kind of impartiality or does it not matter?
Irwin Cotler: No, I think that the ICC is empowered really for purposes of court of last resort to hold responsible those engaged in war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide. Hamas is guilty of all these things. The ICC is also not only a court of last resort, but it’s supposed to operate on the principle of complementarity.
That is to say, if there is a democracy with an independent judicial system like Israel, then the ICC is not supposed to substitute its judgment for that of the democrats’ independent legal process. So that’s the difference between Hamas and Israel at its starkest sense. Hamas is an anti-Semitic, genocidal, terrorist statelet, not because I say so, but because they say so in their founding charter of 1988 to the present time.
They’ve been involved in a standing incitement to hate and genocide. And what people don’t realize, that’s a stand-alone breach of the Genocide Convention, whether or not atrocities follow. So that means since 1988, they’ve been in breach of international law, in breach of the Genocide Convention, not held accountable.
Whereas Israel, as I say, with an independent legal system should not be put in the same morally equivalent status or situation like Hamas. So while arrest warrants are clearly warranted against Hamas leadership and those who aid and abet it with regard to Israel, they would not be warranted according to the ICC’s own statute and principles of operation because Israel has an independent legal system.
TML: If October 7 happened and Israel’s response was different, and they went in and the full attack happened, everything we’re seeing within a window of a week or two, do you think that this result would have been different?
Irwin Cotler: I think the result would have been different. I think what we’ve learned from history is that Israel only has a certain time span in order to make its case. And I’m not talking just in the military sense, I’m talking in the overall sense in which I, and if it doesn’t make its case during that period, then the narrative could be turned on its head.
And so that’s what you had here. You had October 7 with the horrific, as it’s been said many times, the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. At that moment, the narrative was understood in terms of Israel having been under assault.
At that moment, that’s when Israel’s response time was able to be understood by the international community, even though I know that even then there were those who were denying it, etc. But I mean, there was that window frame. But I think when it’s gone on now for over six months, then you’ve had not only an attrition in the understanding of Israel’s case, but you’ve had an inversion of the narrative.
And now Israel is seen as the major meta-human rights violator.
TML: How disruptive can the ICC actions be to Israel?
Irwin Cotler: Well, it can be very disruptive because if in fact, arrest warrants would be issued against the Israeli leadership. I think one of the problems that would ensue from that, apart from the families and the Raul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights that I chair has been acting as counsel for the families of hostages, apart from the hurt that it will cause them, because it creates a kind of moral equivalence. If you have arrest warrants against Hamas and arrest warrants against Israel, then you create this false moral equivalence.
And the whole notion of aggressor and target is not appreciated. The whole notion of the difference between a democracy and a genocidal antisemitic statelet is not appreciated. But how it can play out is it can incentivize the anti-Semitism that is already metastasizing.
I mean, you have one of the ironies, cruel ironies when you think about it, because you had October 7, you had the horrific attacks by, as I said, an anti-Semitic genocidal statelet. You would have thought that as a result of those horrors, too terrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened on October 7, then the world would have understood and combated antisemitism. But it’s been the reverse.
In a kind of Orwellian inversion, you’ve had an explosion of antisemitism post-October 7. So I think this is the kind of thing that we have to counter and the arrest warrants will only serve to incentivize that anti-Semitism to both almost retroactively legitimated at the same time as it incentivizes it. So I think the arrest warrants would be not just bad for Israel, not only just bad for the incentivization of anti-Semitism, it would be bad for the ICC itself, because the ICC is built around the principles, as I said, of complementarity and the like.
And it would be reversing the ICC’s own stated mandate and motive operandi.
TML: Has the October 7 war harmed the US-Israel relationship? We’re seeing vitriol like we’ve never seen on such a high level.
Irwin Cotler: Well, at the beginning, you had, you know, public displays of support, Biden’s coming to Israel, etc., all the things that you recall, I think would happen afterwards. And some of it is very personal in terms of relationships on the level of the prime minister and President Biden. I think some of those differences in politics, you know, persons and personalities make a difference, not just policies.
And I think the kinds of public airing of differences has been problematic and not helpful. Fortunately, it appears that the public opinion in many ways is still held supportive of Israel. But amongst the younger generation, particularly those from 18 to 30, you have a remarkable situation where in the United States, for example, over half support Hamas.
I mean, that is an astonishing datum and a reality. I mean, we’re talking about those who will be the future leaders of tomorrow. We’re talking about your future congressional leaders, your future media people, academics and the like.
So I’m very worried about the disturbing manifestations amongst the younger generation. I think, therefore, it’s not only how it is felt at the top level with President Biden and the like, because then those differences will be overcome. It’s the metastasizing among the young people that is very problematic.
TML: I want to go back a minute to the ICC. And, you know, we were doing reporting on this as well here in terms of the fact that these warrants can be given without telling Prime Minister Netanyahu or others that they’re coming forward. What does that mean?
What are the implications there?
Irwin Cotler: The implications there, I believe they will, it’ll become public. It’s not something that stays hidden. It’s like in any criminal investigation for a period that may not yet be known.
But I happen to have high regard for the Special Prosecutor Kareem Khan. I’ve known him for a long time. I regard him as being a person of principle.
And I think he’ll understand what is best for the court. I’m not only speaking about in terms of the interests of the parties involved. Kareem Khan has just concluded an agreement with Venezuela whereby under that agreement they will not be issuing warrants with regard to Venezuelan leadership on the assumption that Venezuela will now undertake the kinds of things that will preclude that.
I think with regard to Israel, those undertakings are already there. In other words, an independent judiciary, etc. All the trappings and substance of a democracy.
So, I mean, I take Kareem Khan at his word. He looked at the and characterized the International Criminal Court as a living tree and a living tree that’s supposed to be anchored in the principles of both complementarity and cooperation. I believe that a framework of understanding can be worked out with the Israeli leadership so that arrest warrants do not have to be issued.
If you can have an agreement with Venezuela, you can certainly have an agreement with a democracy like Israel.
TML: If it doesn’t happen?
Irwin Cotler: Well, if it doesn’t happen, then we might find ourselves in a situation where if arrest warrants are issued, it will not only be as it will be, you know, prejudicial, not just to the Israeli leadership or not. It will be prejudicial to Israel and the Jewish people. It will incentivize antisemitism, all the things that I mentioned.
And I believe it will hurt the ICC as an institution. And as somebody who was very much involved with the International Criminal Court, I was at one point a special advisor when I was a law professor to the Canadian government to support the establishment of an ICC. As a parliamentarian, I chaired the first assembly of parliamentarians for an international court.
I mentioned this only because I believe strongly in the ICC as a successor international Nuremberg tribunal. I still believe in it. And I believe in the foundational principles of it, which include complementarity and cooperation.
And therefore, I’m hopeful that in fact, arrest warrants will not be issued because they will be prejudicial to the ICC itself.
TML: Israel has weaponized targeted killings, and it’s receiving a lot of criticism for it. Do they violate international law in doing so?
Irwin Cotler: No, no targeted killings are themselves understood if what we’re talking about are methods of last resort, and our means, really, of a form of law enforcement where no other option is available in order to combat the horrific international terrorism and all that that implies. There are frameworks and responsibilities that are involved. You can’t indiscriminately engage in targeted killings.
One has to comport with an international legal law enforcement strategy for that purpose. But the notion that you can never have a targeted killing is itself misplaced as a matter of law. But if you engage in a targeted killing, you have to do it in accordance with the norms of international criminal law in that regard.
TML: There are more than 100 hostages that are still being held in Gaza. Do you feel that the families have any recourse that they haven’t looked at that might make a difference in terms of courts, in terms of legal path?
Irwin Cotler: I think, you know, the families have done their best. I think it’s the responsibility of the international community to realize that the immediate and unconditional, as I would put it, even release of hostages is a stand-alone imperative. When I say a stand-alone imperative, regardless of where you stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is a stand-alone imperative from a humanitarian point of view.
I mean, we’re talking still with regard to hostages, women, children, elderly, disabled and the like. So that’s an imperative. It’s a stand-alone principle of humanity with respect to release of hostages because of the inhumanity of them being hostage.
It’s a moral imperative of the first order and a legal imperative. What people don’t understand that every day that these hostages are in detention under Hamas is a standing crime against humanity. It’s a continuation of the crime against humanity.
And finally, it’s an international legal obligation. It’s not just an obligation with regard to Israel. It’s an obligation on the part of the international community.
So we have to do our best as an international community. And it should not just be Israel’s responsibility to, in fact, secure the release of those hostages. As I say, every day that they are in captivity is an ongoing crime against humanity.
TML: Professor Cotler, what’s your fear a day after the war ends?
Irwin Cotler: My fear after the day after the war ends is that the war itself will not have ended. It will have ended only on a military front. It will not have ended on the other fronts that have been unleashed as regard this war.
And I’m thinking principally of, you know, the weaponization of the international legal institutions, as I’ve mentioned, singling out Israel for selective approval and indictment. That may continue, but that would be part of what I consider to be a larger issue. And that is the explosion of antisemitism.
When I say that, I say that’s a global explosion of antisemitism, which is not only unprecedented, as I mentioned, but it’s not just a threat to Jews. This is what we have to realize, as history has taught us only too often and too well, that this explosive antisemitism is toxic to democracies. It’s an assault on our common humanity. It’s a standing injustice. And to use that proverbial statement that while it begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews.
This is the proverbial bloodied canary in the mineshaft of global evil. It’s sounding the alarm for the international community. It’s a threat to our national security of different democracies. So therefore, we have to combat it.
But Jews cannot combat it alone. Israel cannot combat it alone. We need what I would call a global constituency of conscience, a whole of government, a whole of society approach to combat it.
And it’s in our own collective interest to do so.
TML: Your role as special envoy of Holocaust remembrance and the fight against antisemitism comes at a fortuitous time. Witness today’s television coverage of what’s happening on the campuses in New York and in Los Angeles. Are Jews safe anywhere?
Irwin Cotler: Well, I think that Jews are increasingly unsafe. And as I just said, I think the responsibility for the security and safety of Jews is bound up with the responsibility for the security and safety of our democracies as a whole, I would use the term, our human security. It’s not just national security, it’s human security, which is a phrase I used when I was minister of justice and attorney general.
That’s what has to be protected. And I would hope that the community of democracies, as part of the international community, take the leadership in the protection of Jewish security as part of the protection of their democracies as a whole, because if the Jewish citizens are unsafe, it will mean that the democracies will be unsafe. And increasingly, Jewish students and others in the public square, etc., are feeling unsafe and are in fact unsafe.
And so at this point, it’s the responsibility of political leadership everywhere, as I say, both to protect their Jewish citizens, but to protect their democracies.
TML: Why are we not seeing a strong force in the United States and beyond of legislators coming out very firmly and quickly with action against what’s happening on the campuses? I mean, there’s violence on the campuses at the moment, it’s going to lead to something far greater.
Irwin Cotler: I used to say when I was a law professor, I’m still in the sense, an emeritus law professor, I used to say very often that academics are not used to exercising leadership. In other words, they’re very comfortable in libraries, they may not be comfortable in exercising the necessary moral and intellectual leadership. And it starts at the top with the presidents of universities.
And when I hear them speaking about academic freedom, or freedom of speech, I think it’s an example of not understanding what leadership is all about. There is no academic freedom to engage in outright discrimination. There is no freedom of speech that comprehends, you know, the incitement, menacing, harassment, etc. of Jewish students and others. So it’s a question at this point, we need responsible leadership at the university levels. And I think that presidents and others in the university have not been accustomed to exercising that kind of leadership.
And we need responsible leadership at the governmental and parliamentary levels. That’s why I say it has to be a whole of government approach, but also a whole of society approach. And it has to be integrated and intertwined.
And it has to be strategic, but people have got to assume the responsibilities of the office that they occupy, and not wait to see who else is standing before they make a judgment to do so. Because in the world in which we live, there are too few people who are prepared to stand up and be counted. And that’s what we need at this point.
TML: The irony of the timing of your global report on anti-Semitism, which is coming out through Tel Aviv University, kind of begs the question, where does it stand? What do we expect from this report? And particularly now, after what has just unfolded before all of our eyes, and it still is campus after campus, with the expectation of even an intifada that’s supposed to take place come Nakba Day?
Irwin Cotler: Well, it’s a global report, and it’ll include, you know, country reports. It will also include reports from the various special envoys, such as the special envoy for the European Union. But unlike previous years, which the report was important and had resonance, but was largely, you know, descriptive, this report also is intended to be prescriptive.
In other words, to set forth recommendations for action, because what we need at this point are not only words of condemnation, we need action, the kind of action as you yourself indicated, at the academic leadership level, at the parliamentary leadership level, at the government leadership level, at civil society level, as I said, a global constituency of conscience, what I hope will emerge from this report will be a global action plan. Because words are important. I’m not saying they’re not because if you don’t have condemnation, then people will feel licensed to continue.
So the metastasizing of antisemitism has to be condemned. And words are important. But the words have to be translated into deeds and to action.
And what we need are national action plans that are going to be implemented. And as part of a global action plan where we act in concert.
TML: You know, from where you speak, you were under surveillance for 24 hours straight. Where did this come from in Canada?
Irwin Cotler: I think what happened is that we’ve allowed this to fester, metastasize for a long time. And the word, you know, antisemitism is not only the longest and oldest and most enduring and most lethal of hatreds, but it’s one that mutates and metastasizes over time. But it’s grounded in one, I would say, foundational, generic, historical trope.
And that is Jews, the Jewish people, Israel is a Jew among the nations, as the enemy of all that is good, the embodiment of all that is evil, reflecting whatever is the zeitgeist at any given moment in time. So when the zeitgeist was religion, then the Jews were held to be guilty of deicide. When the zeitgeist in the Middle Ages was the Black Plague, then the Jews were the poisoners of the world.
I can go back in the ‘70s. Well, then I began as a law professor, the zeitgeist became human rights. And then Israel is held up for the first time as being the meta human rights violator of our time.
We didn’t pay much attention to it. But that dynamic sort of continued inexorably, indulgently for some 50 years since then. And it had a number of tipping points.
One of the tipping points I mentioned was the World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001. You had another tipping point in 2021. And now we’re witnessing the last tipping point of the aftermath of October 7.
So it’s been an inexorable build up with respect to the singling out of Israel as the meta human rights violator. And we were not paying attention. I’m hoping that the recent events will finally serve as the wake up call for the international community to realize that what’s at stake at this point, is really the integrity of our democracies, and the security of our democracy, as I said, in our human security, and that finally, we will start to see the global action that is needed, and the leadership that is needed at all these levels, governmental, parliamentary, civil society, academic and the like.
TML: Do you see a direct correlation to the threat to yours and your family’s life going to October 7? Is that a definite line drawn?
Irwin Cotler: Well, I see a certain line drawn. I mean, the threat that emerged with regard to me was in the immediate aftermath of October 7, when I was told by the authorities in Canada that the threat with regard to my life was “imminent and lethal.” That had not happened before October 7.
There might have been, you know, the implied criticism, threats that we all might experience, but that type of threat, and the protection that has emerged that the Canadian government has provided me since then, that was unprecedented. And so that’s a post-October 7 phenomenon, if I’ve been experiencing it, in a personal level, I’m speaking now much more importantly, about how it’s being experienced nationally, and internationally, and how it’s being experienced in particular, by the Jews, who are the targets of this type of lethal antisemitism.
TML: Are you satisfied with Canada’s public position on the war?
Irwin Cotler: I think Canada’s public position should be more unequivocal than it has been. I think that there have been statements made by the government that have been important, and that have been condemnatory of antisemitism. But as I said, we need to go beyond words, we need to go into action.
Because what is happening on the campuses, in the streets, in the public square, represent at this point, you know, not only menacing, threatening, intimidating behavior, but threats to human security. And therefore, the government has got to be clear and unequivocal in its action in the protection of national security.
TML: As of October 6, Israel was still charting what was happening with judicial reforms. And you said that legislation proposed by the government on judicial reforms would eviscerate judicial review, undermine the independence of the judiciary, and vest undue power in government. Do you still feel that?
Irwin Cotler: I still feel that way. I think that the prospective reforms, as they were called by the government, would have had the effect that I mentioned, it would have been undermining the independence of the judiciary, etc. I also believe that it was prejudicial, you know, to Israel’s national security at the time.
I’m not saying that there was no need for reforms. I do think that we needed to reform the law of standing here. I think we needed to introduce certain reforms with regard to the principle of justiciability, and the like, but the kinds of reforms that were proposed, and the manner in which they were proposed, would have undermined the independence of the judiciary, would have, in fact, invested too much power in the executive, etc., would have upset the separation of powers and the balance of powers. I think it was a mistake, both in what was proposed, and I think it was no less a mistake in the manner in which they sought at the time to carry it out. I’m glad that it was not implemented. But I do think it caused damage, even though it was not implemented, because it caused unnecessary division here in Israel.
It caused unnecessary toxicity to the Israeli democracy. I think therefore it was unwarranted and harmful, and I hope we’ve seen the last of it. Again, I’m not saying that there cannot be certain reforms that are warranted, as I mentioned, in terms of justiciability, standing, and the like, but the manner and substance of the reforms were themselves, you know, toxic and problematic.
TML: Prime Minister Netanyahu had, you said, wrongly compared the High Court of Justice override system in Canada to what he was trying to propose in Israel. And you said this was absolutely not the case. Can you explain that a little bit better?
Irwin Cotler: Well, you know, the attempt to say that we’re doing what Canada is doing, and Canada is a democracy, but it was entirely different. If you take the notwithstanding clause, number one, the notwithstanding clause, the federal government that I was a member at the time, and that’s become Canadian Parliament, we said we will never invoke the notwithstanding clause. Number two, Canada is a federal system, not a system like Israel.
So we were talking about only the invocation with some provinces. And even then, under the Canadian Constitution, if you invoke the notwithstanding clause, it has a lifespan of five years, and it can be challenged and has been challenged. And so you have a protective framework because it’s number one within a federal system. Number two, you have a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Number three, you can challenge it in in the courts. Number four, it has a limited life.
And to say, therefore, that we’re doing in Israel what they were doing in Canada, no, it was entirely different. And I thought the statement by the prime minister, as I said, at the time was uninformed and ended up being misleading. And therefore, it is not something that Israel should invoke.
And frankly, even in the limited manner in which it was invoked in Canada, I objected to it in Canada as well.
TML: The war ends tomorrow, and the protest movement might be right back on the judicial reform issue. It’s very possible. I am sure that you would weigh in at that point. What would you say to the protest movement?
Irwin Cotler: Well, I would say I understand the protests, but I do hope that the protest movement has also learned the same way that the government has to learn, as I said, the lessons. The protest movement has to learn that there are certain limits here because the notion that even if the reforms were adopted, as I said, that wouldn’t mean the end of Israel as a democracy. It would not mean that Israel would thereby, you know, become a dictatorship.
It would mean that it would not be as healthy a democracy as it was before. It would mean that it would have all the effects that I said would be problematic in terms of undermining the independence of the judiciary, etc. But you would still have an independent judiciary.
You’d still have a free press. You’d still have fair and free elections. I mean, I know enough about what dictatorships are and the evil that dictatorships cause to say that if those judicial reforms were, in fact, enacted, which I’m totally opposed to, but if they were, Israel would not become a dictatorship.
So I think that even those who are protesting have to understand that they should not mischaracterize the nature and impact of the reforms, because then, you know, you get on the both sides misrepresenting the nature of the position. So number one, I hope the government will not go back to in any way to seek to instill those reforms. And I hope, therefore, the protests with regard to those reforms will no longer be necessary.
Other protests may be necessary, but not those.
TML: Apropos our conversation in human rights, you had a documentary, First to Stand, and it was about your casework and life work. And if you look at those that you defended, what case did you feel had the farthest-reaching results?
Irwin Cotler: I think the probably the two cases that had the farthest-reaching results reflected the two great human rights struggles in the second half of the 20th century. I’m referring to the struggle for Soviet Jewry. And I think Anatoly Sharansky was the face, the identity, the voice of that struggle.
And I think that that struggle helped to bring about at that time the end of the Soviet Union and its dictatorship as we knew it. Regrettably, you know, we saw it arise in a different way under Putin’s Russia. But I do believe that what Sharansky and those associated with them proved, and we just were discussing it just a few days ago, you know, how and I use the expression now, a few small, few people, you know, with the proper commitment and action can change the universe.
And you saw that with regard to the struggle for Soviet Jewry. The second struggle was the struggle against apartheid. And here you had Nelson Mandela, who languished 27 years in the South African prison and emerged after 27 years to not only preside over the dismantling of apartheid, but to usher in the first democratic, egalitarian, nonracial, South African state.
I regret that some of that legacy of Mandela has been tarnished by the successor governments in South Africa. That also was a tipping point in terms of the struggle against apartheid. Mandela’s struggle in that regard, my involvement, there is much more of a cameo involvement than it was with regard to the Sharansky case.
But the two great, as I say, human rights struggles, were led by two great human rights individuals. It also shows you how one person with the compassion to care and the courage to act can confront evil and transform history. And as I’m saying this, I’m thinking of another historical moment.
We are now on the 80th anniversary of the worst and cruelest and most efficient killing field in all of the Holocaust. I’m talking about the period between mid-May and the beginning of July 1944, where 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to the death camp Auschwitz, as I said, the quickest, cruelest, most efficient killing field in all of the Holocaust. Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Swedish location in Budapest in mid-July, and a mixture of bluff and bravado and mobilization and the like saved 100,000 Jews thereafter.
An example of how one person, as I say, with the compassion to care and the courage to act can confront evil, prevail, transform history. That’s why we named the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights in his legacy and memory, Wallenberg being Canada’s first honorary citizen, being an honorary citizen also of the US and Israel and Australia. We need those inspirational role models.
We don’t have enough of them today. We need the Mandela’s and the Sharansky’s, the Wallenberg. These are the inspirational role models that young people need so that they can be inspired, in fact, to act upon those legacies in their own time.
TML: Looking even further back in history, who would Professor Cotler have liked to have represented today?
Irwin Cotler: Well, there’s been great figures in history and I don’t know they needed, would not have needed my assistance. We need their assistance in the sense that we need to think back about these great leaders.
We just concluded the holiday of Passover. We had great leaders in terms of Moses and Moses thereafter succeeded by Joshua. That’s the kind of leaders that we need. We need these moral, inspirational leaders.
Regrettably, the international community has too few of them today.
TML: Professor Irwin Cotler, you have a very interesting personal story, the one of how you met your wife, and many have come out with elements of how you met your wife. But why don’t you share with how you met Ariela?
Irwin Cotler: Well, it goes back to the time when I was then a law professor and I used to spend four summers, ‘75, ‘76, ‘77, ‘78, in the Arab countries. People would ask me, why are you going there? And I said, well, as somebody who wants to be involved in the Israeli-Arab Palestinian peace process, if I could call it that, I had to have a better understanding, not just of the foreign policy of the Arab countries, that word was too general, but the culture, the psychology, the people, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Jordanians, Palestinians and Israel. And I’d spend four months every summer from ‘75 to ‘78 in sequence in those countries. And I’d begin with Egypt.
And I was there for a month in ‘75 and ‘76 at the Institute of Political and Strategic Studies at Al-Ahram in Cairo. And I came back in ‘77, doing the same thing. But this time, while I was there, Prime Minister Begin was elected the prime minister here in Israel.
And Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who had been the head of the Institute of Political and Strategic Studies at Al-Ahram, when I was there in ‘75, ‘76, it was now the minister of state of foreign affairs for Sadat. And he invited me to a meeting with Sadat to ask me two questions. One, could he make peace with the newly couped government?
My answer was yes, and they can carry the rest of the country. And could he make peace with the new Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin? And I said I didn’t know the new prime minister, but he was known to me as being a democrat, a parliamentarian.
I believed he would want to make peace with the largest and most important Arab country, whereupon he gave me a message to deliver to the Israeli prime minister. And I looked at him somewhat surprising. And I said, President Sadat, I said, I mentioned to you, I don’t know Prime Minister Begin.
He said, I know that. He said, but Boutros Boutros-Ghali tells me that you end up your trip to the Arab countries in Israel. I want to give the message to somebody that I can trust and who I believe the Israelis will trust.
And so that summer I cut my trip short. I went just to Syria. Then I went to Israel.
By happenstance, the day that I arrived in Israel, I bumped into a good friend of mine, Uri Gordon, a senior official in the Jewish Agency, who invited me to a meeting of Knesset members, in particular younger Knesset members. And sitting at that luncheon, unknown to me then, was my future wife, who was the parliamentary secretary to the Likud and very close to Menachem Begin. At the luncheon, my colleague, Uri Gordon, all of a sudden, surprisingly, asked me to say a few words.
And I got up and I spoke in Hebrew and he asked me to say a few words about North American Jews. But I said, look, you hear enough about North American Jews. Let me just share with you some experiences that I’ve had in Egypt and Syria.
And I spoke about that. And my wife-to-be, Ariela, sent a note to a friend of hers saying that I must be a spy, because she could not understand how somebody, a young Jew, that was in the traveling freely in the Arab countries, including Syria, etc., and also spoke Hebrew, to her that constituted a spy.
So after the lunch, she came up and asked me some questions. And I understood already that she was suspicious. And I, at that moment, said I would share with her a story that I hadn’t shared over lunch, that when I was in Syria and I met with the Syrian Jewish community, they drank a l’chaim to the election of Menachem Begin and added that with his election would come their redemption. And she heard this and her eyes lit up and she said, you have to tell this to Prime Minister Begin. He has to know this.
And I said, which was true, I don’t know the prime minister. She said, I’ll arrange it.
And shortly thereafter, I was sitting in his office. And at one point, I said to him that there’s something I have to share with you, Prime Minister, but I can’t do with anybody else in the room. And I got that look from her that I understood since.
In other words, I’ve arranged this meeting and you’re saying I am to leave. But the prime minister said, no, she’s my confidante. She remains.
And then I shared with him a message from President Sadat, which basically was an invitation to the prime minister, Begin, to enter into peace negotiations based on two conditions. One, Israeli withdrawal from the whole of the Sinai. Two, recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
I can still see Prime Minister Begin looking at that message and saying, this can’t happen. Then I said to him, he didn’t ask you to agree to these conditions. He just said that these are his conditions for negotiation.
Then the prime minister Begin said, then let me ask you the same question. Do you think I can make peace with President Sadat? I said yes.
And in particular, I said his wife wants him to make peace and she’s been present at meetings that I’ve had there, whereupon he sent me back a message to President Sadat that he’s prepared to enter into negotiations and the rest is history. I might add, parenthetically, that we got married on March 25, 1979, the day of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, in remembrance of how we met and in recognition of it.
TML: Professor Irwin Cotler, quite an honor to have you today. And thank you so much for your time here at The Media Line.
Irwin Cotler: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to be interviewed by somebody who has the kind of repository of expertise that you have.