Inappropriate appointment

The Tel Aviv University faculty members who oppose the appointment of Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, head of the international law division (ILD) in the Military Advocate General's office, to a post at the university's law faculty, are right.

This faculty, the spearhead of academic legal research in Israel, now has a public responsibility of the first order - to examine in depth Israel's conduct during the war in Gaza, to distinguish between what is permitted and what is not, and to offer an alternative and objective set of rules to the self-serving ones formulated by Sharvit-Baruch during her time as head of the ILD.

One of the important reasons not to appoint Sharvit-Baruch to the law faculty is her sanctioning, as head of the division, of the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, women and elderly people, during the three weeks of the war.

The division headed by Sharvit-Baruch gave the go-ahead for the criminal killing of dozens of Palestinian policemen by the air force - which bombed them during their graduation ceremony on the war's first day - with the knowledge that these policemen were nothing more than civilian law-enforcers, and on the grounds that they might become participants in the fighting with Israel (as reported in a story that will appear in the Haaretz English edition Magazine tomorrow).

The legal appendix that the division attached to the military orders of Operation Cast Lead did indeed demand that caution be employed in the field, but it did not rule out the use of cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs or anti-personnel mines.

The appendix even stated that it was possible to avoid warning the civilian population that was near a target slated for attack.

Severe criticism is being voiced about the conduct of the ILD. A long list of experts in international law and the laws governing the war on terrorism, including the former head of the division, Daniel Reisner, have expressed their objections to the way Sharvit-Baruch made possible such trigger-happiness during the Gaza campaign.

Han och Dagan, the dean of TAU's law faculty, is misleading in the demagogic argument he employs to justify Sharvit-Baruch's appointment. He says that it is better to expose students to a wide range of opinions and points of view, so long as they are within the framework of the law.

Dagan is misleading, both because Sharvit-baruch's opinions - which are acceptable among the general public and, one can assume, in the corridors of the law school - already enjoy wide expression, to a level far beyond that received by opposing points of view; and also because the reason Sharvit-Baruch's opinions fall within the framework of the law is because she is the one who formulated the law, in her capacity as head of the ILD.