A yeshiva, I Iearned last night is where you go mostly to study the  Talmud and rabbinic literature. The self styled “disorganisation” behind the Rootless Cosmopolitans event Jewdas took and subverted the traditional format in a number of ways. By the way they are the same people who got into hot water for doing the hoax cancellation of the pro-Israel demonstration during the assault on Gaza. Most Yeshivas don’t happen in a Catholic Irish social club. The bar manager was distraught. He’d never seen so many people drink so little. The range of discussions included the indentity politics of Jews in the Spanish Civil War – something of a niche specialism, laughing at The Holocaust and Jews in the porn industry. The latter was not quite what you might have expected. Mostly it was the presenter displaying a wide knowledge of the genre and saying “he’s Jewish”, “she’s Jewish”. A better approach might have been along the lines of what Splintered reports is happening in the Belfast Film Festival (sic).

Eyal Weizman gave an astounding talk called Lawfare in Gaza: Legislative Attack. He is an architect and opened with a short slideshow showing a bend in a road in Palestine. This brief account will do no justice to the subtlety of his arguing so check it out.

He used the tools of the architect’s trade to explain how the Israeli state’s legal system is used to justify the theft of Palestinian land. It starts with a bend in the road. Roads bend because of topography. In this case it’s a hill with a Palestinian farmer’s olive grove at the top. Israeli settlers complain that the hill is a security risk because they lose the signal on their mobile phones for twenty seconds. That is resolved by planting a phone mast. The mast has to be protected because it’s a piece of security infrastructure so a guard is deployed. The guard needs a hut and that is connected to the water and electricity supply. Being of a nervous disposition the guard gets some dogs and has a large fence erected around the site. Before you know it his family has moved in and they are followed by friends and relatives. That’s how the Israeli state’s legal system makes it easy to colonise Palestinian land.

 Eyal reserved most of his forensic wrath for the construct of international humanitarian law. Exhibit one was the wall being used to carve up Palestinian territory. To some extent this was negotiated with Palestinian lawyers in court. As an aside he mentioned that the Israeli checkpoints now benefit from some shelter and seats as a result of humanitarian legal pressure.

You will remember, if you could hear them through your own shouted curses, how the spokespeople for the Israeli murder machine during the attack on Gaza made great play of their rigid adherence to international law. The minor problem here is that according to international law if an army tells you that it’s going to blow up your house in five minutes and you don’t, or can’t get out, they can designate you as a human shield. If you are a non-combatant it’s not legal for them to kill you. Bad luck if you get sent a text message saying you’ve five minutes to get the kids out because then you are taking a direct part in hostilities. It does not seem to matter if the IDF has cut off the electricity supply preventing you from charging your mobile. At least they tried and the law is on their side.

Law is ultimately a matter of a relationship of forces. That is one of Eyal’s points and he seemed to be implying that for that reason you shun it completely. This is not a helpful approach. We all know that cops can kill anyone they want and expect to get away with it. From that it does not follow that you don’t use the state’s own legality, expressing a certain balance of forces, to put political pressure on them. It’s a rich and a deep discussion and more yeshivas would be a good thing.