SummaryHamas’ use of human shields, including using hospitals and civilian objects to store weapons, launch attacks and place operations, is forbidden under international law and constitutes a war crime. Once civilian objects are used for military purposes, they are considered as legitimate military targets. Israel may strike such targets,...

Israel has a right under international law to impose a complete siege, which would be a land encirclement of the combat area of the Gaza Strip. Since Gaza has land borders with two countries—Israel and Egypt—a complete siege would require that Israel interdict land transfers from Egypt to the...

October 7, 2023, was the bloodiest day in Israeli history. As the world now knows, in the early hours that morning, during a Jewish holiday, more than a thousand Hamas terrorists invaded Israel from Gaza, aiming to massacre as many people as possible. By the end of the day,...

Israelis are still burying the 1,200 victims of the Saturday attack on southern Israel by Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that seized power in Gaza in 2007. As the assault unfolded, terrorists raped women and dragged them through the streets. They decapitated babies in their cribs. They slaughtered entire families...

An interesting judgement from the British court is of particular relevance to the discourse in Israel: Is legislation that deems some government agencies’ decisions immune to judicial review acceptable, or does such legislation contradict supra-constitutional norms? One line answer: The rule of law principle binds all government branches, including...

Following the court decision that canceled the Israel Medical Association (IMA)’s strike against the judicial reform (SK 57697-07-23). One line answer: The Labor Court determined that the IMA’s strike against the reform was an illegal political strike, and that IMA claims of potential harm to doctors and to the...

The claim that there is a shortage of teachers, amounting up to thousands of teachers a year, is being made more and more often in public discourse. Israel does indeed have a relatively high birth rate for a developed Western country, which means that a larger part of the...

Research by Kohelet Forum Policy illuminates the fact that Israel’s comparatively low rate of importing goods and services is largely a result of government policy, particularly the barriers imposed on importation. Israel’s economy is characterized in some ways as an “island economy”, i.e. an economy with limited natural resources...

Avrum Tomer, Kohelet Policy Forum researcher of education policy, comments in a Makor Rishon article on the merits of the Ministry of Education’s declaration to allow some teachers to work for the Ministry through personal contracts rather than collective agreement. The declaration has caused some turmoil, although it only...

Why the Threat of International Prosecution is both False and Harmful In two recent articles in Maariv and Israel Hayom, Adv. Avraham Shalev and Prof. Eugene Kontorovich reiterate the main points outlined in the Kohelet policy paper Judicial Reforms and the Threat of International Criminal Court Prosecution. In the...