http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6958044.ece?openComment=true

The application of law to warfare is among the greatest advances in Western civilisation over four centuries. In the name of human rights, that tradition is being traduced by a politicised campaign to harass the statesmen of a democracy. It is unlikely that you will have needed to read this far to learn that the targeted nation is Israel.

Tzipi Livni, the leader of the Israeli Kadima party, accepted an invitation to speak at an Anglo-Jewish event in London last weekend. It emerged in the meantime that British magistrates had issued an arrest warrant against Ms Livni for alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza last winter, when she was Foreign Minister (see page 14). The warrant was the latest attempt by pressure groups to seek British court authority for the arrest of Israeli leaders. It was rescinded only when the court learnt that Ms Livni had cancelled her trip to Britain, apparently because of a scheduling clash. The Israeli Foreign Ministry nonetheless expressed fury.

The Israeli reaction is far from overwrought. Ms Livni’s is the second such case in recent months. Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister during the Gaza offensive, attended a meeting at the British Labour Party conference in September. Campaigners unsuccessfully sought an arrest warrant against him from the same court.

The difference between the cases appears to be that Mr Barak was still a serving minister, whereas Ms Livni is not. Lawyers acting for the campaigners cite the principle of “universal jurisdiction”. Under it, courts in England and Wales have jurisdiction over certain crimes regardless of where in the world they were committed.

Mr Barak, however, enjoyed immunity from prosecution as a representative of a state.

It is preposterous that so serious an issue is reduced to a legal technicality. It makes British justice look ridiculous. The least of the consequences of the warrant against Ms Livni will be a monumental waste of time. Any Israeli minister visiting the UK will seek a meeting with a British counterpart merely to insure against the risk of a frivolous legal case.

But the campaign for legal targeting of Israeli leaders is not merely frivolous: it is repugnant. It risks damaging Britain’s relations with an ally, undermines the Government’s moral authority in promoting a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and brings the legal system into disrepute.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is now looking urgently at ways to close the loophole. Universal jurisdiction has honourable intent. It seeks to protect the vulnerable by ensuring that war criminals can be tried even if they live in countries with weak legal systems. It is the rationale for the indictment of Radovan Karadzic before an international tribunal at The Hague. But Israel’s Gaza offensive was not the genocide at Srebrenica.

The Times reported the deaths and suffering in Gaza, and exposed Israel’s use of white phosphorus despite official denials. That campaign was not a crime against humanity. It was a chapter in Israel’s history of trying to stop violence against its own civilians, which is a prerequisite of achieving the two-state resolution that Mr Barak and Ms Livni have worked for. You cannot reasonably criticise Israel’s military tactics without understanding Israel’s security needs.

The legal campaign against Israel’s leaders is not justice but politics, and disreputable politics at that.