Seventeen human rights organizations, among them Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, on May 8 called for the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to apply on behalf of Palestine to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Coincidentally, the Hebrew University was at the same time hosting Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who until two years ago had served as the court’s chief prosecutor. Moreno-Ocampo was invited to Israel to speak at the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Initiative, a program that seeks to introduce the process of transitional justice to future law students and leaders of Israel. That same week, on May 9, Israeli author Amos Oz stirred up a storm when he suggested that instead of calling Jews who harass the Arab minority “hilltop youth,” and their acts of vandalism “price tag,” the perpetrators should be called “Hebrew neo-Nazis.”