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Hotovely mourns passing of US jurist who defended Jewish rights

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The deputy foreign minister praises Wallace Brand for teaching arguments that otherwise would have been forgotten.

By World Israel News Staff

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) on Monday mourned the passing of American jurist Wallace Brand, an outspoken supporter of Israel and the Jewish state’s legal claim to Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.

Brand passed away on December 5 at the age of 88 and is survived by six children and 13 grandchildren. His wife, Ann, died of cancer in 1985.

A Korean War veteran, Brand studied at Harvard Law School before working for the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and later at the Justice Department Antitrust Division.

“Brand taught crucial legal arguments that would otherwise be forgotten,” said Hotovely.

“Brand was a vocal defender of Israeli legal rights who specialized in counter-attacking any Palestinian attack against Israel which cited ‘international law,'” her office said in a statement.

“’How many people on the street know anything about international law?,'” Brand wrote. “Repeated often enough to them it becomes a ‘poetic truth’ that can’t be dented by facts, reason, or logic.”

In one of his published legal opinions, Brand argued that “under international law, the Jewish people have sovereignty west of the Jordan River. Arab people residing in Palestine calling themselves ‘the Palestinian Arab People’ do not.”

Brand argued that as of the San Remo Conference in 1920 which created the British Mandate for Palestine – with the goal of creating a Jewish national homeland – the question of “whether Arabs or Jews have sovereignty west of the Jordan River under International Law is res judicata – already decided,” in favor of the Jews.

A few months ago, Hotovely’s office noted, Brand urged U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to relinquish an official U.S. Government legal opinion which concluded that Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are “illegal.”

Brand said the opinion was incorrect because its conclusion was reached in reliance on a 1959 scholarly publication by Professor Julius Stone, an acclaimed expert on international law. But Stone himself, Brand pointed out, publicly supported the legality of settlements.