UKLFI Charitable Trust held a webinar on The Law of Armed Conflict and the Gaza Strip with Professor Geoffrey S Corn and Colonel Richard Kemp, chaired by Natasha Hausdorff on Wednesday 15 November 2023.
The speakers in this webinar have extensive experience in the military, operational and legal challenges fighting non-state armed groups and implementing measures to defeat such groups consistent with legal and moral obligations central to professional armed forces.
They examined the conduct of the current Gaza conflict by Hamas and other terrorist groups and by Israel and its allies; the challenges that have to be confronted and the decisions that have to be made in urban, asymmetric, armed conflict; the application of LOAC in this context; and the impact of LOAC and perceptions regarding its application on strategy and strategic outcomes.
To view on YouTube press HERE
More about the speakers:
Prof. Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn is the George R. Killam Jr. Chair of Criminal Law and Director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University.
He served in the US Army for 21 years as an officer, and a final year as a civilian legal advisor. He was tactical intelligence officer in Panama, supervisory defense counsel for the Western US, chief of international law for US Army Europe, professor of international and national security law at the US Army Judge Advocate General’s School, chief prosecutor for the 101st Airborne Division, and senior law of war expert advisor.
He earned a JD with highest honors from George Washington University and an LLM as distinguished graduate from the US Army Judge Advocate General’s School.
Prof Corn is also a Distinguished Fellow, JINSA Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy;
He is co-author of Criminal Law: Classroom to Courtroom (forthcoming); The Law of Armed Conflict: An Operational Approach; The War on Terror and the Laws of War; National Security Law and the Constitution; National Security Law: Principles and Policy; The Law in War: A Concise Overview; and Principles of Counter-Terrorism Law.
Col. Richard Kemp CBE spent most his 30-year career in the British Army fighting terrorism and insurgency. He commanded British forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Northern Ireland, the Balkans and elsewhere. From 2002 – 2006 he headed the international terrorism team at the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee and also chaired the strategic intelligence group at COBRA, the UK national crisis management committee.
He has been present during each of the conflicts between Israel and Hamas since Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and has been in Israel from the start of the current war in Gaza. He has also been present at the front line during the war in Ukraine. He was appointed MBE by The Queen in 1994 and was promoted to CBE in 2006. In 1994 he was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery for actions in Bosnia. His name was discovered on an Al Qaida kill list in 2013.
Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister at 6 Pump Court Chambers and a frequent speaker on International Law. She has a law degree from Oxford University, qualified as a solicitor at Skadden, and subsequently gained an LLM from Tel Aviv University, focussing on public international law and the law of armed conflict.
She clerked for Miriam Naor, President of Israel’s Supreme Court, and was a Fellow at Columbia Law School’s National Security Program. Natasha is legal director of UKLFI Charitable Trust.
In the course of the current conflict, Natasha has been interviewed frequently on television to explain the application of the law of armed conflict. Tweets of her interview by Katya Adler on the BBC News Channel went viral with over 4 million views. Other videos of her interviews can be viewed HERE.