Natasha Hausdorff, the British barrister who has become an outspoken defender of Israel’s legal rights on global news networks, warns that a “vicious cycle of disinformation” — fuelled by media self-censorship and terrorist propaganda — has warped the world’s understanding of the Gaza conflict, and put Jewish lives at risk.

More notably, the expert in international law has popularized one such law, 

Uti possidetis juris

. It states that newly formed sovereign countries should retain the borders that their preceding area had before their independence. Therefore, at the time Israel declared itself a state, Mandatory Palestine – which included what today is known as Israel, Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank) and Gaza – would by law be legal territorial boundaries of Israel. It is a lynchpin argument, she believes, against the charges of “illegal occupation” and “illegal settlements.”

She regularly briefs politicians and international organizations and has spoken at parliaments across Europe.

After her law degree at Oxford University, she clerked for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel in Jerusalem in 2016. In 2018, Hausdorff was a Fellow at Columbia Law School in the National Security Law Program.

Dave Gordon interviewed Hausdorff prior to a talk she delivered at Toronto’s Nova Exhibition on June 12, hosted by StandWithUs Canada.

It would seem uti possidetis juris ought to have been used by Israel decades ago in international forums. Why hasn’t it?

I can fully appreciate that Israel’s official stance is constrained by diplomatic operations and political pressures. It’s a rule that applies automatically, whatever Israel says about the situation.

There are other examples of Israel not standing on ceremony, as far as international law is concerned. One of those relates to Egypt’s obligation to open the border to Palestinian civilians, fleeing civil disorder in Gaza. That’s in accordance with Egypt’s obligation under the Organization of African Unity Convention on (governing the specific aspect of) Refugees, which it signed in 1980.

This is a convention that has a much broader definition of refugee than the international convention. Nobody has been calling on Egypt to open the border from October 2023. But Israel can’t pressure (that), because Egypt threatened to tear up the peace agreement with Israel.

What’s your opinion about how the media’s been covering the war?

If the BBC were reporting from North Korea, there would be some indication somewhere that we are not free to report without censorship — controlled in what we’re able to say by the regime. I have not seen a single piece of reporting from Gaza that has acknowledged that: nothing comes out of the Gaza Strip that is not controlled by Hamas.

So for a start, the notion that the international media would be parroting Hamas propaganda in this fashion is deeply shameful, and indicates to me a complete absence of journalistic integrity. That’s quite apart from the devastating impact that this is having.

When I talk to policy makers, officials around the world, they tell me they’re basing their determination on what to do, on the basis of the Gaza pictures they see in the media.

Now, let me be clear, they are terrible. But I see on Israeli media, a series of interviews from Channel 12 in November, in Gaza, where they held out a microphone to Palestinians that were leaving Jabala. At the time, they could not grab it from him quickly enough, to tell the world how Hamas was responsible for all of the ills that had been visited upon them, how grateful they were to Israel for the humanitarian assistance, the fact that Israel provided humanitarian corridors.

I didn’t see those interviews anywhere on the international broadcast media. Frankly, they don’t fit with the agenda that people want to follow.

The amount of damage that this self-censorship, and embracing of Hamas, and other terrorist organization propaganda is doing, is seen in the obscene statements that we’ve heard from supposed allies of Israel: the U.K., France and Canada.

Jews are being executed on the streets in the capital of the free world (Washington, D.C.), and I think that is directly attributable to the irresponsible broadcast, where we had the media repeating this absurd claim of 14,000 babies dying in the next 48 hours.

The link, I’m afraid, is undeniable.

Do you think Israel is telling its story well?

So much misreporting is happening, and this isn’t being addressed. Can I put the blame squarely on Israel? I struggle with that, because the fact of the matter is that a lot of this information is publicly available. Right?

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) website catalogues all of the aid going into Gaza, over the last 19 months. That is not only ignored by the international media, by politicians, by the UN, by the ICJ, it is actually inverted. And there is this reoccurring canard that there’s not enough food getting into Gaza, which, ultimately, you know, Israel can’t really fix if it’s telling people what the reality is, and they choose to ignore it. That’s not necessarily on Israel’s head.

Have Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, gotten better at the propaganda war?

They certainly have, I think, invested a great deal more in time, energy and resources into it. It’s certainly been a key factor of Hamas’s planning of this war. Hamas puts members in press vests, and generates fake images.

We’re seeing the impact of that disinformation campaign. I think we need to understand the symbiotic relationship that exists with these terrorist organizations and international organizations.

The Amnesty International report on genocide makes it clear in their methodology that they are taking their information from Hamas. They call them “local government authorities,” but we all know what they’re talking about.

They take this terrorist propaganda, put it into a report, which is headed up by Amnesty International. Then that gets repeated by Special Rapporteurs at the UN, like Francesca Albanese. Then it gets worked into UN resolutions, and the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly, then it gets quoted by the ICJ or the ICC, and then these international organizations pick it up again and say, “see! The ICJ says so.”

So that vicious cycle of disinformation has been operational for a very long time.

Of the untruths peddled, like settler colonialism, genocide, apartheid, etc., which is the biggest?

I think they’re all deeply vicious and poisonous, and the connection that they share is they are reminiscent of the ancient blood libel against Jews.

We’re seeing a phenomenon where the real victims in each of these instances are being blamed for the very crimes that were committed against them. If you’re asking me to pick one, I’d go with genocide, because it is the most reprehensible.

Principally, when you consider that the term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin to provide a lexicon for the Jewish experience in the Holocaust.

Ultimately the acts of the seventh of October were acts of genocide by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, and even Palestinian civilians targeting Jews. The fact that the experience would be weaponized against the Jews in this fashion, and they would be accused of this, is projection.

It’s clear to me that when South Africa brought this claim of genocide at the International Court of Justice, it didn’t have much hope of getting (a win) on it. It was trying to shift the debate and shift the Overton window.

In fact, when I was on (a broadcast) immediately after, my counterpart in this debate said, “Isn’t it wonderful, now we can finally use Israel and genocide in the same sentence, and nobody can tell us otherwise?” They’ve clearly been successful in doing that, even though the case has absolutely no resemblance to reality.

The Canadian government recently sanctioned two Israeli Knesset members, and in the same statement saying that Judea and Samaria are “illegally occupied.” What’s your response?

There is no illegal occupation to speak of, so (Prime Minister Mark) Carney’s wrong about that. It’s a policy that, as far as I can see, isn’t driven by legal analysis, but by political agenda.

There are demographic issues here, and riding issues of constituencies, and who it is that he needs to kowtow to, that these policies are being put in place.

As a lawyer, we look for the proper and equal application of international law. You cannot have a general rule like 

uti possidetis juris

, then an exception for a country you don’t like very much, where you have some ideological or political opposition to it. That’s not how any respectable legal system can operate.

Mark Carney and his government are actually undermining the very notion of international rule of law, and the international legal system, by inverting it.

Special to the National Post

This interview has been edited for brevity.

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An Iranian whose refugee claim was turned down in Canada because he was convicted in England 16 years ago of a serious assault that left one person dead and another two injured will get another shot at arguing he should be allowed to stay here because his bisexuality, Kurdish ethnicity, conversion from Islam to Christianity and identity as a Westerner would all put him at risk back home.

An immigration officer refused Sirus Lotfi’s last ditch plea to stay in Canada in March 2024, arguing he had not provided sufficient evidence to establish the basis for his protection claim.

“I respectfully disagree with this position,” Justice Angus Grant wrote in a recent Federal Court decision out of Toronto.

“On the core details related to the applicant’s risk factors, the affidavit (outlining those) was detailed and comprehensive. This was particularly the case with respect to (Lotfi’s) sexual orientation. The affidavit contained many details, from the applicant’s first homosexual encounters, to subsequent relationships, to his time spent in Tehran, frequenting a park where gay men would meet. Moreover, the documentary evidence before the officer clearly raised concerns with respect to the applicant’s safety, assuming the risk factors he raised in his affidavit were true. This being the case, there was simply no doubt that the facts set out in the applicant’s affidavit, if believed, would have justified granting the application.”

The judge noted “the well-established principle that when an individual in refugee protection proceedings swears to the truth of their testimony, that testimony is presumed to be true unless there is a valid reason to doubt its truthfulness.”

The immigration officer’s conclusion that Lotfi “had not established facts that he had categorically and unambiguously sworn to be true” amounted to a “veiled credibility finding,” Grant said. In other words, the immigration officer questioned Lotfi’s honesty without explicitly stating the Iranian’s credibility was in doubt.

The judge granted Lotfi’s application for a judicial review.

“The matter is remitted to a different decision-maker for reconsideration,” Grant said in his decision dated June 18.

Lotfi “entered Canada in November 2022 on a fraudulently obtained passport and made a claim for refugee protection,” said the decision.

“He did not have any other identity documents with him at the time, so he was arrested and detained by the Canada Border Services Agency.”

While Lotfi was in detention, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada “learned that in April 2009, the applicant was convicted in England with intent to do grievous bodily harm,” it said. “The Canadian equivalent of this offence is aggravated assault.”

Because of his conviction, for which he served half of a 10-year prison sentence, “Lotfi was referred for an admissibility hearing before the Immigration Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board,” said the decision.

It found Lotfi “was inadmissible to Canada on grounds of serious criminality.”

That meant Lotfi became ineligible for his refugee claim to be heard, so he applied for a pre-removal risk assessment — his last ditch plea to stay in Canada.

For that hearing, Lotfi submitted a detailed written argument alleging that he would be at risk in Iran on four distinct grounds. But the immigration officer hearing his case noted Lotfi’s lack of supporting evidence to establish his claim for protection.

The court heard Lotfi “had essentially no relationship with his mother in Iran, and moved to Germany as a young adolescent, where his father placed him in a boarding school.”

At some point his family “stopped paying tuition fees for this school, and he was subsequently placed in a Christian orphanage where he lived until he turned 18,” said the decision.

“Over the course of these years, (Lotfi) grew disconnected with his Islamic background and gravitated towards Christianity. At one point while at the orphanage, he tattooed a cross on his shoulder.”

Lotfi “also explained how he explored his sexual orientation while in the orphanage, though this was not easy to do. At 20, the applicant learned that his father had committed suicide. This led to a period of serious drug addiction, and in 2007 (he) was removed to Iran.”

Lotfi “had a difficult time adjusting to life back in Iran,” said the decision.

“Eventually, he learned of a park where gay men met to have sex. He began frequenting the park and having encounters with men, despite the obvious dangers that this posed. Eventually, however, (he) decided to leave Iran and went to the United Kingdom.”

The subsequent altercation in England “led to his criminal conviction, which resulted in the death of one individual and the injury of two others,” said the decision.

“He claims that he acted in self-defence, but contrary to the advice of his lawyer, he plead guilty and was sentenced to a ten-year sentence, of which he served five years. While in prison, (Lotfi) stated that he received mental health treatment for the first time, that he disavowed drugs, and formally converted to Christianity.”

• EU condemns death sentences for two women in Iran
• Determining gay refugees a difficult task, but risk of bogus claimants is ‘exaggerated,’ experts say

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

An incredible 16 billion passwords have been leaked in what tech experts are calling the largest data breach ever.

The breach contains a massive amount of information that can affect billions of online accounts since cybercriminals now have access to a massive amount of login credentials.

Cybernews researcher Vilius Petkauskas, whose team has been investigating the online theft since the beginning of the year, told

Forbes Magazine

that the breach comprised “30 exposed datasets” including logins from Apple, Google, Facebook and more.

A

Cybernews report

details that the stolen records from the 30 databases, each contain up to 3.5 billion passwords from social media and VPN logins to corporate platforms.

These aren’t just “old breaches being recycled” but rather “fresh, weaponizable intelligence at scale,” the Cybernews researchers warned.

Here’s how to find out if you’re affected and how to stay safe.

What has been exposed in the leak?

Currently, almost all major platforms have been affected, including Apple accounts (formerly Apple IDs), Gmail, Facebook and GitHub, as well as instant messaging platforms such as Telegram and commercial and government platform portals.

The data appears to contain URLs, usernames and passwords. “However, with the unfathomable size of the data that’s been exposed, there’s no way to tell how many accounts are currently under threat,” reports

tomsguide.com

.

The stolen data appears to come from several infostealers (malicious software created to breach computer systems and steal sensitive information, such as login details). The datasets are reportedly new, but the

sheer amount of info

could also be from a mix of different datasets from previous breaches.

One of those previous breaches included a database containing 184 million records, as reported by

Wired Magazine

in May.

How can you protect your accounts?

First, check on your accounts. To find out if your login credentials have been affected, you could use:

Have I Been Pwned

.

Second, change passwords to affected accounts, but consider doing it anyway with any major accounts where you may be at risk. (Apple, Facebook, Google).

Third, a recommended method to keep your accounts secure is to enable two-factor authentication (2FA). This is intended to stop threat actors from easily accessing your online accounts. A second-step authentication through an app, phone, passcode or a physical USB key will need to be approved by you.

If you haven’t already, find out how to

enable 2FA here

.

Fourth, delete unused accounts and consider using a

password manager

to secure your online accounts. A password manager provides a secure place to store all your passwords in one place, so you can autofill them into a website or app instead of remembering all of them.

Fifth, consider using

passkeys instead of passwords

. Passkeys aim to keep your accounts more secure by using passwordless logins instead of traditional passwords. Each passkey is unique — a digital key that can’t be reused. They’re also stored in an encrypted format on your devices, instead of on a company’s server. That keeps them safe from a data breach.

• Global Affairs investigating ‘malicious’ hack after VPN compromised for over one month
• China-backed hacker hijacked 9,200 Canadian devices to operate illegal hacking network: FBI and CSIS

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Canada Post and its second-largest union have reached an agreement in the ongoing labour dispute between the postal service and its workers.

In a

statement released Thursday

, the employer said it has a new collective agreement with the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association. As Canada Post’s second-largest union, CPAA represents more than 8,500 employees, primarily those responsible for managing post offices in rural Canada.

What are the terms of the new agreement?

The new agreement includes an 11 per cent wage increase over three years, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2024. The increase is split between 6 per cent in 2024, 3 per cent in 2025, and 2 per cent in 2026. The agreement is effective from Jan. 1, 2024, to Dec. 31, 2026.

According to a

release from the union

, the agreement also includes a $1,000 lump-sum payment to all full-time employees on the date of its signing, and $500 to all other employees.

Does this end the threat of a Canada Post strike?

No. Canada Post is still trying to reach a deal with CUPW, its largest union, which represents about 55,000 postal workers. It has been in a strike position since May 23, with the union having imposed a

ban on overtime

since that date.

Last week, the corporation received notice that Patty Hajdu, the minister of jobs and families, had approved its request for a

vote to take place

on the company’s final offers to CUPW, which was delivered on May 28. The vote will be administered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board as soon as possible.

“Canada Post welcomes the Minister’s decision as it will provide employees with the opportunity to have a voice and to vote on a new collective agreement at a critical point in the company’s history,” the company said

in a statement

. It is still unclear when the vote will take place.

What is Canada Post’s final offer?

Canada Post’s final offer includes a 13.59 per cent cumulative wage hike over four years and a plan to have part-time workers for weekend delivery.

It’s also offering a signing bonus of up to $1,000 and an end to compulsory overtime. “The company is no longer proposing a new health benefits plan, changes to employees’ post-retirement benefits, or enrolling future employees in the defined contribution pension,” according to Canada Post.

Are any other unions involved?

A number of Canada Post workers are part of PSAC, the Public Service Alliance of Canada. However, in April that union announced that it would

defer bargaining

until 2026, after agreeing to a 5 per cent increase retroactive to Sept. 1, 2024, without any concessions on other issues.

When was the last Canada Post strike?

Mail carriers last went on strike for 32 days beginning Nov. 15, at the height of the pre-holiday shipping season last year. That ended with a back-to-work order and an extension of the current collective agreement to May 22, which brings us to where we are now.

— With files from Canadian Press

• Canada Post says strike contributed $208M to the company’s $1.3B loss last year
• Empty mailbox: What will be lost if Canada Post goes out of business?

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.