53 Spring-Summer 2017 played a major role in the Israel delegation to the Reparations agreement with Germany and later served as a consultant to Gideon Hausner and Gabriel Bach, the prosecutors at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Hausner wrote that it was Robinson's blueprint that was "the central pillar" of the international law arguments in the case (p. 81). As is well known to lawyers, it was the Israeli Court decision in this case that set the international law precedent establishing universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity. When the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed in 1939, an arbitration commission was established by the Pact to settle outstanding disputes. Daniel A. Greenberg in his essay relates that Robinson "told me with some amusement how Molotov had nominated him to be one of the members of that commission, a nomination that of course was vetoed by the Nazi regime because he was a Jew" (p. 216). Robinson was rightly considered at the time as one of the leading world experts on the United Nations, and he was a fervent believer in advancing its principles. This didn't prevent him from taking a sober view of reality, and in his 1958 seminal lecture published by the prestigious Hague Academy he wrote that "neither in letter, nor in spirit, nor in substance is the United Nations what it was supposed to become" (p. 161). Robinson was a keen observer of the international scene and his comment on Russia, years before Perestroika, was prescient. "Russia and the Soviet Empire will never last. It is beset by enormous centrifugal forces that are constantly working to tear it apart" (p. 213). Perhaps because my grandparents were Litvaks, I particularly enjoyed reading Shabtai Rosenne's assessment of Robinson: He "displayed all the characteristics popularly associated with the intellectual leaders of Lithuanian Jewry — the qualities of accuracy, of rational analysis, of absence of public show of emotions, of coolness in adverse circumstances and of satisfaction at success" (p. 83). n Robbie Sabel is a professor of international law at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, a former Legal Advisor to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Advisory Board of Justice.
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