
Theodor Meron, international lawyer and Holocaust survivor.
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Nick Robinson
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Nick Robinson
Hello and welcome to Political Thinking. We risk a repeat of what was seen in the 1930s, say those who worry aloud about the spread of anti Jewish hatred here in Britain. That others contend is to use the horror of the Holocaust to try to silence criticism of the horrors which Israel, the world's only Jewish state, is now responsible for. One man is better placed than most to judge these competing arguments. He's my guest on Political Thinking. Theodore or Ted Mehron, whose book A Thousand Miracles From Surviving the Holocaust to Judging Genocide, tells the extraordinary story of a boy who was liberated from a Nazi labor camp, went on to be a human rights lawyer in what became Israel, served for two decades as the president of the UN War Crimes Tribunals, and latterly was an advisor to the International Criminal Court when its prosecutor took its most controversial ever decision, the issuing of arrest warrant for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Theodore Mehren, Ted Mehren, thank you for joining me on Political Thinking.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Thank you, Nick for inviting me.
Nick Robinson
We're going to talk about that very controversial case that you were involved in, but I want to begin by talking about anti Semitism. Now, you're in an almost unique position to judge whether there are any similarities with what you grew up with back in the 1930s and the growth of antisemitism that it's argued we're seeing now. What do you think the similarities and differences are?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
As a child I was really not aware of antisemitism at school. I went to a state school. Most of the children were Catholic, not Jewish. I remember constant playing of Chopin's March Polonaise military and so on. I remember all the holidays, celebrations of the great victories of Poland over the Soviet army in the 20s. But I did not suffer or was even aware of antisemitism. Holocaust was quite a different beast. It was the first ever industrial genocide.
Nick Robinson
In many ways, the story of your life is the story of someone who escaped the Holocaust and went on to develop that international human rights law which I want to discuss. But before we do, what do you say to people who say, look, we're seeing some of what we saw in the 1930s here in Britain.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
It's still very, very different. The difference lies in the fact that it seems to me that the British government, the Prime Minister, quite frequently speak very loudly, in a very articulate way, in a very persuasive way, against the growth and existence and manifestations of antisemitism in Poland. To the extent that there were pogroms, there were anti Jewish acts, there were hooligans in the streets who would love to beat up Jewish boys or Jewish children. At that time, there was no public reaction. The mayor of a city or of a village, certainly not cabinet ministers would not speak about it. So I appreciate the fact that the government of the United Kingdom speaks loudly and clearly about the phenomenon of antisemitism, which is frightening. And it's good that the police is doing something about it, that people are trying to see whether, in terms of the existing law, it might be strengthened or might be more effective. But situations were quite different, as we'll
Nick Robinson
go on to discuss. You think that the Netanyahu government may well be guilty of war crimes? You've been highly critical of the policies of Israeli governments in the past as well. But do you think there's a danger that demonization of Israel has contributed to an atmosphere of hatred? Did you ever worry yourself, given that you were part of that proposed arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, that in a way you've contributed to that climate of opinion?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
The demonization of Israel did contribute, I think, to manifestations of anti Semitism all over the world, including in the United Kingdom.
Nick Robinson
But do you worry at all that that arrest warrant contributed to that?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
No. I think that the arrest warrant was required by the application of something that I've always tried to apply in my life, law and evidence.
Nick Robinson
You've told us a little bit of your life growing up in Poland. At the age of nine, the German army come to occupy your part of Poland. Let's reflect for a little while on how you were able to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Your family fled back in September 1939, we fled east.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
We were wandering through Poland, carrying our luggage on our backs, catching trees and stones, rivers where the bridges had been bombed. And eventually we made a decision which was not very wise. We decided to stay in the German part.
Nick Robinson
You chose the Nazis over the Soviets?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I don't know. I think it was not a wise decision. It was many of the unwise decisions which we have made in our lives.
Nick Robinson
Not wise is another of Theodore Mehron's understatements. Isn't it? Because your brother, your elder brother, put up a fight against the Nazis. He was part of the.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
He was five years older. He was, in a way, for me, a sort of a model of bravery because he was an incredibly good cyclist and he could do simple gymnastics miracles on a bicycle. Later, after his deportation, I learned of the fact that in the city, in the ghetto where we lived in Czestochowa, he was involved in resistance activities when he was led to a place where people were being selected either for staying in a labor force or being deported to Treblinka. Treblinka. He attacked a German senior German officer, and that was with a deliberate intent of being killed and not being shipped in terrible conditions to Treblinka. And years later, my father met in Tel Aviv, a barber who survived Treblinka. And he knew my brother, and he said he was involved in the uprising there. This was one uprising which led to a complete destruction of the killing fields, of the crematoria. He was involved and survived it, apparently, and escaped and never found.
Nick Robinson
And how did you, the younger brother, survive? You were not sent to Treblinka and you survived, really, because one day you came home a few minutes late.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I often said to myself, looking back at my life, that except for a terrible childhood, the most terrible imaginable, I had a lot of luck in life. And on this day, apparently good God decided that he does not wish to have my company as yet.
Nick Robinson
On that particular day, what was your piece of luck?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Let me tell you first that the Germans proceeded with the Holocaust in a very, very systematic way. First they created large G. Then people, Jews from surrounding communities, towns, villages were forced to go to that ghetto. Then eventually, the big ghettos were liquidated by people being sent to one of the killing camps. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor. We were first in a big ghetto, and eventually we were moved. Most of my family was sent to Treblinka and liquidated. I was saved.
Nick Robinson
Liquidated is a. Is again one of those Words that is often used with the Holocaust. Your mother was murdered. Your grandmother was murdered. Large parts of your family was murdered.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Both my maternal and paternal grandparents, my brother, my mother.
Nick Robinson
For the crime of being Jews.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
For the crime of being Jews. What happened to us in this small ghetto was sort of general interest in the sense that we were given a sort of a living place which was very primitive, no electricity, no water, no nothing. And Jewish resistance one evening came home, they were armed, and they said, terribly sorry to impose on you, but we are going to dig into tunnels under the barbed wires to try and smuggle arms from Polish resistance when we can get it and eventually try to escape. When the inevitable day comes and I got a small job in the community council and work typically till 5 o' clock or whatever it is, and I would try to come home on time so that my mother and my father, who lived with us, he was on a labor assignment out of town, would not worry. And one day I came. I was about 15, 20 minutes late. I didn't know what was happening there. And as I approached, I saw that our house is in understatement to describe the habitats that we had at that time were surrounded by German paratroopers. And of course, you could not approach it.
Nick Robinson
And if you had. If you had approached, if you joined
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
there earlier, they were put loaded on trucks and sent to quarries outside of the city. And machine guns, I would have been one of them.
Nick Robinson
As you describe this, and you've obviously described it many times, you're familiar with the story. Even though I've often heard stories of Holocaust survivors, I'm shocked to my core hearing that description. Do you remember your feelings at the time? Was it fear, terror, disbelief?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Perhaps all of the above. And also the ability in the worst of times to find refuge in daydreaming. I found daydreaming at that time a real sort of life savior bringing me back to quasi normality.
Nick Robinson
What did you dream about?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I was dreaming of going to school. I was dreaming of biking in a park. I was dreaming of kayaking. I was dreaming of those wonderful things from which I benefited as a child. All of which suddenly overd in one day, disappeared. I was horrified by the loss of autonomy. I was horrified by not going to school for five years.
Nick Robinson
Because although you did escape being sent to the Nazi death camp, you were sent to a labor camp with your father and were liberated, both of you, by the Soviet troops, which then took you to what was then Palestine and would become, a couple of years later, the new Jewish state of Israel. Do you remember your feelings as you arrived in Palestine? Was it a place of hope? Did you see it as really a place of salvation?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Yes, but translated into smaller factors which are so critical in one's life. The one thing which I found during the war and immediately after the war really so terribly horrifying is not going to school for five years, not seeing a book over five years, being constantly in company of adults, not seeing anybody more or less my age. And the reaction that I developed, which I think was in a way quite logical and natural, was to develop an incredible hunger for education, for books, for being with people my age, not people looking twice bigger and taller than I was at the time.
Nick Robinson
Yes, and you must have had that hug because now look at your incredibly distinguished academic career. Did you have a conscious idea in your mind that the law, in some sense was the answer to the horrors that you'd lived through? That in some sense, rules, order, a legal framework might stop the horrors happening again.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Perhaps not entirely stopped, but at least caused them to become less frequent and not as terrifying and as successful in themselves as they were, bearing in mind the fact that Hitler managed to destroy, not only to kill millions of Jews, but also to destroy a whole tradition, a whole culture, a whole setup of communities.
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Nick Robinson
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Theodore 'Ted' Meron
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Nick Robinson
So let's turn now to this extraordinary moment towards the latter part of your life. What I could describe as your late middle age, now that you're 96, which is this decision that you take. Having been involved in international criminal justice for much of your life, having been president of the War Crime Tribunals. For the UN dealing with both Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The decision you took to be involved in a decision about whether to prosecute the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, you had up until that moment said, I don't want to be involved in decisions about Israel. Why did that change?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Well, in a way, decisions as serious and perhaps historically as important, I took already many years earlier in 67, when I was asked by the Israeli Cabinet to give an opinion to the Israeli government as to whether civilian settlements on the west bank and on the other territories occupied in the June war by Israel, whether the government could establish their civilian settlements, just to explain the history
Nick Robinson
to people who don't know that back in 1967, when Israel came under attack, managed to see off that attack incredibly quickly in those six days, and then occupied the territory which Israel still occupies now and which is so deeply controversial because of the development of Israeli settlements on what is seen internationally and within law as occupied Palestinian land. You're telling us that way back then you said, those settlements shouldn't exist, they're not legal.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I said, the Geneva Convention number four, which is the Geneva Convention dealing with occupation and protection of civilian populations, has provisions which would prohibit entirely and in a not ambivalent way, establishment of civilian outposts, villages, communities on the West Bank. I also said that establishing military bases in the territory was lawful because it was a war and countries may establish military outposts.
Nick Robinson
How was that judgment received then?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
The government was not enthused.
Nick Robinson
Not enthused?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Not enthused.
Nick Robinson
That's another of your understatements. I imagine they were furious, weren't they?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I suppose they were too polite to do it in a very explicit way. But there were a few weeks where the cabinet hesitated as how to handle
Nick Robinson
the opinion because they intended to ignore it.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
They, of course, intended to ignore it from the beginning. But the question was, how are we going to present the decision to ignore that opinion to the world? And they said, well, we will in the beginning call settlements that we establish. And it was a total fiction, of course, as military bases.
Nick Robinson
But this, they would disguise them, in effect.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Disguise. And that fiction didn't even survive for a long time. After a few months, the government, and let me make it clear at this time, it was not a Likut government, it was a Labor government led by a Labor leader, Levi Eshkol. They decided to ignore it. And you know, what really makes me very unhappy about it, looking back, is that I say to myself, had the government accepted my opinion, and not only accepted it formally in formal terms, but really carried it out, we probably would have been living in a different Middle east, in a different world, in a world which maybe we would have had peace between the Arabs and the Jews, between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Nick Robinson
When you look at what's happening on the west bank now, in which it's clear that settlers are attacking Palestinians in their villages in order to drive them out of that land, to occupy more and more of the land, to make it argued often, the two state solution impossible to implement, even if it can ever be agreed. What do you think of what's happening now?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
It really breaks my heart, I told you, in a different context. Recently I started writing poetry. And one of the poems which I have recently written, which was published, I call it the Pogroms, speaking of the memory of terrible pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe and saying how horrible it is. The Jews who for centuries were subject to pogroms, to rapes, to burning of property, to plunder of property, yet that some of them, not all of them, I'm sure, but many of the religious fanatic settlers on the west bank resort to a phenomenon, to action, which I am forced as a lawyer to regard as pogroms.
Nick Robinson
And you know, as you, it breaks
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
my heart, you know, as you use
Nick Robinson
that word, as you wrote that word in your poetry, that that is a knife to the heart of many Israeli Jews because you're using words to describe the horrors that they suffered and saying that they are now doing it to other people.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I think that the legal advisers of governments, I think the judges in international criminal courts have a very high ethical obligation, professional obligation, obligation of integrity, to call the things the way things are.
Nick Robinson
Let's turn now from you being a lawyer in Israel, giving this rather difficult advice to the then Israeli in 67, back in 67, two years later. And you've had a lifetime's involvement by then in the development of international criminal justice. You've been the president of the tribunals dealing with Rwanda and dealing with five
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
decades working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, with which I am still very much involved.
Nick Robinson
Now, throughout that time, you had taken a decision not to get involved in cases that might involve Israel, your old homeland. What made you decide that you would when it came to the fallout of the Gaza war?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Let me explain that. I joined the International Criminal Court in a way about two years before the Gaza war and the Netanyahu war ended. I was approached by the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, and I said to myself, it would be hypocritical if I Having spent nearly 20 years in leading international criminal courts, when they pertained, when we were involved in cases on Rwanda or on the breakup of the Balkans, when it comes to something which touches me, I say I stay out. I said to myself, I have an obligation to say yes. I told him. I told Karim Khan, I wish you would not have phoned me. I wish you would not have approached me, but I am afraid that I have no choice now.
Nick Robinson
You wish he hadn't called you because you feared the consequences, or it placed you morally.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
It placed me morally in this sort of conflictual situation. I wish I would not be confident that I would not have to deal with issues pertaining to a country which was very good to me historically, to which I owe a lot. But I felt that when it comes to war crimes, we really, as professionals, as lawyers, as judges, we have a higher obligation to try and get people, respect the law. And one of the ways to do it is to strengthen the principle of accountability, to end. Put an end to the practice of impunity for war crimes. So he asked me, in fact, take the plane. We want you at the Hague on Monday.
Nick Robinson
And when you were at the Hague and when you were meeting with those other barristers, you then wrote as a group a legal judgment that there was a case for Israel's leaders to answer as well as the leader.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
We judged. I would not call it a judgment. We wrote an opinion.
Nick Robinson
An opinion, forgive me, a possible prosecution for war crimes. It wasn't your job to find the guilty.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Let me emphasize that our function was very, very narrow. It was limited. It was to determine whether, according to the evidence which was presented to us by Karim Khan, we would think that that evidence would be adequate for the charges before an international Criminal Court.
Nick Robinson
Yeah. So you, to be clear, you were expressing a legal opinion. You were not judging because that would.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
We were not judging. Decision for a future court case reached unanimously.
Nick Robinson
Let's turn to the reaction to that opinion. There was horror in Israel, wasn't there? Because a country that was still feeling, living really every day, the horror of what Hamas had done on October 7, with many of them thought was the worst crime against Jews since the Holocaust, was itself being accused on the same day of carrying out war crimes the same day as Hamas leaders were also facing that. Did that make you hesitate?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
No, I think that I would have hesitated much more had the arrest warrant not included on the very same day, the charges against the Hamas leaders. I think that the talk, which I resented then and I do resent now, is accusing Karim Khan of Moral equivalence, because at the same time he went against both parties. There is no question in my mind that what happened on the 7th of October, one of the most cruel, inhuman events that I have witnessed in my lifetime. But here we are. And if we are going to have justice, it must mean following principles of rule of law, the same justice for everybody, for both parties.
Nick Robinson
Let's go to the evidence that was presented to you. On the one hand, the evidence is that Israel attack civilian targets. They say, no, hold on. Hamas hide behind civilian targets. Another part of your opinion was to do with the restriction of food supplies. Israel says vast amounts of food have been supplied to the people in Gaza and their overall defense is we're at war with a group, a terrorist group, as they put it, that had carried out the worst atrocities on Jews since the Holocaust. What were we meant to do?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Well, the responsibility of Hamas for using civilians as covers for military and combat activities was well established. There is no question that this, the fact that, that Hamas combatants were embedded in every school, in every hospital, in every civilian building made the situation extremely difficult. But again, you had to put it into different components, smaller components. There is no question whatsoever that the evidence which was presented to us on the main charge, which was presented, pushed against, pressed against Netanyahu and his Cabinet defense minister, Mr. Galland, was the question of starvation. There is no question that there was a deliberate policy of the Israeli government at that time to limit terribly, provision of supply and food and medicine, medicine to the Gaza Strip.
Nick Robinson
And the defense that Israel has, which is that those supplies were being stolen by Hamas, that they were being sold for huge profits by Hamas, it may
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
very well be that some of them were in fact hijacked or plundered by Hamas. But still, there's no question that looking at the picture as a whole, the population was suffering from starvation. And this was one of the items on which we approved of the charges.
Nick Robinson
Do you believe that that case will ever come to court? Or is it now likely that given that Israel's not a signatory of the treaty that set up the International Criminal Courts, that the United States rejects it, incidentally, Russia rejects it as well, that nothing will happen?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I would not be willing at this point in time to reach this negative conclusion. Things happened, governments change, attitudes change, and people can find themselves at the Hague without willing to go to the Hague. This was our experience in the Balkan Wars. This was the experience of the International Criminal Court recently when they got custody of the ex president of the Philippines.
Nick Robinson
So are you saying that it is possible that One day it may be some years away, Benjamin Netanyahu will end up in the Hague facing prosecution for war crimes.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
One of the things that I did not inherit from my great ancestor is to be a prophet. So I will hesitate to answer very clearly, but please do remember that lots of countries, most of the European countries, for example, which you need to overfly when you go elsewhere, have accepted our parties to the court.
Nick Robinson
So they would have an obligation to arrest him.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
And imagine that because of a storm or otherwise, the plane carrying Mr. Gallant or Mr. Netanyahu would land somewhere in a country which is accepted, which is a party to that country. I cannot now predict what decision politically they would make, whether they in fact deliver, arrest Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Gallant and deliver him up to the Hague. But this is not impossible.
Nick Robinson
I want to end our fascinating conversation by talking about whether this rules based order, this legal framework, which was designed to deal with some of the horrors that you witness as a child, is now completely under threat. Mark Carney, this Canadian Prime Minister talked at Davos, didn't he, about the old order is not coming back.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Perhaps a little bit too apocalyptic.
Nick Robinson
Yeah, too apocalyptic. Why? What makes you an optimist then?
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Well, first of all, let me tell you that being at least in part an optimist is part of a job description of international criminal judges. You cannot deal with those things, deal with those horrors that you see before the eyes and lead and reach judgments which are based not on any prejudice, but on law and evidence without being a little bit optimistic. If you look at the past in which international justice has developed, international criminal law has developed, you see that there is not a simple linear upward and upward way that international law develops in ups and downs. And sometimes the worst atrocities lead to great reform of the law and improvement.
Nick Robinson
Do you think there's a connection, Ted Mehron, between your optimism now as a 96 year old human rights lawyer and the daydreamer of that nine year old dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust by dreaming about canoeing.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
I never thought about this aspect, but I think that you have a point, sir. We need some daydreaming. Time for despair. I don't believe it has come. I think that should we move into the mode of despair, we will not improve the world. We should try to improve it and do it from now on. And I very much like to hope that eventually, before long, we will go from the, to use a biblical expression, from lean years into richer years of a constructive, progressive approach to international criminal law.
Nick Robinson
Theodore Merrin, Ted Marron author of A Thousand Miracles From Surviving the Holocaust to Judging Genocide. Thank you very much for joining me on Political Thinking.
Theodore 'Ted' Meron
Thank you very much for having me.
Nick Robinson
Thanks for listening to this episode of Political Thinking. The producers were Hannah Wilkinson and Flora Murray. The editor is Giles Edwards. There are hundreds of previous conversations like this on BBC Sounds, so do go back and have a listen. If you tap subscribe, each new episode will drop into your feed as soon as they're released.
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Nick Robinson
what do Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney, YouTube megastar MrBeast, and former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg all have in common? They're all being discussed in the new season of Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast which explores the lives and fortunes of the world's super rich. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now. Search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Date: June 12, 2026
Host: Nick Robinson | Guest: Theodor “Ted” Meron
This episode features a powerful and deeply personal conversation between Nick Robinson and Theodor Meron—Holocaust survivor, acclaimed international judge, and advisor to the International Criminal Court (ICC), notably around its controversial arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Together, they explore Meron’s journey from the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland to shaping the principles of international criminal law. The discussion delves into the parallels between past and present antisemitism, the ethical and legal dilemmas around Israel and Palestine, and the continuing promise and peril of a rules-based international order.
The conversation with Theodor Meron moves fluidly from personal testimony of survival and trauma to international judicial responsibility and ethical complexity. Meron remains a person whose hope, capacity for daydreaming, and steadfast commitment to calling things by their right name have shaped not only his own life but the ongoing evolution of justice on the world stage. This episode stands out for its blend of historical witness, intellectual rigor, and cautious, hard-won optimism—anchored by the lived experience of both humanity’s darkest hours and its incremental progress.