Theodor Meron

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Theodor Meron (b. 28 April 1930) was the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) until 2005. and was a judge in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

He now serves as a judge on the ICTY.

Born in Kalisz, Poland, Theodor Meron received his legal education at the Hebrew University, Harvard and Cambridge. Since 1977, he has been a Professor of International Law and, since 1994, the holder of the Charles L. Denison Chair at New York University Law School. In 2000-2001, he served as Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State.

In the late 1960s, he was legal counsel to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and wrote a secret 1967 memo for Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who was considering creating an Israeli settlement at Kfar Etzion. This was just after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Meron argued that creating new settlements in the Occupied Territories would be a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Eshkol went ahead to create the settlement anyway and so began the Greater Israel movement and Israel's settlement enterprise.