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He's dodged bullets his whole life, so he didn't even break a sweat when he had to dodge an arrest warrant.

Which is precisely what Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak found himself doing in London in September, while preparing to meet with Britain's prime minister and its foreign secretary. That same week, IDF Lt. Col. David Benjamin, a reserve officer, found out he was the target of a senior prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

Both cases stemmed from the IDF's successful counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza last year.

On Jan. 7, Brooke Goldstein, director of the Children's Rights Institute and former director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, appeared on John Batchelor's WABC radio show to set the record straight on the continuing use of what's known as "lawfare" against Israel and the West.

"It's a very new term; it basically means the use of the law as a weapon of war. Or, more specifically, the manipulation of a legal system to achieve a specific end," Goldstein told Batchelor and the segment's guest host, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Goldstein described the three types of lawfare: "lawfare efforts that frustrate our ability to fight terrorism; lawfare efforts that are aimed at delegitimizing states, such as Israel and the United States; and lawfare that punishes free speech."

Goldstein noted the manipulation of the legal term "universal jurisdiction," and she's dead-on; here's how the U.K. Guardian reported the claim in Barak's case: "Solicitors are asking a district judge at the City of Westminster magistrates court to issue a warrant for Barak's arrest under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, which gives courts in England and Wales universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases."

And here's how Haaretz explained the investigation of Benjamin, a duel citizen of Israel and South Africa, where he was born: "Newsweek magazine released an interview Monday with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina in which he said he is convinced his office has the authority to launch an investigation into Benjamin's actions," because South Africa signed the ICC's founding treaty, "so the ICC is authorized to indict its citizens."

So why are rogue prosecutors from London and Argentina litigating a war between a terrorist organization (Hamas) and its neighbor, Israel? The answer, as Goldstein shrewdly points out, is the crux of the concept of lawfare: it isn't about the law. Rather, it's a way -- as Goldstein alluded to in her opening definition of the term -- for enemies of Israel and the U.S. to join a war against them without having to send soldiers, by attempting various legal maneuvers designed to hamstring the Israeli or U.S. military.

Goldstein mentioned three types of lawfare, the last of which punishes free speech. I wasn't surprised to hear her say that; the last time I met Goldstein, she and I were talking with Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders about his status as a prime target for jihadists after he released the film "Fitna," about the connection between the Quran and Islamic terrorism. That was in October 2008.

Besides needing constant protection, Wilders faced another threat: last week, his trial began. He stands accused of "incitement to hatred," "discrimination," and "insulting Muslims," and could face up to 15 months in prison.

Many remember that in 2008 the writer Mark Steyn was sued by Khurrum Awan of the Canadian Islamic Congress for warning of Islam's demographic advance. Awan lost the suit, but he bragged that it cost the magazine that ran Steyn's offending article $2 million. Awan was quoted as saying "we attained our strategic objective -- to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material."

Well, Awan has now turned to Canadian writer Ezra Levant, who openly criticized Awan's crusade against Steyn. Awan is suing Levant for libel. "This is the soft jihad of 'lawfare', the strategy where anti-Western radicals use our own laws to attack us, rather than pantybombs or shoebombs," Levant writes on his Web site.

Like many tactics of warfare, lawfare was tested on Israel but has been expanded to the West. Back at that October 2008 meeting, Wilders warned of this: "If they can get Israel, they can get everything," he said. "Therefore, it is not that the West has a stake in Israel, it is Israel."

At the opening of his trial on Friday, Wilders again offered a warning for the world to heed: "Future generations will wonder how we, in 2010, at this location, in this room, served our most precious asset. Whether the freedom is for both sides in this debate and thus also for Islam-critics. Or whether in the Netherlands only one side of the debate may be heard. Whether freedom of speech in the Netherlands applies to everyone, or only to some."

"The answer to that," he added, "is immediately also the answer to the question whether freedom still has a home in this country."

That question has now gone global. How would we answer it?

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.