Judges Julia Sebutinde and Nawaf Salam of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, May 16.
PHOTO: YVES HERMAN/REUTERS.
By Robert Nicholson, an adviser to The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation.
This article was published on July 21th – The Wall Street Journal.
In a gross miscarriage of justice that surprised no one, the main judicial body of the
United Nations has attacked Jewish self-determination in Jerusalem, Judea and
Samaria. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion Friday
saying that Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinian Territories violates international law.
The ICJ’s opinion is nonbinding but will reinvigorate the
Palestinian crusade against Israel and the West. Yet Western leaders seem oblivious
and indifferent.
In legal terms, the opinion is little more than a warmed-over presentation of the
Palestinian narrative. The real story is the civilizational context that surrounds the
case and Western powers’ failure to see it. Several judges took issue with the
majority opinion, but it was a woman from Uganda—Judge Julia Sebutinde, the
court’s vice president and the only full dissenter in the case—who has come out to
tell it like it is.
Judge Sebutinde’s dissent is a masterful analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
that dismantles the majority opinion point by point, arguing that the court
shouldn’t have taken the case to begin with. The ICJ is often called the “world
court,” but in fact it has limited jurisdiction and can weigh in only when states
formally submit their disputes for review. Israel’s enemies got this case on the
docket by exploiting that rule’s sole exception—that the court can also issue
advisory opinions when asked to do so by the U.N. General Assembly.
The Israel-Palestinian conflict will be solved by a political process based on
negotiations between the parties, Judge Sebutinde wrote, not a judicial settlement
in The Hague. She is nothing if not brave, breaking ranks with her peers in asserting
the legality of Jewish rights in all of Mandatory Palestine. She cites the legal
documents and principles that justify those rights, recounts the history of
Palestinian intransigence, and notes a Jewish presence in the land going back to
ancient times. “Israel,” she wrote, “is not a colonizer.”
Judge Sebutinde also points out how a “pro-Palestinian group of states” is hijacking
institutions like the ICJ to create on paper what they can’t build on the ground. This
group of states speaks in legal language, but its goals and motives flow from
anything but law. After rejecting seven peace offers and mismanaging the West Bank
and Gaza, the Palestine Liberation Organization is waging a multifront legal
intifada designed to sway public opinion and prompt the U.N. Security Council to
act.
The core of this group is a bloc of Arab and Muslim countries for which Jerusalem
carries religious significance and that votes together when it comes to Palestine,
often backed by Russia and China. This isn’t surprising. Is it strange that Muslim
states would stand in defense of Muslim Palestine? That Judge Nawaf Salam,
president of the ICJ and author of the majority opinion, is a Muslim from Lebanon?
Western analysts, polite to a fault, often choose to ignore factors of religion and
culture when analyzing global affairs—and nowhere more so than in the Holy Land.
At the U.N., Western diplomats tend to skip or abstain from controversial votes
rather than anger Israel’s enemies. Historically the U.S. was an exception to the rule.
But nine months after Oct. 7, we find President Biden’s appointee to the ICJ, Judge
Sarah Cleveland, breaking with American tradition and concurring with the
majority against Israel.
The sight of Western judges allowing anti-Western factions to use international
institutions as a weapon against the spiritual forefathers of the West is appalling
and absurd. Thankfully, the absurdity may not be permanent. Fears of Muslim
immigration and a reactionary embrace of Europe’s Christian heritage are fueling a
populist conservatism in Europe that stands to shape the next decade. Changing
political winds in the U.S. may do the same.
More intriguing is the phenomenon Judge Sebutinde represents. She is an African
woman steeped in Pentecostal Christianity who feels a natural kinship with one side
of the conflict. If Judge Salam’s Muslim identity shapes his views, Judge Sebutinde’s
Christianity no doubt shapes hers—and she is no outlier. In a crucial geopolitical
development of the last century, American missionaries seeded evangelical
Christianity across Africa, Asia and Latin America—and with it,
the famous evangelical penchant for Zionism. The political consequences are only now
emerging.
Guatemala’s decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, Kenya’s
condemnation of Hamas after Oct. 7, Fiji’s legal interventions in The Hague on
behalf of Israel in recent months—these are all points on a longer trend line.
Evangelical populations will continue to gain influence in the global south, and
national politics will evolve in response. Looking ahead, it isn’t hard to imagine
Asian and African Christians like Judge Sebutinde leading the fight for Western
values rooted in the biblical tradition while the West continues to grope in the dark.
In time, we could see the emergence of a Judeo-Christian voting bloc at the United
Nations.
In the meantime, our judges and policymakers are unable to see the battle for
Jerusalem as the epochal struggle it is. Undeterred by reality, they insist that a few
more concessions, a bit more dialogue, will cool passions and bring peace closer.
Fortunately, a new class of leaders like Judge Sebutinde have risen from outside the
West with the audacity to tell them that they are wrong.
