The ICJ is Bigoted, Biased and Anti-Semitic
In July 2004, when the International Court of Justice rendered its advisory opinion on the Wall, many newspapers in Israel, North America and the UK featured articles, editorials and letters attacking its integrity.
One notorious apologist for Israel wrote an op-ed piece that was published by a prominent English-language newspaper in Israel accusing the ICJ of bias and comparing it to a Mississippi court in 1930s America (Alan Dershowitz, “Israel follows its own law, not bigoted Hague decision,” The Jerusalem Post, 11 July 2004).
Dershowitz claimed that he wrote the article before the ICJ rendered its opinion. He said the Court deserved “the contempt of decent people for its bigoted processes and its predetermined partisan result.”
Similarly, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post (“Travesty at The Hague,” 16 July 2004) wrote:
“It must be noted that one of the signatories of this attempt to force Israel to tear down its most effective means of preventing the slaughter of innocent Jews was the judge from Germany.”
Krauthammer was referring to Bruno Simma, one the world’s most widely respected judges on international law.
Interestingly, Krauthammer failed to mention that the US judge, Thomas Buergenthal, is a Holocaust survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, or that the British judge, Rosalyn Higgins, is also Jewish.
Yet this did not prevent either of these judges from ruling on the salient aspects of international law that arose in the case (although Buergenthal dissented to hear the case he let it be known in his separate opinion that he agreed with the rest of his colleague on most of the merits).
Allegations that the ICJ takes a partisan approach when fulfilling its judicial tasks, which it takes very seriously, are simply misplaced and unfounded. There are 15 judges who sit on the bench in the Court in the Peace Palace in The Hague. Of those, eight judges come from the developed world (the US, Europe, Australia and Japan), and only seven come from the developing world (Africa, Asia and Latin America).
The composition of the Court that opined on the legality of Israel’s Wall consisted of judges from the following countries:
The developed world (eight judges):
1. Gilbert Guillaume (France)
2. Vladlen S. Vereshchetin (Russian Federation)
3. Rosalyn Higgins (UK)
4. Pieter H. Kooijmans (Netherlands)
5. Thomas Buergenthal (US)
6. Hirashi Owada (Japan)
7. Bruno Simma (Germany)
8. Peter Tomka (Slovakia)
The developing world (seven judges):
1. Shi Jiuyong (China)
2. Raymond Ranjeva (Madagascar)
3. Abdul G. Koroma (Sierra Leone)
4. Gonzalo Parra-Aranguren (Venezuela)
5. Francisco Rezek (Brazil)
6. Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh (Jordan)
7. Nabil Elaraby (Egypt)
These judges are widely considered extremely conservative, and not “judicial activists” in any sense of the term. The median age of the judges was 67 years. Collectively, they have over 500 years of professional experience. Most of the judges are top academics in their field, or have played prominent roles in the international affairs of their respective countries.
One should therefore be cautious in making allegations of bias against a judiciary on the basis of their nationality, gender, race, religion or ideological outlook.
As the late Judge Manfred Lachs (the longest-serving member of the ICJ) once wrote in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law:
“It is a gross simplification to identify a judge’s views of legal issues with his nationality, and still more gross to identify his opinions with his nation, an error frequent in press reports that treat the International Court of Justice as merely a Security Council that substitutes legal for political vocabulary.”
When it came to the illegality of Israel’s Wall, the ICJ was unanimous on all the major issues of contention presented to it. Allegations that it is biased simply do not stand up to judicial scrutiny. It is simply ludicrous to compare it with a Mississippi Court in 1930s America, or to insinuate that a judge is biased because of his nationality or religion.
For further reading:
Alan Dershowitz, “Israel follows its own law, not bigoted Hague decision,” The Jerusalem Post, 11 July 2004. You can access this article if you register as a member at the Jerusalem Post Membership Centre (access is free) here.
Charles Krauthammer, “Travesty at The Hague,” The Washington Post, 16 July 2004
Judge Manfred Lach’s comment: “A Few Thoughts on the Independence of Judges of the International Court of Justice,” in volume 25 of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (1987) pp. 594 - 600 at p. 595;
Chittharanjan F. Amerasinghe, “Judges of the International Court of Justice - Election and Qualifications,” in volume 14 of the Leiden Journal of International Law (2001) at pp. 335 - 348 and in particular pp. 345 - 347;
B.A. Wortley, “The Judges of the World Court: The National Element,” in volume 26 of the Indian Journal of International Law (1986) at pp. 448 - 451.
For the biographies of ICJ judges click here.
Information on Thomas Buergenthal can be accessed here.