[Opinion] The ICJ is not a court
[Excerpts]
The immoral and absurd complaint brought by South Africa – falsely charging Israel with genocide – and the majority’s incoherent preliminary decision highlight the deeply problematic nature of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and related institutions.
The central problem is legitimacy, or rather its absence, in the case of the ICJ specifically, and more generally, regarding the so-called Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and the people and institutions claiming to speak for this enterprise.
In contrast to the legal and court systems of democratic countries, international law lacks basic political legitimacy. Instead, these institutions and individuals, including judges, prosecutors, and professors, are political actors who use soft-power warfare (aka lawfare, or propaganda) to accompany and amplify kinetic conflict (bombs and rockets) through the facade of a legal process.
The ICJ (like its newer counterpart – the International Criminal Court) is linked to the United Nations framework, and its 15 standing “judges” are selected or voted in by the Security Council and General Assembly. The countries that are judged (in this case, Israel) are not duly represented in the process – Israel gets one vote in the GA out of the over 190 UN member states, of which the majority are dictatorships and autocratic regimes, while the Islamic bloc has 55 votes. (For this reason, Israel has never been elected to the Security Council.)
