Israel’s Eighth Front: The Weaponization of International Law

International courts claim to champion human rights and justice, but when it comes to Israel, they increasingly trade legal standards for political posturing. From questionable ICC arrest warrants to highly selective ICJ opinions, Israel faces a level of legal discrimination no other democracy endures. The double standards and legal distortions are not just unjust – they’re dangerous. 

The ICC’s Politicized Warrants

It is now clear that the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants issued against Israel’s democratically elected leaders were procedurally flawed and legally questionable, even by the court’s own standards. Last week, the ICC Appeals Chamber agreed to reconsider Israel’s jurisdictional challenge – a challenge the court had previously dismissed as it rushed ahead to pursue warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant. 

Israeli officials reacted swiftly. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar stated on X that the ICC never had jurisdiction over Israel, while Israel’s Ambassador to the UN labelled the court a “political tool”, according to a report in the Times of Israel. When the arrest warrants were initially issued, Prime Minister Netanyahu compared the decision to the infamous Dreyfus Affair, reflecting the sense of injustice he felt had been done with the act. 

Questionable Jurisdiction Claims

At the heart of the controversy is jurisdiction. Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC and rejects its authority – a position shared by other powerful and war-involved nations including the United States, Russia, and China. The ICC previously attempted to investigate US soldiers in Afghanistan, only to meet fierce resistance from Washington. 

To justify its involvement, the ICC claims to act on behalf of the “State of Palestine,” which it defines as covering Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and Eastern Jerusalem. Yet significant legal questions remain about whether such a state exists under international law, especially as no Palestinian Arab entity has ever exercised sovereignty. While the Palestinian Authority exercises limited authority in parts of Judea and Samaria, it has no control over Gaza, which is ruled by Iranian-backed Hamas – a designated terrorist organisation which attacked and violently expelled its Fatah opponents from the Palestinian Authority after the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, when Israel completely withdrew from Gaza for the sake of peace – removing its troops, dismantling 21 Jewish communities and forcibly evacuating over 8,000 Israeli citizens.

This undermines the court’s claim to jurisdiction, particularly in Gaza. Even under international legal precedent, a “State of Palestine” demonstrably fails to meet criteria required to be considered a state, according to the Montevideo Convention (1933), which include: defined territory, permanent population, effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Notably, while the ICC can theoretically exercise jurisdiction over nationals of non-party states if alleged crimes occur on the territory of a party state, this is fraught in this instance given the unresolved legal status under international law.

Legal Hypocrisy and Double Standards

And while the ICC has never prosecuted Syrian, Chinese, North Korean, Venezuelan, or Iranian regime leaders responsible for unspeakable atrocities, it appears to have created a legal framework to target Israel selectively – raising serious concerns about politicisation.  

The warrants also violate Israel’s sovereign right to self-defence. Israel is a Western democracy with an independent judiciary capable of investigating its own military operations, and alleged war crimes, as it has done repeatedly. Israel’s Supreme Court, one of the most activist and independent in the world, has a long history of ruling against government and military policies in cases involving Palestinian petitioners, evidencing its robust legal checks. No other democracy defending itself against terrorism has faced ICC arrest warrants for its leaders. 

Moreover, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan cancelled his planned visit to Israel and Gaza, declined to hear Israeli evidence directly, and proceeded with warrants based on a prior 2021 notification – a move criticized as procedurally improper. 

Israel has also argued that under the Oslo Accords, no Palestinian entity has legal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. The ICC has so far declined to rule definitively on this, stating it would do so only when considering specific arrest warrants for Israeli officials. 

Additionally, according to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Immunity, any Israeli official, on a diplomatic visit to a country subject to the court’s jurisdiction, has diplomatic immunity.  

The Flawed Charges 

The accusations against Israeli leaders – claiming they deliberately starved Gaza’s civilian population and targeted civilians – ignore the complexities of urban and asymmetric warfare, and the environment of and nature of wars in the Middle East. Hamas has long used civilians as human shields and stolen Israeli weapons during the October 7 massacre (which they proudly showed during the horrific hostage release ceremonies). This raises questions about the identification of alleged ‘IDF victims’ and whether some were in fact targeted by Hamas itself, a group notorious for brutalising its own population and executing alleged ‘dissidents’ under its iron-fisted rule.  

The tragic civilian toll in Gaza is the direct result of a double war crime by Hamas: targeting Israeli civilians while embedding among its own – a tactic, documented in prior conflicts including the Operation Protective Edge in 2014 – another war between Israel and terrorists in Gaza.

At the time the ICC produced the arrest warrants, Israel was facilitating the entry of dozens of humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza daily. Later restrictions on aid deliveries were part of Israeli pressure to secure hostage releases – a tactic recognised in international law, provided civilian needs are addressed, and Hamas’s diversion of aid to its machine of terror. 

While the ICC has sought to draw equivalence between Israeli leaders and Hamas commanders, the circumstances could not be more different. To equate Israel’s self-defence after October 7 with Hamas’s massacre is as obscene as equating the United States with Al-Qaeda after 9/11. Notably, the court briefly issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif – after Israel reported his elimination – only to withdraw it after Hamas confirmed his death.  

The controversy also coincided with investigations into damaging allegations of sexual assault against Prosecutor Khan, reported by reputable outlets including Reuters and the BBC, adding another layer of scrutiny to the court’s decision-making. 

Several countries have since criticised these arrest warrants and rejected the idea of arresting the Prime Minister on their soil. The Trump Administration in the United States rightfully put sanctions on the ICC and Karim Khan for the decision and invited Netanyahu to the White House more than once, while the leader of Hungary, one of the ICC’s founding members, Viktor Orbán, announced that his country would soon withdraw from the court. France, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic, and others have also raised concerns over the arrest warrants, and the question of diplomatic immunity.

On the other hand, in a clear attempt to reduce the Israeli morale for victory in the war against Hamas and the return of all hostages, pro-terror and anti-Israel institutions around the world feel emboldened by the ICC’s reckless decision, even brazenly targeting heroic Israeli soldiers abroad with lawfare, simply for serving to defend their country.  

The fact that Hamas and the Iranian regime openly welcomed the ICC’s absurd decision should alone prompt democratic nations to reject its politicised verdict. 

If Israel cannot defend itself against genocidal terrorist organisations that wants to destroy the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and Hamas is rewarded for their tactics, including the use of human shields, then other Western democracies fighting terrorism in the future could face similar consequences. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered over 1,200 Israelis – the highest number of Jews killed in a single day since the Shoah – and abducted more than 250 hostages, including women, children, and the elderly.

The ICJ’s Flawed Advisory Opinion

The ICC controversy isn’t Israel’s only legal battle. In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a non-binding advisory opinion calling for Israel to end its so-called “occupation” of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and East Jerusalem, and withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, essentially calling for Jerusalem’s Old City, the ancient and holy eternal capital of the Jews, be ridden of Jews. 

While often confused, the ICC and the ICJ are two distinct institutions: the ICC prosecutes individuals for alleged war crimes, while the ICJ issues advisory opinions and settles disputes between states. Both, however, have faced growing accusations of politicisation in cases involving Israel.

The ICJ’s simplistic opinion disregards historical, legal, and security realities. Gaza has had no permanent Israeli military or civilian presence since 2005, shares a border with Egypt, and Hamas’s governance over the enclave. The 1949 lines were never internationally recognised borders but temporary ceasefire lines. They were were explicitly rejected as borders by Arab states at the time, and were only intended as military armistice demarcations, not political frontiers. The court’s opinion disregarded the Jewish people’s historic, religious, and indisputable indigenous ties to these territories, Israel’s legitimate security needs, as well as repeated Palestinian rejections of peace offers (from even before the 1948 Partition Plan which would have created an independent Arab state alongside Israel – for example the 1937 Peel Commission which gave approximately 75% of the Land of Israel for an Arab Palestinian State, as well as all of the territory of modern-day Jordan for another Arab state). It overlooked that no Palestinian state has ever existed in these areas, and that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria were established voluntarily – not through forcible transfer, as prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Importantly, Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention was drafted to prevent the kind of mass deportations perpetrated by Nazi Germany, not voluntary settlement in disputed territories without forcible displacement of a local population. International legal precedents, including the 1920 San Remo Conference and the Mandate for Palestine, explicitly recognised the Jewish people’s legal right to reconstitute their national homeland in these territories – rights never legally superseded. The San Remo decisions were incorporated into Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations and formed the legal basis for the British Mandate, giving them binding legal weight under international law. The ICJ also ignored the consistent precedent that successor states to British Mandates typically inherited control over their entire mandate territory.

Notably, before Israel regained these areas in a defensive war in 1967, there were no formal Palestinian sovereignty claims to them. From 1948 to 1967, Judea and Samaria were illegally occupied and annexed by Jordan, a move recognised by only a handful of countries. Jewish residents, especially those of Eastern Jerusalem, were expelled, and dozens of synagogues and ancient cemeteries were desecrated or destroyed – a fact rarely acknowledged in modern discussions about the city’s legal status.  At the time, Palestinian leadership offered little resistance and, in some cases, actively supported Hashemite rule. At the 1950 Jericho Conference, prominent Palestinian figures formally called for the unification of the territory with Jordan under King Abdullah. Throughout this period, no independent Palestinian government or sovereign institutions were established in either Judea and Samaria or Gaza, with Palestinian national aspirations largely absorbed under Jordanian and Egyptian control. It was only after Israel took control of these territories in a defensive war that modern Palestinian nationalism began to assert distinct claims to statehood in these areas.

The ICJ also overlooked defensive realities: Israel took control of these territories in a defensive war against Arab aggression in 1967. And while international courts remain fixated on Israel, they conspicuously avoid issuing advisory opinions on other long-running territorial disputes, including Morocco’s control over Western Sahara and Turkey’s illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s ICJ case accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ lacks credible evidence, and it continues seeking extensions to bolster its claims. It has also been suggested that South Africa’s actions were influenced by the Iranian regime in a report in the Jewish Chronicle that details the ties between the regime and the ANC (African National Congress) which rules South Africa. The ICJ itself called for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas (the taking of which is a war crime and sometimes a crime against humanity, according to the 1949 Geneva Conventions), while several international legal experts and military experts have noted that Israel’s military actions fall within the scope of lawful self-defence under international law, and that Israel’s ratio of civilian to combatant casualties is relatively low considering the circumstances of urban warfare, Hamas’s use of human shields, Hamas’s own rockets that fall short in Gaza and contribute to casualties, and an over 350-mile fortified tunnel network built below. If Israel sought to harm civilians, it not only would not have urged evacuations from areas where combat was taking place and warned civilians before attacks, but also could have caused significantly greater damage in Gaza.  

It wouldn’t be surprising if they ultimately find a way to accuse Israel regardless, especially as ICJ judges are elected by the UN General Assembly – heavily populated by autocracies and anti-Israel blocs. After all, Amnesty International admitted when they accused Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip at the end of last year, they had to change the accepted definition of the word, describing it as ‘an overly cramped interpretation.’ Ireland has already seized the opportunity at the world court, asking the ICJ to ‘broaden’ the interpretation of the word, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and respected news sites.  

No country is without criticism for its conduct, but this clearly shows unprecedented attempts to accuse and charge Israel of crimes in a war it didn’t start.  

The UN’s One-Sided Obsession with Israel

The UN also will not miss an opportunity to scrutinise and condemn Israel, to single out the Jewish state while ignoring or downplaying genuine atrocities elsewhere and to demand that Israel be as small as possible – in size, power, and influence alike. After all, the UN Human Rights Council (which Israel and the United States recently withdrew from), has condemned Israel more times than all other countries combined. We cannot let that happen, especially in a post-Shoah ‘never again’ reality, where Israel must be powerful, decisive, and alert in the face of all possible threats. To this day, the UN has not officially condemned October 7th, while the Secretary General attempted to justify it, uses Hamas’s numbers for the casualty toll in Gaza, and Hamas terrorists are even employed by UNRWA; many even participated in the October 7th massacre and the kidnappings, including of Yonatan Samarano.  

To add to it all, earlier this year, the UK Lawyers for Israel created a report which strongly disputed the previous claims of famine in Gaza from NGOs, including some linked to the UN. Similarly, a report in the Jewish News Syndicate by Mike Wagenheim also suggests that the UN will not confirm there was ever a famine in Gaza despite multiple UN-affiliated agencies repeating the claim throughout the war. As reported in the Times of Israel, those reports from NGOs were used in both the ICC and ICJ cases against Israel.

Qatar’s Malign Influence in the West

Let’s not forget the Qatari-funded antisemitic influence on American campuses – an issue President Trump is addressing. It’s time to question Qatar’s role in the West. Beyond its influence on campuses, Qatar exerts disproportionate soft power through its state-funded media outlet Al Jazeera, which has long faced credible accusations of promoting anti-Israel narratives and providing a platform for extremist voices. While painted as left-leaning in English, it is known to be strongly pro-Hamas and often antisemitic in Arabic. When interviewing in Gaza, Al Jazeera journalists refuse to speak to Gazans who are frustrated with Hamas and the life the terror group has caused for them. As Hamas’s primary patron and a primary backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, why is it still a major non-NATO ally? 

Conclusion: Israel’s Legal and Moral Right to Defend Itself

The growing politicisation of international legal institutions, and antisemitic double standards against Israel undermine their credibility and risks turning international law into a weapon against democracies defending themselves from terror. Israel has every right – and duty – to fight against this legal onslaught, as it does against physical terror.  It is our responsibility to stand against this legal hypocrisy, to outline these facts to the international community and to help Israel not only in the fight on the ground, but also in its legal and moral battles. Luckily, Hillel Neur’s United Nations Watch holds figures in the UN to account, while Nitsana Darshan-Leitner’s Shurat Hadin takes the battles for Israel’s sovereignty and security directly to the courts. Now the United States has ruled that UNRWA is not immune from lawsuits – further strengthening Israel’s credibility, and ability to fight against these institutions.

The Jewish people have returned to their indigenous and ancestral homeland, and no politicised court should be permitted to reverse that fact. As it was foretold in Numbers 23:9: “Behold, a people that dwells alone, and is not reckoned among the nations.”