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American ICJ Judge Who Voted Against Israel Was Nominated by Biden for Top State Department Role
Judges, including Sarah Cleveland, arrive at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), during a ruling on South Africa’s request to order a halt to Israel’s Rafah offensive in Gaza, in The Hague, Netherlands, May 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Johanna Geron
One of the judges on the top United Nations court who voted on Friday to end Israel’s military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was previously nominated by US President Joe Biden to serve as a senior State Department official.
In Aug. 2021, Biden announced his intent to nominate Sarah Cleveland, an American, to serve as the legal adviser for the State Department in his administration. The nomination was ultimately unsuccessful, as she was not voted out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Two years later in November 2023, Cleveland, a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee, won election to sit on the bench of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded to Cleveland’s election by showering her with fawning praise. He expressed approval of Cleveland’s “vision for an ICJ that is judicially independent, preserves the integrity and authority of the court, and ensures the dignity of all people.”
The ICJ fills five seats during each general election cycle. Judges are nominated by a group of international law experts appointed by their country’s government. The United Nations General Assembly and Security Council member countries vote separately and secretly to pick the judges who will sit on the bench.
In an interview with Columbia Law School, Cleveland shared that her successful election could be attributed in part to her willingness to vote against American interests.
“Fundamentally, what the rest of the world wanted to see was that the US candidate to the court was independent from the US government, was interested in their individual countries, and understood their perspective,” Cleveland said. “They did not want a judge from a permanent member of the Security Council who would predictably vote for her own country’s interests.”
To win support from countries in the United Nations, Cleveland touted her history of standing against the US government’s positions on controversial issues.
“I have a long record of independence from the US government, since my very first case — as a student in a human rights clinic at Yale Law School — which was a lawsuit against the US government on behalf of Haitian refugees detained at Guantanamo,” she said.
On Friday, the ICJ issued a ruling demanding that Israel halt its military operations against the Hamas terrorist group in Rafah and allow for significantly more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Critics of the court have accused the ICJ, along with other major international organizations, of harboring substantial and unfair bias against Israel.
The order was adopted by the panel of 15 judges from around the world in a 13-2 vote, opposed by judges from Uganda and Israel itself.
If carried out, the ICJ ruling would effectively end Israel’s campaign to dismantle Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the war in Gaza by invading southern Israel on Oct. 7, murdering 1,200 people, and kidnapping over 250 others as hostages.
However, Israeli officials have indicated the Jewish state will not comply with the ruling of the court, which has no enforcement powers.
The post American ICJ Judge Who Voted Against Israel Was Nominated by Biden for Top State Department Role first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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