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The International Court of Justice Ruled Against Israel; Then Its President Became PM of Lebanon
Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam speaks at the presidential palace on the day he meets with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, in Baabda, Lebanon, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
The United Nations General Assembly and Security Council are political institutions that countries use to pursue their foreign policy interests.
For that reason, the UN Charter also established the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to offer opinions based solely on international law rather than politics. This is what the ICJ was charged to do in evaluating charges against Israel last July.
In order for the ICJ to remain nonpolitical, it is composed of a panel of 15 judges, each a citizen of a different nation. These judges are sworn not to represent their home country’s government, or even to be influenced by it. Instead, they are to be guided solely by their conscience and their understanding of the law.
During the period in which hearings about the legal status of Israel’s alleged occupation were held and the advisory opinion was written, Judge Nawaf Salam of Lebanon served as president of the ICJ. In addition to having served as Lebanon’s representative to the UN, he also has an impeccable legal resume.
The ICJ opinion was harshly critical of Israel. It declared that Israel must withdraw from all its “occupied” territories, including eastern Jerusalem, as rapidly as possible without regard for Israel’s historical ties to those places and regardless of the extent to which such a withdrawal endangers Israel’s security. Court President Salam added his own separate declaration, in which he expressed anti-Israel views even stronger than the court’s majority, and found Israel guilty of apartheid.
While it’s tempting to accuse the court of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, we must think long and hard before questioning the motives of those with whom we disagree. The opinion weighs difficult legal issues that people may see differently. The fact that the court’s president was from Lebanon, a known enemy of Israel, is also not an indication that the ICJ is biased as an institution. The 15 judges come from all around the world and there wouldn’t seem to be anything untoward about the Lebanese judge being chosen as chief.
But on January 13,2025, ICJ President Salam abruptly resigned his position to become Lebanon’s new Prime Minister.
One day, he was an international judge sworn not to be influenced whatsoever by the political positions of his home country, then the next day, he was in charge of formulating and advancing the same political positions he had been sworn to ignore.
At this point, one has to wonder to what extent the court’s opinion, and certainly Salam’s personal declaration, were not unbiased legal interpretations — but rather were written with an eye towards currying favor in Lebanon.
It would be best for the ICJ to have a code of ethics mandating a “cooling off period” of at least a year or two during which a former judge cannot be appointed to or campaign for a political office. That way there would be less incentive for judges to use their ICJ opinion writing to audition for jobs back in their home countries, and less reason for those reading court decisions to suspect that is going on. But the ICJ doesn’t currently have such a rule, and so Salam was able to make this overnight transition. That’s a shame, because for an international court to have any standing to deliver a legal opinion on a political controversy, it needs to be seen as completely impartial and above politics.
Salam concluded his separate declaration by stating that he has participated in the proceedings with the deep conviction that he is using law and justice to lay “the foundations for a just and enduring solution to a conflict that has lasted far too long.” But is the ICJ opinion truly a solution based on law and justice, or is it a list of politically-motivated demands designed primarily to resonate with the Lebanese public that he phrased in the language of law?
Salam’s abrupt transition gives us every reason to wonder. Israel and its supporters have yet another valid reason to believe that the international legal system has been rigged against it by politics. On top of that, the job of anyone who wants to promote reliance on impartial international justice is now even harder.
Shlomo Levin is the author of the Human Rights Haggadah, and he writes about legal developments related to human rights issues of interest to the Jewish community. You can find him at https://hrhaggadah.com/.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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