Date: Saturday, 22 March 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/international-law-is-now-suspended
https://theduran.com/international-law-is-now-suspended-if-not-eliminated/
International law is now suspended, if not eliminated.
21 March 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
PART ONE: The essence of international law is progressive.
A law cannot exist if there are individuals or organizations that fall within its scope but which stand “above the law” — can’t be prosecuted no matter how flagrantly they violate it. EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW IS THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF LAW, and if any exceptions can be allowed, those are ONLY the ones that are stated IN the law as being NOT within its scope — and, thus, the fundamental principle of law is that a law exists ONLY if all individuals or organizations that fall within its scope are subject to investigation and prosecution if they violate it. Otherwise, it’s NOT a “law.” To call it a law is false. The United States Government and its colonies such as Israel can’t be prosecuted for violating international law no matter how flagrantly they violate it. Consequently, international law no longer exists. What DOES exist, then? The traditional ethic does: Might makes right.
For example: Whatever happened to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) so-called ‘investigation’ by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into South Africa’s detailed 99-page fully documented case that Israel’s leaders are committing ethnic cleansing if not genocide in Gaza? The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article “South Africa's genocide case against Israel” asserts that
On 5 April 2024, the court set the schedule for comprehensive submissions of legal opinions by South Africa and Israel. The time limit for the South African memorial was set to be 28 October 2024, and for the Israeli response 28 July 2025.[122] South Africa filed its memorial on 28 October 2024.[123][124][125] In accordance with the ICJ's rules, the memorial is not public. It contains over 750 pages of text and over 4,000 pages of exhibits and annexes.
Consequently, in this legal case, presented by South Africa, which was accepted by the ICJ (International Court of Justice) on 29 December 2023, the jurists will commence their consideration of Israel’s defense, starting on 28 July this year, which might be already after the crime (whatever it might be) has been completed.
On page 93 of the 99-page pdf (or p. 184 of the 194-page document) of the South African filing of the case, is the following:
D. The Risk of Irreparable Prejudice and Urgency
136. The Court “has the power to indicate provisional measures when irreparable prejudice could be caused to rights which are the subject of judicial proceedings or when the alleged disregard of such rights may entail irreparable consequences”557. In particular, the Court has the power to indicate provisional measures “if there is urgency, in the sense that there is a real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused before the Court gives its final decision”558. As the Court recently confirmed, “[t]he condition of urgency is met when the acts susceptible of causing irreparable prejudice can ‘occur at any moment’ before the Court makes a final decision on the case”559.
137. For the purposes of its decision on a request for the indication of provisional measures in a case involving allegations of violations of the Genocide Convention, “[t]he Court is not called upon . . . to establish the existence of breaches of the Genocide Convention, but to determine whether the circumstances require the indication of provisional measures for the protection of rights under this instrument”560, as “found to be plausible”561. As held by the Court, this does not require it to “make definitive findings
That prior Court expressed its concern that “there is real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice” meaning in this case genocide and-or mere ethnic cleansing “will be caused (by Israeli troops armed and guided by American weapons and satellite intelligence, but note here that ONLY Israel and NOT the U.S. is being ‘investigated’ by this Court; so, immediately — because of this inequality before the law — this is not a court of law, but of prejudice in favor of Joe Biden etc.; so, this is already a quasi-court involved with quasi-law) “before the Court gives its final decision,” which will therefore settle nothing but instead create interminable debate because that “decision” will be received as propaganda instead of as anything worthy of respect.
That exemplifies the actual non-existence of international law.
We still live in a Might-makes-right world, NOT (not yet, at least) an international-law world. Why is this?
PART TWO: The source of people’s ethics is an allegedly holy inerrant Scripture.
Every religion is based upon an allegedly holy inerrant Scripture, which contains the unchangeable laws or “commandments” of some anthropomorphized Deity or Almighty ‘God’, such that the “good” is defined as serving that ‘God’ — adhering to its commandments — not serving regular people (THEREFORE: Democracy is impossible in ANY nation whose Government, including its Constitution, recognizes some religion’s “Holy Scripture” as being the SUPREME law in that land — it’s a theocracy instead of a democracy; no other document, than that Scripture, can actually BE its Constitution, because that function, as being the basis for the nation’s laws, has already been ceeded to that Scripture).
Furthermore: unlike any Constitution in any democratic country, any such ‘holy Scripture’ is presumed to be inerrant and therefore cannot even possibly be amended — no provision in it says how its basic laws (the Constitution) may become changed; and, so, though every democratic Constitution allows for Amendments, NO ‘holy Scripture’ can allow any, at all.
What is the DEFINING attribute of “God”? Is it “good”ness? In numerous instances, ‘holy Scripture’ says “God” ordered the extermination of an entire category of people — such as Caananites, and such as homosexuals. No, certainly, the defining attribute isn’t “goodness.” Is it instead power — the idea that the Deity is “The Almighty” — the very personification of power? Obviously yes, because ‘God’ is traditionally described as having created the universe — a creation-story is normally included in any ‘holy Scripture’. So: virtually all religions, which is to say every organized faith-based community, worships POWER: the principle that “Might makes right” is literally at its very foundation. Consequently: if EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW IS THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF LAW, then under any RELIGIOUS law, INEQUALITY before the law is the very foundation-stone of law; and, so, religious law is the exact opposite of “law” in the sense of any democracy. Not only is that not “natural law” (it cannot be accepted as constituting “law” in, say, physics, or biology — not in any of the sciences), but it is FORCED “law,” imposed in order to serve the deity, instead of to serve the public. So, it is entirely artificial: it is, indeed, fraudulent.
Though fraudulent, it is the way human society still and currently IS.
On page 72 of the pdf (p. 142 of the document) of South Africa’s 99-page submission against Israel, appears this:
On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister [Netanyahu] invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”446. The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers447. The relevant biblical passage [1 Samuel 15:3] reads as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.”448.
In other words: their ‘God’ has commanded them to exterminate the Palestinians. This commandment is stated not only in 1 Samuel, which isn’t within their allegedly inerrant and holiest of all Scripture, the first five books of the Bible, which is in every synagogue and is called the Torah, but it is likewise commanded several times ALSO inside the Torah itself, such as:
Here are some of those specific biblical passages that ARE in the Torah (and therefore even MORE binding upon Jews than is 1 Samuel):
Genesis 15:18-21
“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt [the Nile] to the great river, the Euphrates, including the lands of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amoriotes, the Caananites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’”
Deuteronomy 7:1-2
“You must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance: the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. You must put them all to death.”
Deuteronomy 7:16
“Destroy every nation that the Lord your God places in your power, and do not show them any mercy.”
Deuteronomy 20:16-18
“When you capture cities in the land he Lord your God is giving you, kill everyone. Completely destroy all the people: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord has ordered you to do. Kill them so that they will not make you sin against the Lord by teaching you to do all the disgusting things they do in the worship of their gods.”
Israel’s Government takes such passages as ‘justifying’ what they do to Palestinians. And the vast majority of Israelis agree with that viewpoint. America’s Government says it doesn’t like what Israel is doing, but nonetheless continues to provide almost all of the weaponry and satellite intelligence in order to do it, and is therefore co-equal with Israel in doing this genocide, but (since America pretends to be not a theocratic nation [and our Constitution is entirely secular, so anything at all theocratic in the U.S. Government would actually be traitorous], and not even an aristocratic nation, but instead a democratic nation — though it now IS actually an aristocratic nation) alleges that it isn’t participating in the genocide. That allegation by the U.S. Government is clearly a lie.
Following after that in South Africa’s case against Israel, are many similar biblical citations by other top Israeli officials. Also, some of Israel’s traditional heroes are cited, such as (p. 76 or 150):
— Israeli army reservist “motivational speech”: On 11 October 2023, 95-year old Israeli army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1948 Nakba — reportedly called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion, was broadcast on social media inciting other soldiers to genocide as follows, while being driven around in an Israeli army vehicle, dressed in Israeli army fatigues: “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live . . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him . . . We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what’s in front of us, and destroy houses, then destroy the one after it. With all of our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase them.”477
The descendants of “the Hittites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites” and of “the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, … the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amoriotes, … [and of] the Girgashites” had been allegedly ordered by ‘God’ to be exterminated, but not all of them actually were exterminated; and, so, now, the Israelites — with American assistance — are trying to complete the job, starting with the residents in Gaza.
Consequently, the facts of this case are indisputable that Israel is indeed committing ethnic cleansing if not outright genocide in Gaza; but, how will the ICJ, and then the ICC after it, be dealing with the case: As expressing biblical law; or instead as expressing international law?
The strongest existing sign of the answer to that question will now be documented here:
The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article on Julia Sebutinde focuses on her being a female Black who rose from Uganda’s middle class to become now the ICJ’s Acting President after her having entered Edinburgh University’s Law School in 1990, graduated with a Master of Laws degree in 1991, and then being awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws there in 2009, after her being pushed forward by the U.N.; and, then on 13 December 2011, Sebutinde received an absolute majority of votes in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, and thus was declared elected to join the ICJ, which she now heads. Though the Wiki article does make mention of her “Plagiarism controversy” (“Her dissenting opinion has been accused of plagiarizing from pro-Israel sources,[25][27] as well as plagiarism from Wikipedia and the BBC. According to a Palestinian researcher at the Doha Institute, Majd Abuamer, "at least 32 percent of Sebutinde’s dissent was plagiarised”.[28]”), she is otherwise held to be not controversial. But here is the reality:
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https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/1883555090465804702
Conversation
Zachary Foster [Princeton U. historian of Palestine]
@_ZachFoster
Breaking: the President of the International Court of Justice (@CIJ_ICJ), Julia Sebutinde, plagiarized sections of her dissenting opinion (https://icj-cij.org/node/204162) in which she voted against all provisional measures of South African's case of Israel's genocide of Palestinians.
On p. 6, Sebutinde writes: ""The name “Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire."
This sentence was plagiarized word for word from a 2021 article published by Douglas J. Feith by the
titled, "The Forgotten History of the Term "Palestine," (https://hudson.org/node/44363) in which he writes:
"“Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman empire."
It gets worse. Sebutinde plagiarized the next two sentences as well. She writes:
"In 135 CE, after stamping out the second Jewish insurrection of the province of Judea or Judah, the Romans renamed that province “Syria Palaestina” (or “Palestinian Syria”). The Romans did this as a punishment, to spite the “Y’hudim” (Jewish population) and to obliterate the link between them and their province (known in Hebrew as Y’hudah). The name “Palaestina” was used in relation to the people known as the Philistines and found along the Mediterranean coast."
These 2 sentences were also plagiarized from the same Feith piece, in which he writes:
"In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast."
Sebutinde make a pitiful attempt to change a word here or there, but this is a textbook case of plagiarism. Feith's piece is not cited in her legal opinion, even though she copied and pasted multiple sentences from the piece.
What a joke of judge. She's making a mockery of the ICJ and should be removed immediately.
Zachary Foster
@_ZachFoster
It gets worse. She also plagiarized at least 4 sentences from The Jewish Virtual Library (https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-israel-146-s-roots#:~:text=In%201937%2C%20a%20local%20Arab,for%20centuries%20part%20of%20Syria.%22…).
Here are the 4 sentences from Sebutinde, and then the 4 sentences from the Jewish Virtual Library immediately following:
1. Sebutinde: "Prior to the
Show more
Zachary Foster
@_ZachFoster
Correction: In the first tweet in this thread, I should have noted, the dissenting opinion (w/the plagiarism) was with regard to the "Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem." I
Show more
Kitt
@Kittfornow
"She's making a mockery of the ICJ and should be removed immediately."
That she chose Douglas Feith to plagiarize from should in and of itself should be grounds for removing her immediately.
automne
@jepresume
wow! this is brilliant! congrats!
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by Louis Matheou, 20 February 2025
On 14 January, the Ugandan judge Julia Sebutinde, a devout Christian Zionist accused of plagiarising pro-Israeli sources to defend the occupation of Palestine, was appointed acting president of the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The only justice to oppose all six provisional measures the court issued last year in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, Sebutinde’s record raises serious concerns about impartiality amid efforts to hold Israel accountable for its grave violations of international law.
Sebutinde’s appointment comes at a decisive moment for the global legal order, as UN experts warn that states’ widespread failure to uphold their legal obligations towards [i.e., on regard to prosecuting] Israel threatens the very foundation of international law.
Novara Media spoke to legal experts about what Sebutinde’s appointment means.
The deciding vote.
The first African woman to sit on the ICJ, Sebutinde was appointed as the court’s acting president after Nawaf Salam left the role in January 2025 to become prime minister of Lebanon. As vice-president at the time, Sebutinde automatically assumed the responsibilities of the presidency.
The president of the ICJ holds a variety of procedural powers that could allow them to influence the genocide case in favour of Israel, should they decide to.
If judges cannot reach a majority decision in deliberations – including final judgments and provisional measures – the president casts the deciding vote. And even if the court rules that genocide has been committed in the Gaza Strip, the president can still influence the wording of the final judgment in ways that limit the ruling’s impact.
If they choose, the president can appoint the drafting committee of the final judgment. They will also preside over final revisions to the text. In this process, the president could dilute the ruling’s wording and narrow its scope to shield Israel from more severe legal consequences and enforcement measures. This could allow the court to acknowledge genocide whilst setting an extremely high threshold for proving that Israel is directly responsible. However, this is a worst-case scenario.
The president can, however, steer cases in more understated ways.
Jeff Handmaker is associate professor of legal sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. “Given the subtleties in how the ICJ conducts its work,” he told Novara Media, “it is not difficult to imagine how Sebutinde’s evident bias in favour of Israel would influence her by administering the trial in a manner favourable to Israel.”
“This soft power she would hold could manifest, for example, in: the limiting or extending of speaking times allocated during court sessions, deadlines imposed for filing of pleadings, the ability to make corrections to a legal filing, the furnishing of copies to the respective state parties or drawing on experts and witnesses.”
It is possible that Sebutinde may serve the remainder of Salam’s term, which is due to last until February 2027. If she does, she will oversee the crucial period in South Africa’s genocide case: Israel is set to present its defence brief by July 2025, and whilst the court has not yet specified an exact date for the final judgment, it will probably fall within the current presidential term.
Handmaker suspects, however, that the ICJ is unlikely to leave Sebutinde in the role that long. “It is more likely that, in order to preserve the integrity of the court’s independence and impartiality in the eyes of the international law community and the general public, a fresh election will be held,” he said.
Yet even if Sebutinde’s term is short, she could influence the court’s business significantly. Given her judicial record, which has consistently reflected her deeply held Christian Zionist beliefs, this has already generated deep concern among those advocating for Palestinian liberation.
‘Extreme views.’
Sebutinde is a member of the Watoto church, a Pentecostal Christian community based in the Ugandan capital of Kampala and founded by Pastor Gary Skinner, a dedicated Christian Zionist. Skinner trumpets an impending “end times” – a series of events culminating in the second coming of Christ, including the return of the Jews to Israel.
Sebutinde has explicitly acknowledged the influence of the Watoto community on her worldview and her legal practice: “Godly values of integrity, honesty, justice, mercy, empathy, and hard work that the Skinners and Watoto church instilled and nurtured in me over the years account for who I am today, and have immensely contributed to my incredible career as a judge in Uganda and a judge at the International Court of Justice.”
Whilst judges inevitably hold views based on cultural and religious influences, Handmaker warns that “the extreme religious and ideological views of Sebutinde, which include extensive biblical references in her dissenting judgements, align closely with the standpoint of the Israeli government, rather than emanating from her professional role as a senior judge and president of the ICJ.”
Judge Sebutinde declined Novara Media’s request for comment.
Standing with Israel.
In January 2024, the ICJ issued six provisional measures to Israel, including orders to prevent genocide in Gaza and allow humanitarian assistance into the Strip. The measures received near-unanimous backing from the 17-judge panel – even Israeli judge Aharon Barak supported two of the six measures.
But one judge voted against every single measure: Sebutinde. So extreme was her opposition to the provisional measures that Uganda’s ambassador to the UN, Adonia Ayebare, publicly distanced the Ugandan government from Sebutinde.
In her dissenting opinion against the ICJ majority, where she was obliged to provide a full and conscientious legal justification for her decision, Sebutinde largely disregarded South Africa’s extensive legal arguments.
Sebutinde argued that there were “no indicators of a genocidal intent” by Israel and that “the controversy or dispute between the state of Israel and the people of Palestine is essentially and historically a political or territorial (and, I dare say, ideological) one … not a legal one calling for judicial settlement.’”
Six months later, in her dissenting opinion against the ICJ’s landmark advisory opinion that found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank violates international law, Sebutinde went further. She cast doubt on the existence of Palestine as a distinct historical territory, claiming that the name “Palestine” only “applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire.” Sebutinde then reproduced Zionist narratives of the biblical “bond” of the Jewish people to ancient Israel, citing the Old Testament to trace this “from prehistory to the end of Ottoman rule.”
Shahd Hammouri, senior legal consultant at Law for Palestine and lecturer in law at the University of Kent, rejects Sebutinde’s reasoning. She told Novara Media: “There’s nothing in international law that says that you get to claim land on the premises of how you interpret religion – otherwise I could start a religion tomorrow morning and claim the United States as spiritually my land.”
Plagiarising Zionists?
Yet Sebutinde’s written judgments do more than reflect the influence of her Christian Zionist beliefs. They appear to have been partly plagiarised from pro-Israeli sources. Historian of Palestine Zachary Foster has alleged that significant sections of Sebutinde’s dissenting opinion against the ICJ’s advisory opinion on Israel’s West Bank occupation were lifted from pro-Israel commentators and advocacy groups.
In her account of the “historical nuances” of the Israeli occupation, Sebutinde appears to have copied several sentences from an opinion piece written by US neoconservative Douglas J Feith, an avowed Zionist and a former under-secretary of defense, often referred to as the architect of the Iraq war. Sebutinde then seems to lift four sentences nearly word-for-word from a page of the Jewish Virtual Library, an online encyclopedia published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a non-profit organisation created to “strengthen the US-Israeli relationship”.
Later in the opinion, when discussing the failures of a two-state solution, Sebutinde repeats several sentences almost verbatim from a video produced by PragerU, a rightwing media outlet whose CEO, Marissa Streit, previously served in the Israeli military intelligence unit 8200. The video’s narrator, David Brog, is the executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, a group dedicated to resisting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement on North American campuses, and the director of Christians United for Israel. …
——
I wrote yesterday about the Maccabee Task Force, to explain how the bi-national Israeli-Amercan thirty-billionaire who donated over $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign has gotten from him the type of policies toward Israel and Palestinians that she had wanted. Among the masses, America might be somewhat theocratic, but among the billionaires, America is actually an aristocracy, and Trump is now serving them (or at least the Republican billionaires) as their king.
Both Jews and Christians accept this Scripture (the Bible and especially the Torah in it) as reflecting ‘God’s Will’ — Commandments, even. Whom does this leave out? Non-Jews, and non-Christians, of course — and this includes almost all Palestinians (who instead were there damned by that ‘God’). Thus, on 22 January 2025, I headlined “Trump has already doomed his Presidency.”, because his chosen U.N. Representative is just like Sebutinde is, and supports the genocide in Gaza for the same reason she does. This is what happens with a religious-based ethic — not with an ethic that’s fit for democracy.
FDR’s plan for the U.N. (he invented the U.N. but he died and Truman got to control the writing of its Charter and so it failed) included a Charter (or Constitution) that would define “aggression” and firmly outlaw it, and which would also in other ways produce an ENFORCED body of international laws, in a democratic federal republic of the world’s nations, which would constitute a REAL world Government, with Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branches, an authentic global democracy of nations. This is what would be needed in order to transform from the existing might-makes-right world to instead a world that would serve the people and NO clergy and NO aristocracy (except perhaps WITHIN nations, because such a U.N. would concern ONLY inter-national — and NO national, or “intra-national” — laws). Either we will get FDR’s plan, or we will get chaos.
PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
