A group of actors and other Hollywood types, among them several already well-known for anti-Israel animus such as Cynthia Nixon and Susan Sarandon, recently claimed in a group letter that “the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, has ruled that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza.”
Not only is it demonstrably false that the ICJ made such a ruling, it’s also not true that the ICJ is “the world’s highest court.” In fact, it’s not even clear that the ICJ is a court at all.
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But none of that matters to those who target Israel. And rest assured, the United States is squarely in their sights as well.
For the ICJ to be a “high” or “highest” court, it would need to have other courts underneath it, over which it had appellate jurisdiction. It doesn’t.
The Supreme Court is called the nation’s “highest court” because it has appellate jurisdiction over federal circuit courts, which, in turn, have appellate jurisdiction over federal district courts. In certain cases, the Supreme Court also has appellate jurisdiction over states’ highest courts, which, in turn, have appellate jurisdiction over lower state courts. In New York, the Court of Appeals has appellate jurisdiction over the appellate divisions, which, in turn, have jurisdiction over, confusingly, the state’s supreme courts.
There is no appeal from the U.S. Supreme Court, or from other nations’ highest courts, to the ICJ. Therefore, it’s certainly not correct to call the ICJ the “highest court.” The power of courts flows from the sovereignty of nations, states, or municipalities. But the United Nations is not a global government and has no sovereignty — thankfully.
Indeed, the U.N. is increasingly a platform where the enemies of America, such as Cuba and Venezuela, promote their anti-American rhetoric. This, even as the U.S. hosts the forum in New York and pays more than 20% of its budget, or $13 billion in 2023.
Unfortunately, the organization has been co-opted by some of the worst actors on the global stage time and again. For example, Iran, a country in which women can be arrested for failing to cover their hair and gay people can be executed, chaired a 2023 meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council Social Forum.
Like the U.N. itself, its “court,” the ICJ, was intended to be a vehicle to resolve disputes among nations through diplomatic means. Jurisdiction is voluntary, which makes it more like an international arbitration panel than a court. Calling it “the world’s highest court” confers on the ICJ and its decisions an unearned gravitas.
Not surprisingly, the ICJ, too, has been co-opted. Israel has gone to extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties to the extent possible in Gaza, where Hamas hides in hospitals and tunnels and uses civilians as human shields. There was never a reality-based argument that Israel is committing genocide, a crime that requires “the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”
The argument was always propaganda. Even bringing the case to the ICJ was an abuse of that forum, with allegations that African National Congress party officials in South Africa did so in exchange for “bribes from Iran which were intended to cover ANC debts.”
Joan Donoghue, the president of the ICJ at the time the ruling was made, clearly stated on the BBC in April 2024, “I’m correcting what’s often said in the media — [the court] didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible. The test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted.”
I’m sure no one is shocked that celebrities don’t understand the nuances of international law.
What is deemed “Holocaust inversion” involves turning the claim of genocide around and using it as a weapon against the actual survivors of genocide and their descendants. The claim being made against Israel, whether at the international arbitration panel known as the ICJ or by these self-important celebrities, is being made now simply to smear Israel.
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And, as Israel is the “little Satan,” and America is the “great Satan,” the U.S. can expect to be targeted with similar charges down the line.
We don’t expect celebrities to live in the real world. But serious journalists and especially international leaders must. If the U.S. is going to continue to fund the various arms of the U.N., including the counterfeit courts, we must demand that our country and our allies be treated fairly there.
Karen Bekker is the assistant director of the media response team at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, and a non-practicing attorney.