Julia Sebutinde is a dedicated Christian Zionist who stood alone in rejecting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Now the court’s president, the Ugandan judge appears to have plagiarized sections of her dissenting opinion justifying Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories.
With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability.
The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on January 14, 2025 to become Prime Minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda. Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak.
The Ugandan judge rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah. In a previous advisory case on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Sebutinde insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. In fact, she concluded that Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims.
Sebutinde’s opinion opened with a lengthy history of the Israel-Palestine conflict that blended well-worn Zionist propaganda with the Old Testament. In rejecting her colleagues’ ruling declaring Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal, she resorted to accounts of the Jewish presence in the biblical land of Israel, omitting any mention of UN resolutions or international law. (more...)
New ICJ president plagiarized in the name of Christian Zionism
Justice Sebutinde ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine. She has previously voted against Uganda’s case on DRC. Uganda’s support for the plight of the Palestinian people has been expressed…
— Adonia Ayebare (@adoniaayebare) January 26, 2024
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