Israel picks retired chief justice to join ICJ Gaza genocide tribunal

Israel has named its former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak as its addition to an International Court of Justice panel due to hear a genocide allegation filed against it on Thursday and Friday, an Israeli official said on Sunday.

Under the ICJ’s rules, a state that does not have a judge of its nationality already on the bench can choose an ad hoc judge to sit in their case.

Barak, a champion of Supreme Court activism, was a focus of opposition for members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, whose judicial reform push last year bitterly polarized the public.

He is also an internationally recognized jurist, who survived the Holocaust as a child and immigrated to what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1947.

In a post on X, former Meretz Party leader Zahava Gal-On wrote that at the Hague, Barak will “continue to ignore the fact that the government he will defend made him a target for years, more than two decades after he left office. It’s a government that does not deserve its citizens.”

MK Gideon Sa’ar (National Unity), who is a former justice minister, wrote on X that he lauded the decision by Netanyahu and Attorney-General Gali Baharav Miara to appoint Barak.

“At the moment of truth: the incitement, defamation, and delegitimization gave way to the international status, to the good name acquired over decades, to professionalism,” he said.

South Africa, Israel prepare for Gaza genocide case hearing

South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in the Gaza war, has also appointed an ad hoc judge, former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke, its foreign ministry said.

Israel has yet to announce its legal team to the hearing which is preliminary and deals immediately with provisional measures that could be taken in advance of any ruling.

Among those steps could be a declaration by the court that Israel must halt its military operation in Gaza to destroy Hamas, which has claimed that over 22,000 Palestinians have been killed in violence related to that war. Israel has said that at least 8,000 of those fatalities are Hamas combatants.

Israel is expected to argue that it is Hamas which is guilty of genocide, calling for Israel’s destruction, and launching a barbarous attack against the country’s southern border region, in which it murdered over 1,200 people and seized some 250 hostages.

In the past, Israel has argued against the jurisdiction of international courts, but it agreed decades ago to the ICJ jurisdiction in such instances when it ratified the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.