ICJ president accused of plagiarism in dissenting opinion on Israeli occupation

Middle East Eye

27-01-2025

Julia Sebutinde, the current president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has been accused of plaigarising parts of her dissenting views in the court's advisory opinion on the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
In July last year, the 15-judge panel found that Israel's decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories was "unlawful", and that its "near-complete separation" of people in the occupied West Bank breached international laws concerning "racial segregation" and "apartheid".
While the opinion was agreed upon by most of the judges, Sebutinde rejected the findings of the court, stating that the case should be settled through negotiations between the parties.
Zachary Foster, a researcher on Palestine, pointed out the alleged plaigarism in a thread on X on Sunday.
In one section of the dissenting opinion, Sebutinde writes: "Territorially, the name 'Palestine' applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire.
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"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."
The three sentences appear to be lifted, almost word for word, from an article published in December 2021 by Douglas J Feith in the Hudson Institute.
Feith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, was US under secretary of defence for policy in the President George W Bush administration from July 2001 until August 2005, devising American strategy for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
During that time, Feith was in charge of a key Pentagon office that produced "inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the US intelligence consensus disputed".
Missing citations
In 1996, Feith co-wrote a policy paper for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that suggested Israel should consider removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and militarily engage Syria using proxy forces.
Feith's piece for the Hudson Institute is not cited in the bibliography of Sebutinde's dissenting opinion.
Middle East Eye has reached out to the ICJ and Feith for comment.
Foster pointed out in his thread that Sebutinde also lifted several sentences from The Jewish Virtual Library, changing a few words.
Sebutinde wrote: "When the distinguished Arab American historian, Professor Philip Hitti, testified against the Partition of Mandatory Palestine before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he remarked: 'There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history; absolutely not.'"
A very similar line in the Jewish Virtual Library's myths and facts page reads: "When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not."
Foster highlighted four sentences from the dissenting opinion borrowed from the Jewish Virtual Library. The website is not mentioned in the Ugandan judge's citations.
The Jewish Virtual Library is part of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, which says it "provides facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict" and fights the "delegitimisation of Israel".
Dissenting voice
Sebutinde became the president of the ICJ earlier this month after former head Nawaf Salam was appointed Lebanon's next prime minister.
In January last year, the ICJ delivered an interim ruling calling on Israel to refrain from impeding the delivery of aid into Gaza and improve the humanitarian situation.
Nawaf Salam, the ICJ president who became Lebanon's prime minister Read More »
It also ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide in the besieged enclave and to punish incitement to genocide, among other orders.
Sebutinde, who has been described in the Israeli media as "pro-Israel", was the only judge on the 17-member panel who voted against all six measures adopted by the court. Israeli judge Aharon Barak also voted against several of the measures.
The dissenting opinion prompted Uganda to distance itself from Sebutinde.
"The position taken by Judge Sebutinde is her own individual and independent opinion, and does not in any way reflect the position of the government of the republic of Uganda," a government spokesperson said in a statement at the time.
They added that Kampala supported the position of the Non-Aligned Movement on the war, which was adopted during a summit in the Ugandan capital.
The Non-Aligned Movement had condemned Israel's war on Gaza and its killing of civilians.