The rules-based global order has expired in disgraceAnother day, another libel against Israel in the name of international law.
The UN Human Rights Office has issued a report detailing what it calls Israel’s “systemic discrimination” against Palestinians in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as eastern Jerusalem.
“This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before,” declared the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk.
This is the lie constantly deployed by Israel’s enemies to demonise and destroy it.
It ignores the fact that every restriction on the Arabs living in the “West Bank” is imposed by Israel only to prevent the murderous terrorist attacks that the Arabs living there perpetrate against Israeli civilians almost every day.
Ludicrously, it accuses Israel of practising apartheid — a system that discriminated against South Africa’s own citizens in every aspect of their existence — in territory that is not even part of Israel.
Even though the geopolitical map is currently in flux due to the convulsions in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and now, in Hezbollah’s close ally, Venezuela, the campaign to delegitimise Israel continues with the same old same old.
The entire global humanitarian nexus has long been weaponised to destroy Israel in an alternative and more promising sphere than military activity. This is because liberal universalism has become the West’s secular religion.
Western civilisation is rooted in the moral and social principles of the Bible. For decades, however, progressives have turned against the West’s core principles and worshipped instead at the shrine of international law. This has become an overarching and unchallengeable political instrument to govern the world in the way the West tells itself it should be run.
The Trump administration’s exfiltration of Venezuela’s former president, Nicolás Maduro, from Caracas provoked instantaneous condemnation on the grounds that it was an illegal act since it breached international law. Such critics claim that international law underpins the “rules-based global order” that stands between the world and the chaos of “might is right” adventurism.
This is clearly an illusion. Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and marched into Ukraine while the rules-based order of international law was supposedly being upheld on the Security Council — by none other than Putin.
International law didn’t stop Syria’s former president, Bashar Assad, from butchering half a million of his fellow citizens, nor Iran’s Islamic regime from waging a terrorist war on the West for the past half-century. And China’s president Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan if, like Putin, he thinks he can get away with it.
Instead, international law is used against Israel in a manner that perverts law and corrupts justice in transnational courts, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN.s International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Judge Julia Sebutinde, the ICJ’s Ugandan vice-president who has persistently voted against the majority on the court in its rulings against Israel, has pointed out that it repeatedly exceeded its powers to make them.
As for the ICC, its issue of warrants in November 2024 for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s former minister of defence, Yoav Gallant, represented an outrageous abuse of process.
The move was based on false allegations fed to the court by NGOs that form a poisonous echo chamber of Israel-hatred around the United Nations — the central pillar of the universalist establishment and which is itself obsessively hostile to the Jewish state.
Yet according to UK Lawyers for Israel, the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan—who has subsequently been mired in torrid accusations of sexual harassment—“asked the court to ignore any information or evidence other than the material he originally filed in his applications for arrest warrants,” which UKLFI say breached the ICC’s own rules.
A key reason why so many well-meaning people hate Israel is that they believe every word uttered by the humanitarian nexus of the United Nations, international courts and NGOs.
This nexus has become synonymous with conscience, and international law is its catechism. It’s believed to be true and right and good in the way that many religious believers regard their faith as totally beyond challenge.
What follows, therefore, is that because international law has turned against Israel, the Jewish state is widely believed to stand for illegality and evil. Not only is this as false as it is revolting, but international law is itself built on sand.
Its sources are set out by the ICJ. This defines it as being based on international agreements, conventions and custom, general principles of law “recognised by civilised nations” and the teachings of “the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations”.
The UN charter, which is signed by all member states, is regarded as having the force of law. But this is tendentious.
International agreements like the UN charter are effectively contracts between parties that sign them and thus pledge to abide by their principles. That’s not the same as law, which it’s a duty to obey because its authority is absolute. By contrast, international law has no ultimate authority because it has no identifiable jurisdiction.
Certainly, the rule of law is essential to a civilised society. But that involves laws passed within the jurisdiction of a democratic nation and that are therefore rooted in the consent of the people.
International law, rooted instead in agreements between states, is essentially politics by other means.
As a result, it has become weaponised as “lawfare” by people with a malign agenda against Israel. Yet many lawyers, including progressive Jews, firmly believe that it’s a righteous means of constraining tyrants and bringing them to justice.
One such is the storied British law professor Philippe Sands, who represented “Palestine” in the case brought against Israel at the ICJ in 2024.
But the case he was fronting was a malicious one, based on patently false assertions about Israeli “apartheid,” the illegality of Israeli “settlements” and other alleged Israeli violations of international law.
It also trashed previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to resolve all issues through direct negotiations. It thus voided the fundamental international legal principle stipulating the need to gain Israel’s consent.
The case rested upon Sands’ assertion that the Palestinians, like all peoples, had an absolute right to self-determination.
But the Palestinian Arabs are not “a” people. Palestinian national identity was invented in the 1960s as a strategy for Israel’s destruction. Its real agenda lies in what the Palestinian Arabs teach their children — the goal of exterminating Israel and the cultural appropriation, or theft, of the Jews’ own unique and ancient history in the land.
The ICJ case is a glaring example of how international law repudiates justice and truth in concert with its “human rights” enablers.
At the center of this web of hate squats the United Nations. People believe its self-designation as the ultimate custodian of peace and justice in the world. This is because it represents most of the world’s countries, and so plays into the pleasing fantasy of the brotherhood of man.
But most countries are dictatorships, kleptocracies or other human-rights abusers. These dominate the UN General Assembly, while the presence of tyrannical Russia and China on the UN Security Council makes a mockery of holding the world’s malefactors to account.
Last year, what was the number of times the General Assembly condemned Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan, Turkey, Hamas, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon or Venezuela? Zero. The number of times it condemned Israel? 15.
In its increasingly brutal crackdown against the current insurrection in Iran, the Tehran regime has killed at least 36 protesters. The number of UN resolutions or emergency sessions about this? Zero.
International law isn’t the pathway to a fairer and more civilised world. In its ferocious weaponisation against Israel, it has been turned into the negation of justice and the legal instrument of evil.
The rules-based order has expired in disgrace. The only “might” it constrained was the ability of the victims of aggression to defend themselves. The only rule that should govern tackling evil is instead to bring about its total defeat.
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her work on her website HERE
Ludicrously, it accuses Israel of practising apartheid — a system that discriminated against South Africa’s own citizens in every aspect of their existence — in territory that is not even part of Israel.
Even though the geopolitical map is currently in flux due to the convulsions in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and now, in Hezbollah’s close ally, Venezuela, the campaign to delegitimise Israel continues with the same old same old.
The entire global humanitarian nexus has long been weaponised to destroy Israel in an alternative and more promising sphere than military activity. This is because liberal universalism has become the West’s secular religion.
Western civilisation is rooted in the moral and social principles of the Bible. For decades, however, progressives have turned against the West’s core principles and worshipped instead at the shrine of international law. This has become an overarching and unchallengeable political instrument to govern the world in the way the West tells itself it should be run.
The Trump administration’s exfiltration of Venezuela’s former president, Nicolás Maduro, from Caracas provoked instantaneous condemnation on the grounds that it was an illegal act since it breached international law. Such critics claim that international law underpins the “rules-based global order” that stands between the world and the chaos of “might is right” adventurism.
This is clearly an illusion. Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and marched into Ukraine while the rules-based order of international law was supposedly being upheld on the Security Council — by none other than Putin.
International law didn’t stop Syria’s former president, Bashar Assad, from butchering half a million of his fellow citizens, nor Iran’s Islamic regime from waging a terrorist war on the West for the past half-century. And China’s president Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan if, like Putin, he thinks he can get away with it.
Instead, international law is used against Israel in a manner that perverts law and corrupts justice in transnational courts, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN.s International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Judge Julia Sebutinde, the ICJ’s Ugandan vice-president who has persistently voted against the majority on the court in its rulings against Israel, has pointed out that it repeatedly exceeded its powers to make them.
As for the ICC, its issue of warrants in November 2024 for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s former minister of defence, Yoav Gallant, represented an outrageous abuse of process.
The move was based on false allegations fed to the court by NGOs that form a poisonous echo chamber of Israel-hatred around the United Nations — the central pillar of the universalist establishment and which is itself obsessively hostile to the Jewish state.
Yet according to UK Lawyers for Israel, the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan—who has subsequently been mired in torrid accusations of sexual harassment—“asked the court to ignore any information or evidence other than the material he originally filed in his applications for arrest warrants,” which UKLFI say breached the ICC’s own rules.
A key reason why so many well-meaning people hate Israel is that they believe every word uttered by the humanitarian nexus of the United Nations, international courts and NGOs.
This nexus has become synonymous with conscience, and international law is its catechism. It’s believed to be true and right and good in the way that many religious believers regard their faith as totally beyond challenge.
What follows, therefore, is that because international law has turned against Israel, the Jewish state is widely believed to stand for illegality and evil. Not only is this as false as it is revolting, but international law is itself built on sand.
Its sources are set out by the ICJ. This defines it as being based on international agreements, conventions and custom, general principles of law “recognised by civilised nations” and the teachings of “the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations”.
The UN charter, which is signed by all member states, is regarded as having the force of law. But this is tendentious.
International agreements like the UN charter are effectively contracts between parties that sign them and thus pledge to abide by their principles. That’s not the same as law, which it’s a duty to obey because its authority is absolute. By contrast, international law has no ultimate authority because it has no identifiable jurisdiction.
Certainly, the rule of law is essential to a civilised society. But that involves laws passed within the jurisdiction of a democratic nation and that are therefore rooted in the consent of the people.
International law, rooted instead in agreements between states, is essentially politics by other means.
As a result, it has become weaponised as “lawfare” by people with a malign agenda against Israel. Yet many lawyers, including progressive Jews, firmly believe that it’s a righteous means of constraining tyrants and bringing them to justice.
One such is the storied British law professor Philippe Sands, who represented “Palestine” in the case brought against Israel at the ICJ in 2024.
But the case he was fronting was a malicious one, based on patently false assertions about Israeli “apartheid,” the illegality of Israeli “settlements” and other alleged Israeli violations of international law.
It also trashed previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to resolve all issues through direct negotiations. It thus voided the fundamental international legal principle stipulating the need to gain Israel’s consent.
The case rested upon Sands’ assertion that the Palestinians, like all peoples, had an absolute right to self-determination.
But the Palestinian Arabs are not “a” people. Palestinian national identity was invented in the 1960s as a strategy for Israel’s destruction. Its real agenda lies in what the Palestinian Arabs teach their children — the goal of exterminating Israel and the cultural appropriation, or theft, of the Jews’ own unique and ancient history in the land.
The ICJ case is a glaring example of how international law repudiates justice and truth in concert with its “human rights” enablers.
At the center of this web of hate squats the United Nations. People believe its self-designation as the ultimate custodian of peace and justice in the world. This is because it represents most of the world’s countries, and so plays into the pleasing fantasy of the brotherhood of man.
But most countries are dictatorships, kleptocracies or other human-rights abusers. These dominate the UN General Assembly, while the presence of tyrannical Russia and China on the UN Security Council makes a mockery of holding the world’s malefactors to account.
Last year, what was the number of times the General Assembly condemned Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan, Turkey, Hamas, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon or Venezuela? Zero. The number of times it condemned Israel? 15.
In its increasingly brutal crackdown against the current insurrection in Iran, the Tehran regime has killed at least 36 protesters. The number of UN resolutions or emergency sessions about this? Zero.
International law isn’t the pathway to a fairer and more civilised world. In its ferocious weaponisation against Israel, it has been turned into the negation of justice and the legal instrument of evil.
The rules-based order has expired in disgrace. The only “might” it constrained was the ability of the victims of aggression to defend themselves. The only rule that should govern tackling evil is instead to bring about its total defeat.
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her work on her website HERE
11 comments:
Isreal wouldn’t bother with weaponising a war because they just use missiles and stuff like that. They weaponise weapons.
The writer is being a bit harsh in her sweeping denigration of international law.
There is a general consensus among scholars that international law began with the Peace of Westphalia 1648. As summarised by Google,
"The Peace of Westphalia is considered a foundational moment for the modern international system, promoting state autonomy, secular governance (by separating politics from religious uniformity), and diplomacy over religious warfare, profoundly influencing European politics for centuries."
The next great milestone was the Concert of Europe in the early 19thC which, again in the words of Google, "established a set of principles, rules and practices that helped to maintain balance between the major powers after the Napoleonic Wars, and to spare Europe from another broad conflict."
This may come across as a bit eurocentric, but like so many things - human rights, for instance - international law was born in Europe and spread outwards from there during the era of colonial expansion.
Numerous international treaties were concluded during the second half of the 19thC, although not all of them abided by today's standards. The League of Nations born after WW1 was the first central authority presiding over international law. (As a matter of interest, one of the first charges levelled at Germany after WW2 was breaching the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 under which "major nations, including the U.S., France, Germany, and others, renounced war as a tool of national policy, promising to resolve disputes peacefully" [thanks again to Google].)
The intentions behind international law have always been to encourage sovereign nations to act honourably towards one another and resolve disputes through negotiation.
At this point, I need to sharply disagree with Melanie P when she intimates that international law is somehow at loggerheads with Western civilisation. On the contrary, international law is a product of Western civilisation, specifically of the Enlightenment. I would be the first to concede that international law has been hijacked over the past few decades by the same ideological forces that have hijacked national law in many of our countries. But we must beware of throwing out a pure and tender baby with that putrid bathwater.
None of this is to say that Israel is not in violation of international law, such as through those illegal settlements. No country has a right to build settlements for its citizens outside areas of its own jurisdiction, and 'no country' includes Israel.
Melanie's strategy seems to be to tar all international law with the same dirty brush and thereby convince her audience that all of it is wrong and designed by malefactors to bring her country down. This is intellectually and ethically indefensible - a series of very cheap shots. Let us be supportive of the right of the State of Israel to exist and prosper by all means, but at the same time recognise the wrongs that nation-state is perpetrating, and the role of international law in holding all to account.
Melanie is married to one of the leading lawyers in Britain so I believe her interpretation of law is very knowledgeable and nuanced.
The other issue is that to some Israel has a highly religious status. To a secularist this means little.
To many religious Jews and Christian supporters of Israel the ultimate authority for the Land of Israel is the Torah and Mosaic Law - a covenant with God of the Jews which provides a permanent , divine title that transcends contemporary political agreements or UN resolutions.
Proponents argue that Israel has a unique 'destiny' established through divine promise not overruled by secular international bodies.
Israel cannot be fully understood within a purely secular perspective excluding Halakhah.
Always surrounded by hostile superpowers, it could be seen as miraculous that Israel still survives.
>"Melanie is married to one of the leading lawyers in Britain so I believe her interpretation of law is very knowledgeable and nuanced."
Let me just rephrase that......... "Melanie is married to one of the leading lawyers in Britain so her biased interpretation of law is given false authority by association with her hubby."
As for bringing tribal law of millennia ago into it, no ball game! OF COURSE the Jewish tribal god favours its own tribe over others and gives its tribe the right to kill, plunder and rape (all in the good 'ol OT) - goes without saying. And OF COURSE people with that mindset will claim that they are above the law (the real thing) because their tribal spook says so. But this is the 21stC and we have civilised law now which eclipses tribal law of the Bronze and early Iron Ages.
Thank you Barend for your knowledge and willingness to share it. Between you ,Gary Judd, Muriel, David Round and Antony Wily my understanding of the laws that govern us have increased markedly since reading Breaking Views on a daily basis.
My pleasure, Anon 1227. But nota bene that international law only 'governs' you as a NZ citizen living in NZ when it has been incorporated into domestic law - contrary to popular myth, it can't be forced upon you while you are on NZ soil by external entities!
AI , the source of my information , found it worthwhile to state other points of view to help people gain understanding of the Israeli situation . It was nice that it did not try and force any particular view on you by ridicule but simply stated it since a proportion of Jews and Christians right now, in the present day, hold this particular view of the Hebrew God.
It may be why Jews eg feel justified in occupying the West Bank.
Melanie is pretty much a lone voice expressing a counter view to much of MSM. She has her articles in major conservative British newspapers . Maybe she is biased but aren't we all a tiny bit , Barend ?
I tried not to be biased while living in Lebanon for 17 years and suffering hearing loss thanks to frequent visits by the Israeli Air Force........ Yes we all have some bias but the point made by the blindfolded lady atop a British court is that the law needs to be above personal biases and be applied without fear or favour.
And that includes being influenced by any little tribal desert deities. OF COURSE that is where orthodox Jews get the idea from that they have right to displace Arabs from lands they claim under the Zionist doctrine - you really are good at telling people what they already know, or should know. But I couldn't care less what proportion of Jews, Europeans, Africans, Asians or whatever adhered to this primitive Palestinian god concept, as that does not - or should not - have any bearing on the issue of the legality of the actions of the State of Israel. I repeat, I acknowledge their right to exist as per the 1948 establishment of their nation, but I do not regard their occupation of lands outside those borders as legit any more than I would regard any country's right to extraterritorial jurisdiction where there is none under international law.
Oh, and BTW, I couldn't care less about the MSM either - I'll go with my own appraisal of the situation (have qualifications in internat law).
I have no sentimental attachment to Jews . They have produced some fairly horrid people like Marx , but they have also made a large contribution to science , acquiring a large number of Nobel prizes in proportion to their population. The same is true for the arts in music and literature. I enjoy reading the psalms which are reassuring in telling me I am not just the product of randomness or environmental factors which are not , for me , a satisfying explanation.
Many of our laws were originally partially biblically based as was the Magna Carta. Wilberforce the abolitionist was a devout Christian acquiring his beliefs from scripture.
Jesus was a Jew and I'd rather follow his teachings than Muhammad or Marx which is so much of what academia seems now to prefer.
You are avoiding the issue, my dear old thing - the legality of the actions of the State of Israel, especially the annexation of lands outside their borders. You have made the excuse that this is OK because their little tribal god condones it but that is in fact no excuse at all.
I won't take you up on the so-called biblical origin of our laws (fortunately the link, if there is one at all, is a weak one or we would be condoning genocide and sexual slavery as sanctioned in Mosaic Law) because it is a distraction. Now let me ask you a straight question to which I expect a straight answer for a change: does international law regarding national borders and extraterritorial annexation of adjoining lands apply to the State of Israel or does it not? If not, why not? - a 21stC legal answer please, no babbling about Bronze Age tribal spooks.
While waiting for a response (assuming we get one), readers may care to dwell on the characteristics of comments arising from the 'pro-Israel' and the 'anti-Israel' camps.
In the former case, Israel is invariably presented as the victim of relentless persecution over many centuries that is fighting for survival against great odds and that can essentially do no wrong in the pursuit of that struggle, including the annexation of lands outside its lawful borders.
In the latter case, Israel is the wrongdoer, the evil malefactor that is intent on liquidating its Arab neighbours. It has no right of self-defence or retaliation against aggressors; after all, the country should not exist to begin with.
Both sides apply the "Those not for us are against us" rule; anyone who dares criticise Israeli actions even mildly is branded as anti-semitic and by implication is presented as one who would wipe the State of Israel off the map complete with its Jewish inhabitants,
Allow me just a little exaggeration to make my point; the truth is not far from the hyperbole.
International law, poorly understood by most people and at the butt end of many falsehoods along the lines of being a world order based on a central world government, is presented as a malefactor because its courts consistently find against Israel especially in the case of illegal settlements.
Unquestioning supporters of Israel and its expansionist designs have a hard time justifying their position, as my exchange with the above Anonymous exemplifies. They may mention past persecution (irrelevant if before 1948), how much the Jews as a race have contributed to humankind (irrelevant to the questions surrounding the legality of state actions such as those settlements), or invoke the approval of the Jewish tribal god (hardly surprising as all tribal deities by definition back their own crowd; not exactly admissible evidence in a courtroom!) When pressed, most seem to realise that some of Israel's actions, particularly those involving extraterritorial jurisdiction, are legally - and, I would maintain, ethically and morally - indefensible, and fall silent.
As I have made clear on more than one occasion, I belong to neither camp. To labour the point, I acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel and its right to exist and indeed defend itself; but I do not acknowledge its right to annex surrounding territories as is the practice under the Zionist doctrine adopted by the World Jewish Congress in 1897 which claimed Jewish sovereignty over the lands of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea more than 3 millennia ago.
Presenting institutions such as the International Court of Justice as wicked participants in a conspiracy aimed at destroying Israel and the Jewish people is unbecoming of a well-informed and fair-minded person. Their main 'crime' appears to be that they do not unquestioningly support Israel and its actions in Palestine. But that is precisely because they are applying the same rules of international law that they apply to everyone else. The Jews may have had cause to demand special favours three quarters of a century ago but that time is well past.
Please, dear reader, try to ensure that your view of the Palestinian situation is an informed and balanced one and above all applies the same legal and ethical standards to all sides concerned.
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