ICJ president’s pro-Israel stance allegedly plagiarised
New claims have surfaced accusing Julia Sebutinde, acting president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), of plagiarising large sections of her dissenting opinion on Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the Middle East Eye reported on February 3rd.
In January, Sebutinde was accused of lifting sentences nearly word for word in her dissenting opinion of July 19th.
A study by Palestinian researcher Majd Abuamer for an upcoming book by US scholar Norman Finkelstein now claims “at least 32 percent of Sebutinde’s dissent was plagiarised.”Â
The findings will be featured in Finkelstein’s book Gaza Gravediggers, set for publication in June.
In July 2024, a 15-judge panel ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories was “unlawful” and that its “near-complete separation” of people in the West Bank violated international laws surrounding “racial segregation” and “apartheid.”Â
While most judges concurred, Sebutinde rejected the findings. She declined to comment when contacted by Middle East Eye regarding the plagiarism allegations.
Finkelstein described her dissenting view as “bizarre” and suspected plagiarism. He posted on Twitter seeking help to verify his concerns, and Abuamer, who grew up in Gaza, responded with a detailed analysis.Â
According to Finkelstein, Abuamer identified that “32.2 percent of her dissent was plagiarised.”
One source Sebutinde allegedly copied is a video by conservative activist David Brog, titled “Why isn’t there a Palestinian state?” Her passage on the 1937 Peel Commission closely mirrors Brog’s, with entire sentences being used, verbatim.
Brog is the director of the Maccabee Task Force, which fights against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement within campuses in Canada and the US.
Additionally, Abuamer found sections lifted from a 2016 paper called “Palestine, Uti Possidetis Juris and the Borders of Israel,” by Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich.Â
Bell and Kontorovich were two of three legal scholars who had advised Israel’s leadership in January 2024 that the country was not legally obligated to allow displaced Palestinians in the north of Gaza to return home.
Sebutinde also allegedly copied from a column by former US undersecretary of defence for policy under George W. Bush, Douglas Feith, who helped shape US military strategy for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in 1996 co-wrote a policy paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Not all borrowed content is from conservative sources. Abuamer found that Sebutinde lifted sentences from Wikipedia and BBC News.
On November 8th 2024, a UN official called on Israel to “fully and immediately” commit to ICJ provisional measures issued in January 2024 demanding a course of action to stop Genocide in Gaza.
Middle East Eye
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