Court president Nawaf Salam (C) arrives on the first day of a two-day hearing in the case that Mexico has filed against Ecuador, at the International Justice court in the Hague, on April 29, 2024. (Credit: Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP)
Julia Sebutinde, the current president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has been accused of plagiarizing parts of her dissenting views in the court's advisory opinion on the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
In July of last year, the 15-judge panel determined that Israel's prolonged occupation of Palestinian territories was "unlawful" and that its "near-complete separation" of people in the occupied West Bank violated international laws related to "racial segregation" and "apartheid."
Although the majority of judges supported the opinion, Sebutinde opposed the court's findings, arguing that the matter should be resolved through negotiations between the involved parties.
Zachary Foster, a researcher specializing in Palestine, highlighted the alleged plagiarism in a thread on X on Sunday.
Breaking: the President of the International Court of Justice (@CIJ_ICJ), Julia Sebutinde, plagiarized sections of her dissenting opinion (https://t.co/Ys5oqkxcJY) in which she voted against all provisional measures of South African's case of Israel's genocide of Palestinians.… pic.twitter.com/erfHlXWcZu
— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) January 26, 2025
In one part of her dissenting opinion, Sebutinde wrote: "Territorially, the name 'Palestine' applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire."
"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 sentences seem 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 conservative Hudson Institute, served as the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy during President George W. Bush's administration from July 2001 to August 2005, where he helped shape American strategy for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
During his tenure, Feith oversaw a pivotal Pentagon office that produced "inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion," which alleged links between al-Qaeda and Iraq—a claim that contradicted the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies.
In 1996, Feith co-authored a policy paper for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proposing that Israel consider removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and engaging Syria militarily through proxy forces.
Foster pointed out in a thread on X that Sebutinde also copied several sentences from The Jewish Virtual Library, making only minor word changes.
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 strikingly similar sentence appears on The Jewish Virtual Library’s myths and facts page: "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 identified four sentences in Sebutinde's dissenting opinion that were taken from The Jewish Virtual Library. However, the website is not listed in the Ugandan judge’s citations.
It gets worse. She also plagiarized at least 4 sentences from The Jewish Virtual Library (https://t.co/rv8qhsH4LC).
— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) January 26, 2025
Here are the 4 sentences from Sebutinde, and then the 4 sentences from the Jewish Virtual Library immediately following:
1. Sebutinde: "Prior to the…
The Jewish Virtual Library, operated by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, claims to "provide facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict" and combat the "delegitimization of Israel."
Controversial stance on ICJ rulings
Sebutinde assumed the presidency of the ICJ earlier this month, succeeding Nawaf Salam, who was appointed Lebanon’s new prime minister.
In January last year, the ICJ issued an interim ruling urging Israel to refrain from obstructing aid delivery into Gaza and to improve the humanitarian situation. The court also directed Israel to take measures to prevent acts of genocide in the besieged enclave and to address incitement to genocide, among other mandates.
Sebutinde, described by some Israeli media as "pro-Israel," was the sole judge on the 17-member panel to vote against all six measures adopted by the court. Israeli judge Aharon Barak also opposed several of the measures.