Radio Recap – ACLJ Returning to ICC, Fighting for Israel

By 

Jay Sekulow

|
February 21, 2020

3 min read

Israel

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The ACLJ is back at the International Criminal Court (ICC), this time defending the interests of Israel.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed our upcoming case defending Israel’s interests at the ICC.

We had a major news development out of a case that we’ve been handling at the International Criminal Court. Remember, we were at the ICC where we presented oral arguments in December. That seems like a lifetime ago. A lot has happened since then. I’ve had a lot of hearings since then.

In that case last December, the issue was whether the United States could be put into proceedings that were really targeting terrorists but the ICC prosecutor was trying to get the U.S. involved. We fought back on that.

There’s another case brewing that involves Israel that we are also involved in heavily. That’s going to require a brief of about thirty pages in length. That’s quite a legal document that we’re going to be getting into.

The ICC prosecutor is trying to basically, through a legal process here, create an environment where Palestine becomes a state.

ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison described the situation:

Basically the prosecutor is trying to abrogate and ignore all international norms with respect to the creation of statehood. In essence the prosecutor, who has been consistently anti-Israel, is simply pushing a dream by many groups that oppose the nation-state of Israel as well as opposing the nation-state of Israel remaining a Jewish state.

As Prof. Hutchison later added:

Essentially the prosecutor asserts that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is not part of Israel. It’s important to keep in mind that the state of Israel, in terms of human history, has existed for thousands of years. The modern state of Israel was created pursuant to a United Nations mandate in 1947, which took effect in 1948. Pursuant to international law, and the rules of war, Israel has taken additional territory but what the prosecutor has essentially done is attempt to reverse the process.

Through our European Centre for Law and Justice in Strasbourg, France we’ll be filing the brief with the ICC at The Hague. An order was issued yesterday or the day before that was rather lengthy because there’s a lot of people participating in this process.

You can hear more about the ACLJ’s upcoming case at the ICC defending Israel along with some political analysis by ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett, by listening to the entire episode here.