ICJ president ‘plagiarised 32 percent of pro-Israel dissenting opinion’

Fresh allegations have emerged of Julia Sebutinde, acting president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), appearing to plagiarise large sections of her dissenting opinion on Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Last month, Sebutinde, who arguably holds the most prestigious judicial position, was accused of directly lifting sentences almost word for word in her dissenting opinion written on 19 July.

A study seen by Middle East Eye compiled by Majd Abuamer, a Palestinian researcher at the Doha Institute, for an upcoming book by US scholar Norman Finkelstein has now alleged that “at least 32 percent of Sebutinde’s dissent was plagiarised”.

The research will be presented as part of a chapter in Finkelstein’s upcoming book Gaza Gravediggers, which will be published in June.

Last July, a 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 most judges agreed with the advisory opinion, Sebutinde rejected the findings.

When contacted by MEE for a response, Sebutinde declined to comment on the plagiarism allegations.

‘Bizarre‘ 

Finkelstein told media sources that when he initially read the Ugandan judge’s dissenting opinion in July, he found it to be “bizarre”, and suspected that sentences may have been plagiarised. 

“So I posted on my Twitter account: ‘Would anyone care to volunteer to help me track down some plagiarism?’” the writer and scholar said. 

Following Finkestein’s call-out on X, formerly known as Twitter, Abuamer, who grew up in Gaza, responded with a thorough examination of the document. 

“He’s very precise. He finds 32.2 percent of her dissent was plagiarised,” said Finkelstein. 

One of the sources Abuamer found that Sebutinde repeatedly borrowed sentences from, word for word, is a video by conservative activist David Brog, entitled “Why isn’t there a Palestinian state?”. 

Laying out the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Sebutinde wrote that during the 1937 Peel Commission, “The British Government offered the Palestinian Arabs 80 percent of Mandatory Palestine (Transjordan), and the Jews the remaining 20 per cent (Palestine) in a suggested split that was heavily in favour of the former.

“Despite the tiny size of their proposed State, the Jews voted to accept this offer, but the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion against the British mandate.”

The equivalent sentence in Brog’s video stated: “The suggested split was heavily in favour of the Arabs. The British offered them 80 percent of the disputed territory; the Jews, the remaining 20 percent. Yet, despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion.”

Large parts of the text from Brog’s video appear in Sebutinde’s dissenting opinion – much of it word for word. The video is not mentioned in her citations. 

Brog is the former director of Christians United for Israel, and the current director of the Maccabee Task Force, which fights the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on campuses in the US and Canada. 

Abuamer also found sections lifted from a 2016 paper titled “Palestine, Uti Possidetis Juris and the Borders of Israel” by Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich (2016). 

These sections were highlighted last week in a blog by Mihai Martoiu Ticu, a writer based in the Netherlands. 

Bell and Kontorovich were among three legal scholars who wrote to Israel’s political leadership in January of last year, asserting that Israel was not legally obligated to allow displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza to return to their homes. 

Several sentences by Sebutinde were also lifted verbatim from a column by former US official Douglas Feith, as MEE reported last week. 

Feith served as under secretary of defence for policy in US President George W Bush’s administration from July 2001 until August 2005, devising US strategy for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also co-wrote a policy paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, recommending that Israel consider removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and militarily engaging Syria using proxy forces.

Sentences lifted from Wikipedia and BBC

Not all of the sources that Sebutinde took sentences from are pro-Israeli or conservative. Abuamer finds that several sections are directly lifted from Wikipedia and BBC News. 

In a section laying out the background of the 1973 Middle East war, Sebutinde writes: “The Israelis recognised that, despite impressive operational and tactical achievements on the battlefield, there was no guarantee that they would always dominate the Arab States militarily, as they had done consistently throughout the First, Second and Third Arab-Israeli Wars; these changes paved the way for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

Aside from the occasional change of word, this was lifted from the “Yom Kippur War” Wikipedia entry, as of late July.

A number of sentences were lifted verbatim from a BBC explainer on the history of wars between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.

There are also at least two sources quoted by Sebutinde, verbatim, from official submissions to the court for the July case. Neither of the sources are attributed by the judge.

Sebutinde wrote: “In 2020, in the context of the Abraham Accords, normalisation agreements (equivalent to peace treaties) have been reached between Israel and a diverse list of Arab countries including the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

“The Israeli presence in the West Bank pending the conclusion of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is consistent with the international and bilateral frameworks for the resolution of the conflict.”

The sentence, among several others, was written by the International Association of Jewish Lawyers (IJL) in its written statement submitted to the ICJ as part of the July proceedings looking into Israel’s policies in the occupied territories.

MEE consulted with legal experts on this matter, who stated that lifting sentences from statements that were submitted to the court by participants of the case is less problematic, and may not necessarily be considered plagiarism.

One expert said that while it was not plagiarism, the source of the submission should still have been clarified, rather than Sebutinde making out it was her own view of the law.

As well as IJL, Sebutinde quoted extensively from Fiji’s submission to the court.

She wrote: “Most of the participants in these advisory proceedings have, regrettably, presented the Court with a one-sided narrative that fails to take account of the complexity of the conflict and that misrepresents its legal, cultural, historical, and political context.”

Meanwhile, Fiji’s spokesperson told the court: “In Fiji’s view, this Court has unfortunately been presented in these proceedings with a distinctly onesided narrative. This fails to take account of the complexity of this dispute and misrepresents the legal, historical and political context.”

There was no mention of Fiji in the footnotes.

MEE reached out to the ICJ for comment, but there was no response by the time of publication.

Finkelstein hailed Abuamer’s research, which he described as “brilliant” and “precise”.

“It tells you something about all the human talent that was squandered and destroyed by Israel in Gaza,” the scholar said. “I’ve met so many really impressive people from Gaza.”