Israel tasks ex-Supreme Court chief Aharon Barak to serve at Hague genocide hearings
Retired Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, 87, will be Israel’s appointee to the 15-judge panel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that will this week hear South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, Jerusalem announced Sunday.
The Foreign Ministry confirmed Barak’s appointment to The Times of Israel.
Barak’s name was suggested by the International Department of the State Attorney’s Office, backed by Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara and personally approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Channel 12 reported.
Beyond the permanent panel of the ICJ, both parties to a case may themselves nominate a judge to join the deliberations. Decisions are made by a simple majority of the presiding judges. [Continue reading…]
Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer on Monday announced that he is collecting lawmakers’ signatures in an effort to expel MK Ofer Cassif from the Knesset over his public support for a South African motion accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice.
In addition to signing a petition in favor of the genocide hearings in the Hague, Cassif “added on social media that the government is committing ‘crimes’ in Gaza, in the name of the people,” Forer said in a post on social media platform X.
His “treasonous words must no longer be heard while the blood of our soldiers and citizens screams from the ground,” he continued, recalling that Cassif had previously been disqualified from running for Knesset by the Central Elections Committee, in a decision that was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Cassif “chose during the war to join one of the most destructive initiatives for the security of the State of Israel, thus supporting the fight of Hamas against Israel,” Forer alleged. “He must soon find himself outside the borders of the Knesset and preferably also outside the borders of the State of Israel.”
According to Basic Law: The Knesset, 90 Knesset members may vote to expel a colleague who expressed support “for an armed struggle” against the State of Israel. Once 70 signatures are collected, the matter is referred to the Knesset House Committee and, if approved there, goes to the plenum for a vote.
Cassif, a member of the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party, recently signed a petition of support for South Africa’s case and has publicly accused Israeli leaders of advocating for crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.
“My constitutional duty is to Israeli society and all its residents, not to a government whose members and its coalition are calling for ethnic cleansing and even actual genocide. They are the ones who harm the country and the people, they are the ones who led to South Africa’s petition to The Hague, not me and my friends,” he wrote on X on Sunday.
“When the government acts against society, the state, and its citizens, especially when it sacrifices them and commits crimes in their name on the altar of maintaining its existence, it is my right and even my duty to warn about this and do everything I can within the law to stop it,” he asserted, adding that he would “not give up the fight for our existence as a moral society.” [Continue reading…]