U.N. on the wrong side of the fence

Given the institution's palpable bad faith, it is no surprise that Israel did not consent to be judged by the International Court of Justice. This U.N.-sanctioned court condemned Israel in absentia, ruling its construction of a security fence in what the ICJ refers to as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory" contrary to international law.

If "international law" as interpreted by the United Nations means that a nation may not forestall mass murder, then this law is worse than an ass – it is a monstrous absurdity rightly ignored.

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In the 60-plus pages of the ICJ verdict, no more than cursory consideration is given to why the wall exists: a concerted and continuous campaign of murder against Israel. As Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman explained, "[T]he very reason for building the fence [is that] Palestinian terrorism has taken the lives of nearly 1,000 Israelis in over 20,000 attacks over the last three-and-a-half years."

In a submission that argued the ICJ has no jurisdiction in the matter, Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker demolished the claim that Palestine is an injured party: "Palestine, given its responsibility for acts of violence against Israel and its population – which the wall is aimed at addressing – cannot seek from the Court a remedy for a situation resulting from its wrongdoing."

This Blackstone-quality argument fell on deaf ears. The judges, from Jordan (Judge Al-Khasawneh), Japan (The Honorable Owada), Egypt (Justice Elaraby), and Sierra Leone (Abdul G. Koroma) resorted to a narrow and bizarre reading of the U.N. Charter. Only if Israel were attacked by a proper state, they "reasoned," would the Charter's self-defense provision apply.

In separate opinions, the U.K. judge (Rosalyn Higgins) and the Dutch judge (Pieter Hendrik Kooijmans) cast timid aspersions on their colleagues' contention that the wall is an impediment to Palestinian self-determination, arguing that the obstacles to this lay elsewhere.

The only jurist to manifest clear common sense was the American Justice Thomas Buergenthal. In a trenchant minority decision, he declared that the majority had ignored the "repeated deadly terrorist attacks in and upon Israel proper" and their bearing on "Israel's legitimate right of self-defense, military necessity and security needs."

While Israelis were in effect instructed they had no natural right to self-defense, the Benthamite statists of the ICJ presumed to confer bogus, positive rights galore on the Palestinians. The court held that the wall violated Palestinian rights to health care, education, a decent standard of living and other "Social and Cultural Rights."

Leaving aside the question of where suicide bombings fit in this gorgeous panoply, where is the evidence that Israel is heedless of them? In the Middle Eastern island of justice that is Israel, every individual affected by the fence's presence or absence may seek legal redress.

Israel's High Court recently ruled for its Arab petitioners and against the Israeli government with respect to a disruptive section of the wall. That such judicial remedy isn't available to citizens of the Palestinian Authority (or of neighboring Arab states, for that matter) is of no interest to the ICJ.

To the outrage of the Palestinian Authority, Israel's infinitely civilized attempt to wall off the New Barbarians has been rather effective. Before the security fence commenced in July 2003, Samaria-based terrorists had killed on average 103 Israelis per year and maimed 688. Since July 2003, the number of the murdered has fallen to 28 and the wounded to 83.

Notwithstanding these statistics, higher morality demands that utility ("Is the wall effective?") be subordinated to ethics ("Do Israelis have the right to defend their lives?"). And the answer to this second question can only be "Yes."

As the world's Solons sat in judgment at the Hague, a beautiful 19-year-old Israeli woman – Sergeant Ma'ayan Na'im – was murdered at a bus stop in Tel Aviv by terrorists. Fatah's Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the bombing that killed her and wounded 33. Is Ma'ayan Na'im any less dead and are the 33 others any less wounded because a court rules that Palestine's Murder Inc. and Yasser Arafat, its capo di tutti capi, lack sovereignty?

"The fence is reversible," an Israeli official concluded, "whereas the lives taken by terrorism are not." This Mosaic emphasis on the sanctity of life was lost on the International Court of Justice, so called.

Editor's note: This editorial first appeared in the London-based Jewish Chronicle.