Aharon Barak: Israel's judge at the ICJ who 'legitimised occupation'

The Israeli government has appointed Aharon Barak, the former head of its Supreme Court, to the panel of judges that will hear South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza at an International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing later this week. 

Barak’s appointment to the ICJ panel was personally approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a report on Israel's Channel 12.

The 87-year-old jurist was born in Lithuania and is a survivor of the Holocaust. His parents moved to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1947, a year before the creation of the state of Israel. 

He went on to embark on a distinguished academic and legal career, and served as Israel’s attorney general between 1975 and 1978, after which he began a three-decade tenure as a judge in Israel’s Supreme Court. In the last 11 of those years, he served as its president.

Barak has built up a reputation of being a liberal judge and a champion of democracy, particularly since his retirement. 

But researchers and commentators have called into question Barak's liberal and democratic credentials, citing his decades-long approach to cases involving abuses against Palestinians.

"For many, many years, and particularly since the massive demonstrations against the judicial coup alone, Barak has become the symbol of liberal democracy in Israel," Orly Noy, chair of Israeli rights group B’Tselem, told Middle East Eye. 

"Now Israel is sending that symbol of the so-called democratic Israel to whitewash its crimes against Palestinians in Gaza."

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