International | On the bench

Israel’s judge in The Hague is its government’s bogeyman

Aharon Barak led the controversial “constitutional revolution”

Aharon Barak at his home office in Tel Aviv.
An unlikely revolutionaryImage: Avishag Shaar-Yashuv/The New York Times/Redux/Eyevine
|JERUSALEM

EVEN IN RETIREMENT Aharon Barak, a former president of Israel’s supreme court, remains a controversial figure. Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government spent most of 2023 attempting to dismantle his constitutional legacy. Yet when asked to appoint a judge to join the panel of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide in its war in Gaza, it chose Mr Barak, Israel’s most renowned jurist.

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This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Tough justice”

From the January 20th 2024 edition

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