We are not arguing here that there is necessarily comparability between the purported weaponization of the American judicial system against former President Donald Trump and the international judicial system with regard to its biased treatment of Israel. But we are suggesting that the treatment of Trump in the various federal and state courts and the actions in the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court involving Israel and its leaders each provide a useful backdrop for the others.
As is common knowledge, it is broadly – and we believe plausibly – being alleged that Mr. Trump has been targeted by elements of an American justice system turned rogue. It has gone from a system that had ostensibly focused first on crimes and then on the prosecution of perpetrators, to one that has increasingly taken to targeting political enemies first and then tying them to crimes, which are often the product of legal gymnastics and exploitations of legal ambiguities.
Without rehashing all of the legalities, almost everybody agrees that if his name were not Donald Trump, the former President would never have been prosecuted for the relatively trivial “crime” of inaccurate business record entries or much less having it ballooned to an astonishing 34 felonies! At worst, it would ordinarily have been deemed the stuff of civil fines or penalties. Yet here we have the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States facing four years in prison for each of 34 felonies.
Small wonder then, that millions of Americans are aghast and profess little confidence in the legal system as an engine of justice. Indeed, from the get go, the pervasiveness of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” virtually guaranteed a conviction of the indictments given to the jury pool in the deepest blue state of New York. And this is to say nothing about the appealable issues raised during the course of the trial. Unsurprisingly, the automatic stigma that used to attach to a criminal conviction is no more as the reality of the weaponization phenomenon has sunk in.
It is also no wonder that since the convictions the Trump campaign has raised record amounts of money and the candidate’s polls have risen so sharply despite his several legal issues.
Sadly, an apt analogy can be drawn with the treatment Israel receives in international legal fora. It is regularly and often automatically deemed in the wrong in the organs of the United Nations.
Most recently the International Criminal Court – an intergovernmental organization with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression – indicated that it will be seeking the arrest and prosecution of Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes committed in the course of the Gaza War. Although it is separate and apart from the UN, the effort is lacking any semblance of legal basis and is patently proceeding pursuant to the anti-Israel political bias its fellow UN members harbor against Israel.
Similarly with the International Court of Justice. The ICJ, an agency of the UN adjudicates general disputes between nations It too has recently issued a decision calling on Israel to restrain its activities in Gaza, but it too is palpably proceeding on the basis of little more than anti-Israel political bias.
It is sad, very sad that in such important respects, both domestically and internationally, we seem to have moved so far away from the neutral application of the laws.
