Australia takes a brave stand for human rights in the Middle East

Not unexpectedly, Australia’s commitment to a fair go informed its brave decision to vote against the adoption of such double standards.

"Israel must find ways of defending itself against terrorists," Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer told reporters. "And it isn't reasonable to tell the Israelis that they can't erect a security barrier to protect the people of Israel from suicide-homicide bombers," he said.

"We believe that taking this matter of the security barrier to the International Court of Justice was the wrong decision," Downer said.

Intriguingly that was the position of some 20 other Western democratic nations until yesterday. Those were the nations, including European nations, which asked the ICJ to decline to hear the case.

The Australian government in particular had presciently submitted to the ICJ that the very giving of an advisory opinion - as the ICJ now has done - would have a negative effect on the prospects for peace.

That the ICJ has done damage to the cause of peace is easily tested from the reaction of various foreign policy doves.  For example, Israel's leftist daily Haaretz commented on 11 July 2004:

It is difficult to accept the omission of Palestinian terrorism by the court and the murky reference to "violence" against Israelis, whose perpetrators appear to be anonymous. In its fervor to present the Palestinians as innocent victims of the occupation the court ignores the suicide attacks and other terrorist activities. Herein lies the main difference between the decision at The Hague and the ruling of the High Court of Justice on the fence. The latter recognised the security necessity of the fence and accepted the government's approach that its construction was meant to protect the citizens and not annex territory.

And one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, now Opposition leader Shimon Peres said that the ICJ "ignored the fact that the right to stay alive is a basic human right."

In ignoring the human rights of Israeli civilians the ICJ has not advanced the cause of peace, and has taken the vital agenda of human rights backwards.