How Israel Faces Legal Warfare on the Global Stage
In an era where courts and international bodies are battlegrounds, legal frameworks meant to protect human rights are now being used to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and sovereignty. V24 spoke with top experts to reveal how lawfare is reshaping global justice and threatening democracies.
Alexandra Audrey Tompson
Dec 18, 2024 - 1:00 PM

Note: This article is informed by interviews conducted by V24 with various experts, including Arsen Ostrovsky, an international human rights lawyer, and other key figures on the issue of lawfare. Their insights shed light on how this legal battle is playing out against Israel and the broader implications for international justice. Video coming soon.
Israel’s New Battlefield: The War Waged in Courtrooms
Israel is no stranger to conflict, but today, a different kind of war is unfolding - one fought not with weapons, but with lawsuits, resolutions, and legal accusations. This is lawfare, a strategy where international legal systems, originally designed to uphold justice, are manipulated to delegitimize Israel, constrain its actions, and shield its enemies from accountability.
International human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky warns that lawfare is being used to weaken Israel on multiple fronts. With military efforts failing to achieve their objectives, Palestinian groups and their allies are turning to international courts and institutions to accuse Israel of war crimes, apartheid, and even genocide. These allegations don’t just aim to damage Israel’s reputation - they’re designed to erode its legitimacy altogether.
The most alarming example? The accusation of genocide. The term itself was enshrined in international law to prevent atrocities like the Holocaust and now, as Michal Kotler-Wunsch, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, puts it, this very law is being "perverted into a modern-day blood libel" against the Jewish state.
How Lawfare is Playing Out: Three Key Battlefields
According to Ostrovsky, Israel faces lawfare in three main arenas:
1. The United Nations – A Stacked Deck
With its one-country, one-vote system, the UN has become a key battleground. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) maintains Agenda Item 7, a permanent review of Israel’s actions - something no other country faces. Meanwhile, serial human rights violators enjoy relative impunity. This dynamic reveals a structural problem within the UN, where resolutions against Israel consistently outnumber those addressing egregious human rights violations elsewhere.
Dan Fefferman, co-chair of Sharaka, calls this “kabuki theater” - a staged performance where dictatorships and autocracies routinely vote to condemn Israel while ignoring far graver atrocities worldwide.
2. The International Criminal Court (ICC) – Twisting Justice
The ICC is investigating Israel for war crimes despite the fact that Israel never signed the Rome Statute, the treaty governing the court. The real goal? To criminalize Israel’s right to self-defense. Meanwhile, Hamas, which openly targets civilians and commits war crimes, largely escapes scrutiny.
Ostrovsky calls this a "grotesque distortion of international law", erasing the line between democratic states and terrorist organizations.
3. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) – A Legal Ambush
The ICJ has been increasingly used as a political weapon against Israel. In 2004, it ruled Israel’s West Bank security barrier illegal. In 2024, it escalated further, declaring Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories unlawful. Then, in December 2023, South Africa took things to a new level by accusing Israel of genocide—a charge Kotler-Wunsch slams as "a perverse mockery of history."
The Economic Front: Boycotts and Sanctions
Beyond legal assaults, economic lawfare is also in play. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, launched in 2005, targets Israeli businesses, cultural exchanges, and global partnerships.
Gadi Taub, historian and columnist, calls BDS a tool of "elites who override democratic processes to impose their agenda." Many of the NGOs driving these campaigns are funded internationally, bypassing Israeli voters to force external pressures onto government policy.
Trust in International Law is Crumbling
This battle isn’t just about Israel - it’s about the future of international justice itself. If institutions designed to uphold the rule of law are used as political weapons, their credibility collapses.
Hilik Bar, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, argues that the ICJ and ICC risk turning into politicized tools rather than impartial arbiters of justice. “How can anyone take these bodies seriously when they condemn Israel for defending itself but turn a blind eye to Hamas?”
What’s Next? Defending Justice from Lawfare
The growing trend of lawfare forces a crucial question: Can international legal systems survive if they are hijacked for political battles?
For Israel, this is more than just a legal debate - it’s an existential fight over its right to defend itself. And for the world, it’s a warning: if justice can be twisted against one democracy, no democracy is safe. In brief, it may well be time for a reckoning with the forces distorting international law.

Alexandra Audrey Tompson
Editor-in-Chief | Lawyer (Admitted in New York; England & Wales)