New ICJ president a Christian Zionist influenced by End Times theology

Max Blumenthal

January 24, 2025

Julia Sebutinde stood alone in rejecting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Now the court’s president, the Ugandan judge suggests her motives for protecting Israel can be found in the Old Testament.

With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability.

The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on January 14, 2025 to become Prime Minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda. Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all six resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak.

The Ugandan judge not only rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah, but insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. Sebutinde concluded that, in fact, Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims.

Sebutinde’s dissenting opinion opened with a lengthy history of the Israel-Palestine conflict that blended well-worn Zionist propaganda with the Old Testament. In rejecting her colleagues’ ruling declaring Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal, she resorted to accounts of the Jewish presence in the biblical land of Israel, omitting any mention of UN resolutions or international law.

“There is substantial evidence that Jewish people lived in the region of ancient Israel between 1000-586 BCE. This period corresponds to the era of the United Monarchy under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and the subsequent divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The evidence includes archaeological findings in the City of David…” Sebutinde insisted. “The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) offers detailed accounts of the history, culture, and governance of the Israelites during this period. While these texts are religious in nature, many scholars consider them valuable historical documents.”

Her opinion was so extreme, and so shot through with theological commentary, it prompted Uganda’s ambassador to the United Nations, Adonia Ayebare, to declare her “ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.”

So what accounted for Sebutinde’s defiance in the face of the entire ICJ panel and her own country’s diplomatic corps? Had she been handled by malign external forces? Or was she driven by deeply held personal passions?

Israel’s history of bribing, threatening and blackmailing officials around the world – and destroying those who forcefully oppose it – is well documented. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, fell under heavy Mossad surveillance after he introduced warrants for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant. In October, 2024 when an anonymous accuser brought forward allegations of sexual harassment against Khan, there could be little doubt an Israeli hand had finessed the scandal.

Sebutinde’s fanatical adherence to Israel’s agenda does not appear to be the product of manipulation or enticement, however. The views expressed in her dissent on the South African case were much more likely a reflection of the Christian Zionist belief system she developed as a member of Watoto, a Pentecostal megachurch in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. It was there that Sebutinde says she developed her worldview under the tutelage of a Canadian pastor and End Times aficionado named Gary Skinner.

“The godly values of integrity, honesty, justice, mercy, empathy, and hard work that the Skinners and Watoto Church instilled and nurtured in me, over the years, account for who I am today and have immensely contributed to my incredible career as a judge in Uganda and a judge at the International Court for Justice,” Sebutinde proclaimed during a June 2024 ceremony for the launch of a new branch of the church in downtown Kampala.

“What happens to Israel is a sign of the End Times scenario”

Since he founded Watoto in 1984, Skinner has instilled a virulently anti-Arab strain of Christian Zionism in his congregation of 36,000 in Kampala. In a 2021 sermon entitled, “Israel: The Greatest Sign,” Skinner spun together an assortment of cherry-picked biblical verses with potted history to justify Israel’s military control over historic Palestine. He punctuated his jeremiad with an admonition to his parishioners and gentiles everywhere: “If you bless the Jews, you will be blessed. If you curse the Jews, you will be cursed.”

Like all Christian Zionists, Skinner saw Israel’s foundation as the fulfillment of prophecy: “May the 14th, 1948,” the tinny-voiced preacher proclaimed, “and on that day, little four or five foot three David Ben Gurion, with his lion like hair, stood up and declared: ‘The Jewish nation reborn,’ to be called Israel. For 2400 years, no Jewish flag had flown over Israel until that day… but God fulfilled his prophecy by bringing them back the greatest sign of the any moment return of Jesus.”

Minutes later, Skinner emphasized that Israel’s existence as a self-proclaimed Jewish state “is the most dramatic sign that Jesus is about to return. What’s going to happen ahead of us – Israel is that barometer,” the preacher continued. “What happens to Israel is a sign of the End Time scenario. The national rebirth of Israel is the greatest End Time sign we have.”

In his sermon, Skinner also boasted of Watoto’s donations to an array of evangelical charities inside Israel through the church’s FIRM Israel initiative, including some that promote religious conversion. “We, as a church, give a lot of money every year to support God’s work in Israel,” he stated, beaming with pride, “because we know that God has a plan for the nation, and it’s the greatest sign of His return.”

Skinner’s eschatological view of history clearly informed Sebutinde’s dissent against the ICJ ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Though Uganda’s Foreign Ministry condemned her radical opinion, powerful evangelical figures inside the country with close ties to the presidency hailed her as a heroine.

“Not all heroes wear capes,” declared Patience Rwabwogo, an influential Pentecostal preacher in Kampala. “Julia Sebutinde has made a historic stand at the ICJ. May God always remember her for mercy and may Uganda as a nation always be found on the Lord’s side.”

Rwabwogo happens to be the daughter of Yoweri Museveni, the flamboyantly evangelical president of Uganda, whose wife Janet – a close ally of Watoto Church – is known for her biblical interpretations of history.

Frank Kisakye, a Ugandan constitutional scholar, argued that the endorsement of Sebutinde’s ICJ dissent by Museveni’s daughter demonstrates the judge’s opinion was “almost certainly informed by the terms of Genesis 12:1-3,” the verse interpreted by Christian Zionists to mean that anyone who blesses the Jews will be blessed, and was therefore “wholeheartedly sanctioned by the Ugandan Pentecostal movement.”

Now at the helm of the ICJ, Sebutinde may be able to undermine the South African case in a more substantive way than before. With Israel likely to shatter the Gaza ceasefire, time is running out for war crimes investigators. But the Ugandan judge appears to be operating on a schedule free from earthly concerns, dictated instead by the End Times.