Mike Pence: “this is a dark day in the history of international law. Today, the International Court of Justice, at the request of the…”

“this is a dark day in the history of international law. Today, the International Court of Justice, at the request of the United Nations General Assembly, ruled, ``The construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying power in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around east Jerusalem and its associated regime, is contrary to international law.'' With this extraordinarily biased decision, the International Court of Justice has become an international disgrace. This outrageous ruling confirms what many of us have feared, that opponents of Israel have overtaken the judicial process at the U.N.'s highest judicial court and have begun to use it for political aims on the world stage. Mr. Speaker, the referral of this issue itself was biased and prejudged Israel. The referral actually used contestable political language such as ``occupied Palestinian territory'' and referred to the Israeli security fence repeatedly as a wall. It is as if the court simply did a cut and paste of those terms and issued them in their ruling today, completely failing in their multipage ruling to talk about context, namely years of brutal terrorism at the hands of Palestinian extremists against Israeli civilians. Mr. Speaker, it is crucial today that we make a pair of points that the International Court of Justice completely ignored. Number one, Israel's security fence prevents terrorism; and, number two, the ICJ had no authority to hear this case.”