The rising international anger over settlements, with condemnations from the European Union as well as neighboring Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, has not determined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the pursuit of settlement activity, which he and his government view as a response to the rising terror attacks.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said that the Biden administration was working together with Israel’s allies to jointly express their collective displeasure over settlement activity.

Kontorovich noted the double standards that have politicized international law, and undermined its integrity. Only Israel’s actions in the West Bank are deemed unlawful and worthy of boycott, even as plenty of other countries—including America—have occupied territories and enabled their citizens to live in them. Kontorovich points to over a dozen other cases (e.g., Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara; Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus) along with a few that are less well known, like the U.S. occupation of West Berlin which ended in 1990.

The idea that settlements are illegal derives primarily from UN resolutions and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is an arm of the UN. The UN does not make legal determinations, only political ones. The ICJ “does not have jurisdiction over all disputes between UN member-states,” according to the Congressional Research Service. In fact, “with the exception of ‘advisory opinions,’ which are non-binding, the ICJ may only resolve legal disputes between nations that voluntarily agreed to its jurisdiction.”