Rights Campaigners Urge World to Watch Gaza Genocide Trial Live. Here's How You Can
Thursday Jan. 11 proceedings at the ICJ are seen as a "glimmer of hope for international justice."
Jurists are seated at the International Court of Justice in The Hague (Photo: Abdullah Asiran/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
JON QUEALLY
Jan 10, 2024
The eyes of the world should be focused on The Hague come Thursday, say human rights campaigners, as the International Court of Justice takes up South Africa's case charging that the Israeli government has "failed to prevent genocide and is committing genocide in manifest violation of the Genocide Convention" by its actions in the occupied Gaza Strip.
"We encourage Americans and people around the world to listen to the oral arguments in South Africa's case, which if successful, would be an important step in holding the Israeli government to account for the genocide and crimes against humanity they are perpetrating against the Palestinian people," said Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
With the oral arguments scheduled to begin in The Hague at 10:00 am local time (4:00 am ET in the United States), the proceedings can be viewed below (or here) via the official ICJ stream provided by the United Nations:
In a statement on Wednesday, Amnesty International said the public hearing of South Africa's allegations against Israel will bring a "glimmer of hope for international justice," though the rights group has not itself determined whether the nation's actions against the people of Gaza amount to genocide.
Despite not making the determination itself—though other experts and scholars have—Amnesty said that "there are alarming warning signs given the staggering scale of death and destruction with more than 23,000 Palestinians killed in just over three months and a further 10,000 missing under the rubble, presumed dead, as well as an appalling spike in dehumanizing and racist rhetoric against Palestinians by certain Israeli government and military officials. This, coupled with Israel's imposition of an illegal siege in Gaza, which has cut off or severely restricted the civilian population's access to water, food, medical assistance, and fuel, is inflicting unfathomable levels of suffering and puts the survival of those within Gaza at risk."
Read South Africa's 84-page application to the ICJ, which lays out the detailed allegations against Israel, here. It contains recent quotes from high-ranking Israeli officials, including Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
A pair of Israeli parliamentarians doubled down on genocidal rhetoric Wednesday, with Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi saying of Gaza: "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."
"As the United States continues to use its veto power to block the U.N. Security Council from calling for a cease-fire, war crimes and crimes against humanity are rife, and the risk of genocide is real," said Callamard. "States have a positive obligation to prevent and punish genocide and other atrocity crimes. The ICJ's examination of Israel's conduct is a vital step for the protection of Palestinian lives, to restore trust and credibility in the universal application of international law, and to pave the way for justice and reparation for victims."
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) highlighted in a Wednesday statement that two weeks after the ICJ hearings, the group will be in federal court for its case against U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Llyod Austin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken "for their failure to prevent—and complicity in—the genocide."
CCR noted that "while previously supporting efforts at the ICJ to prevent genocide in the case of Ukraine v. Russia, the Biden administration has denounced the proceedings in The Hague and is seeking to have the U.S. case dismissed," with Blinken calling South Africa's case against Israel "meritless," despite the mounting evidence.
"Such double standards are unfortunately what we have come to expect from Israel's chief accomplice: Israel could not be committing genocide without the unconditional military and diplomatic support of the U.S. government," the center said. "It is time for the United States to stop its selective support for international law and instead comply with its own obligations to prevent and punish genocide in all cases."
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JON QUEALLY
Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams.
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A Chance to Hold Israel–and the US–to Account for Genocide
On January 11th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is holding its first hearing in South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention. The first provisional measure South Africa has asked of the court is to order an immediate end to this carnage, which has already killed more than 23,000 people, most of them women and children. Israel is trying to bomb Gaza into oblivion and scatter the terrorized survivors across the Earth, meeting the Convention’s definition of genocide to the letter.
Since countries engaged in genocide do not publicly declare their real goal, the greatest legal hurdle for any genocide prosecution is to prove the intention of genocide. But in the extraordinary case of Israel, whose cult of biblically ordained entitlement is backed to the hilt by unconditional U.S. complicity, its leaders have been uniquely brazen about their goal of destroying Gaza as a haven of Palestinian life, culture and resistance.
South Africa’s 84-page application to the ICJ includes ten pages (starting on page 59) of statements by Israeli civilian and military officials that document their genocidal intentions in Gaza. They include statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Herzog, Defense Minister Gallant, five other cabinet ministers, senior military officers and members of parliament. Reading these statements, it is hard to see how a fair and impartial court could fail to recognize the genocidal intent behind the death and devastation Israeli forces and American weapons are wreaking in Gaza.
The Israeli magazine +972 talked to seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials involved in previous assaults on Gaza. They explained the systematic nature of Israel’s targeting practices and how the range of civilian infrastructure that Israel is targeting has been vastly expanded in the current onslaught. In particular, it has expanded the bombing of civilian infrastructure, or what it euphemistically defines as “power targets,” which have comprised half of its targets from the outset of this war.
Israel’s “power targets” in Gaza include public buildings like hospitals, schools, banks, government offices, and high-rise apartment blocks. The public pretext for destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is that civilians will blame Hamas for its destruction, and that this will undermine its civilian base of support. This kind of brutal logic has been proved wrong in U.S.-backed conflicts all over the world. In Gaza, it is no more than a grotesque fantasy. The Palestinians understand perfectly well who is bombing them – and who is supplying the bombs.
Intelligence officials told +972 that Israel maintains extensive occupancy figures for every building in Gaza, and has precise estimates of how many civilians will be killed in each building it bombs. While Israeli and U.S. officials publicly disparage Palestinian casualty figures, intelligence sources told +972 that the Palestinian death counts are remarkably consistent with Israel’s own estimates of how many civilians it is killing. To make matters worse, Israel has started using artificial intelligence to generate targets with minimal human scrutiny, and is doing so faster than its forces can bomb them.
Israeli officials claim that each of the high-rise apartment buildings it bombs contains some kind of Hamas presence, but an intelligence official explained, “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so.” As Yuval Abraham of +972 summarized, “The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.”
Two days after South Africa submitted its Genocide Convention application to the ICJ, Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich declared on New Year’s Eve that Israel should substantially empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and bring in Israeli settlers. “If we act in a strategically correct way and encourage emigration,” Smotrich said, “if there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, and not two million, the whole discourse on “the day after” will be completely different.”
When reporters confronted U.S. State Department spokesman Matt Miller about Smotrich’s statement, and similar ones by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Miller replied that Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have reassured the United States that those statements don’t reflect Israeli government policy.
But Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s statements followed a meeting of Likud Party leaders on Christmas Day where Netanyahu himself said that his plan was to continue the massacre until the people of Gaza have no choice but to leave or to die. “Regarding voluntary emigration, I have no problem with that,” he told former Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon. “Our problem is not allowing the exit, but a lack of countries that are ready to take Palestinians in. And we are working on it. This is the direction we are going in.”
We should have learned from America’s lost wars that mass murder and ethnic cleansing rarely lead to political victory or success. More often they only feed deep resentment and desires for justice or revenge that make peace more elusive and conflict endemic.
Although most of the martyrs in Gaza are women and children, Israel and the United States politically justify the massacre as a campaign to destroy Hamas by killing its senior leaders. Andrew Cockburn described in his book Kill Chain: the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins how, in 200 cases studied by U.S. military intelligence, the U.S. campaign to assassinate Iraqi resistance leaders in 2007 led in every single case to increased attacks on U.S. occupation forces. Every resistance leader they killed was replaced within 48 hours, invariably by new, more aggressive leaders determined to prove themselves by killing even more U.S. troops.
But that is just another unlearned lesson, as Israel and the United States kill Islamic Resistance leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, risking a regional war and leaving themselves more isolated than ever.
If the ICJ issues a provisional order for a ceasefire in Gaza, humanity must seize the moment to insist that Israel and the United States must finally end this genocide and accept that the rule of international law applies to all nations, including themselves.
The Morality of the West on Trial
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
This week South Africa will open its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The indictment is based on the Genocide Convention of 1948 and alleges that Israel is perpetrating a genocide on the Palestinian people in Gaza. All that South Africa needs to prove at this short preliminary hearing – Israel will respond the following day – is that there is a plausible risk of genocide being carried out and that if no action is taken, more Palestinians will die.
This seems a pretty low bar and judging by past cases heard by the ICJ and the solid dossier of evidence for both genocidal actions and genocidal intent produced by the South African legal team, it is expected that the plausibility test will be passed and that the court will shortly thereafter issue an order demanding Israel cease its murderous activities against the Palestinian people.
Contrary to Admiral John Kirby’s assertion that the South African claim is baseless, this will be a pivotal moment, not just for Israel but also for the West. For not only have the governments of Europe and the US failed to call out Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, as required by the Genocide Convention, they have also been complicit in its execution by offering material, military and diplomatic backing.
A further element of support, and a major one at that, has been provided by the western media through its selective coverage of the atrocities perpetrated by the IDF. As we approach a death toll of over 23,000 dead civilians, most of whom are women and children, we have to acknowledge that the most horrific acts of brutality and dehumanisation most of us have ever seen have been normalised, justified and even occasionally cheered on by our mainstream media and political pundits. Under the Genocide Convention incitement to commit genocide is a criminal offence which signatory states are obliged to prosecute. However, in the face of a level of media support that can only be described as cult-like it is unlikely that any prosecutions will follow.
And yet, in spite of the solidity of the West’s support for its colonial flagship which has long enjoyed a de facto state of exceptionalism: beyond the constraints of international law, everything is now different. It is as if populations all over the world have been awakened from some stupor and they are not going back to sleep.
Whilst any signatory state could have brought a legal action against Israel once they became aware of the risk of a genocide being perpetrated: ringing the alarm bells being an obligation imposed on all parties to the convention, it seems historically appropriate that it is South Africa that has actually done so. Nelson Mandela famously remarked that South Africa’s emancipation from apartheid was incomplete without the liberation of Palestine. And, as the first president of that freed country, he recognised, as did many others from the apartheid generation, that the long-standing occupation of Palestine remained the most important moral concern in the world.
And now, notwithstanding the West’s vigorous attempts to conceal the occupation and whitewash Israel’s human rights violations, the issue of Palestinian freedom is centre stage once again. It must be irksome for the political elites to see their tireless efforts at normalisation which were so close to bearing fruit with the Abraham Accords come to naught. The over- zealous suppression of protest, particularly violent in the case of Germany – is no doubt the reaction of a panicked political class who thought they’d succeeded in subduing their populace to quiescent consumerism. Unfortunately for those elites, the immediacy of social media combined with the hubris of the Israeli military have revealed to the world a Boschian hellscape it will be impossible to forget.
Shielding Israel from the legal consequences of its actions has not been a good use of western hegemony. (Prior to the 2023 assault on Gaza Israel was in breach of over 30 UN resolutions as well as the Fourth Geneva Convention – due to its continuous building of illegal settlements). The inflated sense of impunity such protection has imparted to that state has encouraged a tirade of murderous boasts from the army, the Knesset, and all sectors of civil society. This is significant because whereas normally genocidal intent is the most elusive element of the crime for which the prosecution must adduce evidence, in the case of Israel’s current assault on Gaza, there are pages of it. Just like a bullying school boy who, having missed the benefit of timely censure has achieved a level of violence that can only be dealt with by expulsion, Israel may struggle to achieve any level of peaceful coexistence with its neighbours.
Of course there were warnings. As early as December 1948 just a few months after the state’s creation, a group of Jewish intellectuals, including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, wrote a letter to the New York Times warning American Zionists not to fund Menachem Begin’s ‘Freedom Party’ on account of its fascist tendencies, as evidenced by the massacre of Arabs at Deir Yassin. The advice was ignored and Begin went on to become the country’s 6th prime minister in 1978.
But it probably wasn’t until after 1967 when Israel conquered land in the 6 Day War that the Rubicon was crossed. On 22nd September 1967 two letters simultaneously appeared in two different Israeli newspapers each advocating a distinct direction for the country. One letter, written by 57 of the country’s leading cultural figures, including a Nobel laureate, favoured occupation. These societal luminaries saw the conquering of land as an opportunity for expansion and insisted that no government of Israel should ever give it back.
The other letter was from 52 left-leaning political unknowns, mainly drawn from the Socialist party Matzpen, which included Arabs and Israelis. Their prophetic warning reads as follows: “Our right to defend ourselves from annihilation does not give us the right to oppress others. Occupation leads to foreign rule. Foreign rule leads to resistance. Resistance leads to oppression. Oppression leads to terrorism, and counter-terrorism. The victims of terrorism are usually innocent. Holding on to the occupied territories will make us a nation of murderers and murder victims. Let’s leave the Occupied Territories now.”
We all know the direction Israel chose to follow: settlements expanded, the oppression grew more violent, and, as they say, the rest is history. But how the current crisis is now resolved will have repercussions far beyond that tiny strip of land. Because not only have relations with bordering Arab states been seriously damaged, perhaps irreparably, whatever the outcome of Israel’s plans for transferring the Gazan population out of the strip, but now the colonial design for the entire region has been thrown into question. The map drawing skills of Sykes and Picot are being re-examined just as newly emancipated states, like Mali, Burkino Faso and Niger, having thrown out their French guardians, are speaking of forming a federation.
But it is not only ‘out there’ that the ramifications of the assault on Gaza are being felt. At home too: in the arena of domestic politics, everything is in flux. Former British diplomat, Alastair Crooke recently described the political situation in the UK as broken. He is right. The Tories may be thrown out in this year’s election, but it would be a mistake to see the Labour Party as a winner. Its leader, Keir Starmer, a former Human Rights lawyer disappointed many of his political base in not voting for a ceasefire. In fact, his strong support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza has disgusted many within his own party and a number of resignations have followed. Whether a new anti-imperialism party forms in the coming years is anyone’s guess, but the ground looks more fertile than it has in a long time.
The International Court of Justice. Photo credit: ICJ
Of course, Palestine was always a fault line running through liberal democracy; it was where human rights rhetoric met colonial aspirations, where the rules of International Law were trumped by a Rules-based order. And those mutually exclusive ideas have always been on a collision course despite attempts by western powers to disguise the colonial nature of the state of Israel’s founding. The racist thinking of the 1930s was perfectly encapsulated in Churchill’s ‘dog in the manger’ speech where he openly expressed the view that inferior races – such as the Palestinians – should give up their land to ‘an advanced race a superior race, a more worldly-wise race’ who would make better use of it, i.e., the settlers from Europe. Churchill thought ethnically cleansing land was perfectly acceptable just as had been the case in America and Australia, and he lived at a time when it was possible to speak in such terms. But times change and so must discourse. So when Golda Meir’s asserted that Palestine was a land without a people, what she probably wanted to say was that the people there did not count. But this was the 1970s which was a time when some things could no longer be said: racist language was no longer acceptable. Racist practices were, however, provided they were wrapped up in conciliatory language. Only now, in our hyper-visual age, that old linguistic subterfuge no longer works. People can see for themselves.
The problem Israel has had is that it was too late to history: too late to fully accomplish the colonial project achieved by earlier settlers elsewhere. Israeli historian, Illan Pappe, succinctly described the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as ‘an incomplete atrocity’. And Israel can’t complete it now, as much as it is attempting to do so, because the whole world is watching. Israel may even be too late to secure its survival. Too late to history once again! Because, what could have been achieved in 1967: a peace deal with two independent states – Palestine and Israel – living side by side – now looks impossible.
The brutal assault on Gaza has exposed the hypocrisy of supposedly universal liberal values like nothing else. As it is now glaringly apparent that those values do not apply to Palestinians. Western states are working hard to distract their citizenry from such a realisation: trying to reframe what is clearly a moral issue as a cultural one, or a religious one, asserting that killing Palestinian children is upsetting for the Islamic world because they are Muslims. The implication being that non-Muslim citizens can and should accept their government’s presentation of the slaughter as an unavoidable tragedy, or worse, the fault of the Palestinians themselves. A particularly insidious aspect of that reframing, in the UK at least, has been an attempt to whip up Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment in wider society. The Islamophobic narrative is sustained by a continuous supply of low-grade assertions linking Islam with terrorism and anti-Semitism. Similar false narratives have been used to denigrate Protesters simply for demanding a ceasefire. If the ICJ makes a provisional finding of genocide against Israel it is going to impossible for western governments to continue to ignore the moral imperative. They may not abide by their responsibilities under the Genocide Convention to take appropriate action to stop the slaughter, but it is difficult to see how they can continue to besmirch the reputations of those who attempt to do so.
The hearing at the ICJ is not only a determination of the genocidal nature of Israel’s assault on Gaza, it is also an adjudication on the morality of the West. Although I doubt many still believe that the West is the bastion of liberal values it pretends, certainly not many outside the West. Sartre did an able take-down of that proposition in the preface he wrote to Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth’ which is an expose of the cruelties of colonialism in Algeria and beyond, published in 1961. ‘Humanism’ is the word Sartre uses to epitomise the much espoused liberal values of the West. Addressing Europeans he says, “Your humanism claims we are at one with the rest of humanity but your racist methods set us apart.” It wasn’t just a lapse in progressive thinking that was going on in the colonies: some disconnect between honourable motives and a falling short in attainments. Rather, Sartre recognised that Humanism was being used as a cover for those racist methods. It wasn’t a failing, it was an intentional deployment: like a disguise being used by a serial killer to lure his victims by dispelling their fears. Sartre saw that once the lie of Humanism was exposed, it could not be repaired and the order of the world would be forever changed. Because the notion that the West had sold to the world that it was the prototype human being: the head of the great family of humanity that all could eventually join was clearly not the case. And if the West is not the proto type for all human development, then other courses of action, indeed other histories could and would be written. As Sartre neatly sums it up, “It simply is that in the past we made history and now it is being made of us.” The ICJ judgement should be an important part of that new history.
Nations Urged to Back ICJ Case Against Israel After Experts Confirm Genocide Underway
"How many more alarm bells have to ring and how many more civilians must unlawfully suffer or be killed before governments take action?" asked one human rights expert.
An injured Palestinian girl is brought to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli airstrike hit al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on January 09, 2024.
(Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Jan 10, 2024
Human rights advocates are ramping up pressure on nations to formally back South Africa's case against Israel at the International Court of Justice after a panel of experts determined that the Israeli military's actions in the Gaza Strip—paired with officials' overt statements of intent to wipe out the Palestinian population—constitute sufficient evidence that a genocide is underway.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) convened the expert roundtable last month, before South Africa submitted its 84-page ICJ application accusing Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention, which also requires signatories to prevent genocide.
"We have to be clear that this is a very unique case, indeed textbook, in the way that intent is articulated openly and explicitly in an
unashamed way," Raz Segal, associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, said during his December presentation, pointing to remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other high-ranking officials signaling genocidal war aims.
South Africa's ICJ filing, submitted to the 15-judge United Nations court on December 29, features page after page of quotations from Israeli officials and lawmakers voicing what the document calls "genocidal intent against the Palestinian people." The first public hearing on the case is scheduled to take place on Thursday.
"Expert analysis of Israeli government statements revealing their intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, combined with military actions on the ground, including mass killings, forced displacement, and the deprivation of items essential to life in Gaza, suggest that the crime of genocide is being committed against the Palestinian population," Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN's executive director, said Tuesday. "South Africa's charging Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice underscores the need for decisive international action to compel a cease-fire and hold the perpetrators of these atrocities accountable."
Francis Boyle, the first human rights lawyer to ever win an order from the ICJ under the Genocide Convention, toldDemocracy Now! last week that based on his "careful review of all the documents so far submitted" by South Africa, he believes the country "will win an order against Israel to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Palestinians."
Thus far, at least seven national governments and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—which includes 57 member states—have issued statements supporting South Africa's case against Israel. But only Jordan has signaled that it plans to officially back South Africa's case with a Declaration of Intervention.
Such declarations allow countries to "formally express their support for the case and contribute to the legal proceedings, enhancing the case's legitimacy and impact," DAWN explained, noting that more than 30 nations—including the U.S., Israel's top ally and arms supplier—submitted Declarations of Intervention in Ukraine's genocide case against Russia at the ICJ.
"South Africa's application to the International Court of Justice, invoking the Genocide Convention against Israel, represents a pivotal moment in the pursuit of global justice and accountability," said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director. "It is time for the international community to support this process and speak with one voice to stop the genocide against the Palestinian people."
With national and grassroots support for South Africa's case growing, Israel has been pressuring governments around the world to speak out against the filing as it continues to wage war on Gaza's desperate and starving population. On Tuesday, as Common Dreamsreported, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed South Africa's case as "meritless" even as the Biden administration refuses to formally assess whether Israel has adhered to international law.
Since South Africa submitted its application to the ICJ late last month, Israel has killed more than 2,100 people in the Palestinian enclave and injured thousands more, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
"How many more alarm bells have to ring and how many more civilians must unlawfully suffer or be killed before governments take action?" Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, asked Wednesday. "South Africa's genocide case unlocks a legal process at the world's highest court to credibly examine Israel's conduct in Gaza in the hopes of curtailing further suffering."
Israel Accused of 'Effort to Intimidate the Judges' Ahead of Genocide Hearings
"Israel is pressing others to denounce the case in the hope of persuading the International Court of Justice to decide based on politics rather than the facts," said one critic.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken after their meeting in Tel Aviv on October 12, 2023.
(Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Jan 07, 2024
The Israeli government has mounted a pressure campaign urging governments around the world to publicly denounce South Africa's genocide case at the International Court of Justice, which is set to convene hearings on the detailed charges on Thursday.
According to a cable obtained by Axios, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is calling on the country's embassies to pressure host country diplomats and political leaders to swiftly issue an "immediate and unequivocal statement along the following lines: To publicly and clearly state that YOUR COUNTRY rejects the outrage[ous], absurd, and baseless allegations made against Israel."
The cable warns that "a ruling by the court could have significant potential implications that are not only in the legal world but have practical bilateral, multilateral, economic, security ramifications." Israel is seeking to prevent an injunction ordering the country to suspend its attack on Gaza.
Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian American political analyst, called Israel's lobbying campaign "an effort to intimidate the judges" at the ICJ, which Israel has previously boycotted.
Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth argued that the cable shows Israel is "evidently worried about a judgment on the merits in South Africa's case."
"Israel is pressing others to denounce the case in the hope of persuading the International Court of Justice to decide based on politics rather than the facts," Roth wrote on social media.
The United States, Israel's top ally and arms supplier, has already rejected South Africa's case, calling it "completely without any basis in fact" even though the Biden administration has not formally assessed whether Israel is complying with international humanitarian law during its assault on the Gaza Strip, which is now entering its fourth month with no end in sight.
Attorneys have warned U.S. officials that they may be complicit in genocide if they continue arming the Israeli military, which has committed atrocities with American weaponry.
"Increasingly, it looks as if America is underwriting a war to remove Gazans from Gaza."
One human rights monitor estimates that roughly 4% of Gaza's population has been killed, wounded, or left missing by Israel's war on the Palestinian territory.
Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and genocide scholar, has called Israel's assault "a textbook case of genocide," which is defined under international law as "a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part."
South Africa's 84-page application to the ICJ, a United Nations body composed of 15 elected judges, contains several pages of quotes from high-ranking Israeli officials—including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—expressing what the filing calls "genocidal intent against the Palestinian people."
Gallant infamously said days after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that "we are fighting human animals." The remark came after he announced a "complete siege" on the Gaza Strip, denying food, water, and other critical aid to the enclave's desperate population—a move widely decried as unlawful collective punishment.
"Similar statements have been made by Israeli army officials, advisers and spokespersons, and others engaging with Israeli troops being deployed in Gaza," reads South Africa's application, which has been backed by Turkey, Malaysia, and Jordan. Legal experts, advocates, and lawmakers in other nations have urged their governments to join the coalition.
Right-wing Israeli Knesset member Moshe Saada said last week that "my friends at the prosecutor's office, who fought with me on political matters, in debates, tell me, 'Moshe, it is clear that all the Gazans need to be destroyed.'"
Israel, which is a party to the Genocide Convention that it stands accused of violating, reportedly plans to argue at the ICJ that some of the officials quoted in South Africa's application "are not decision-makers"—and those who are "didn't mean what they said."
Israel's campaign against South Africa's genocide case comes after the country's national security and finance ministers drew international condemnation—including from the U.S.—for recommending the permanent removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, where 90% of the population has been internally displaced by the ongoing Israeli assault.
Such comments are hardly a departure from the Israeli military's actions and statements made by Netanyahu, who has reportedly sought out countries willing to "absorb" displaced Gazans. The Times of Israelreported last week that Israeli officials "have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants."
"Increasingly, it looks as if America is underwriting a war to remove Gazans from Gaza," New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote Friday.
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JAKE JOHNSON is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
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Photograph Source: Fars Media Corporation – CC BY 4.0
1948 was a year of tragic irony.
That year saw the adoption of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, together promising a world in which human rights would be protected by the rule of law. That same year, South Africa adopted apartheid and Israeli forces carried out the Nakba, the violent mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Both systems relied on western colonial support.
In short, the modern international human rights movement was born into a world of racialized colonial contradictions. Seventy-five years later, the world is watching in horror as Israel has continued the Nakba through its months-long, systematic ethnic purge of Gaza — again with the complicity of powerful western governments led by the United States.
The horrors of the original Nakba were met with decades of absolute impunity for Israel, feeding further violence. But this time, three decades since the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, the post-apartheid “Rainbow Nation” is taking the lead in challenging Israel’s genocidal assault.
On December 29, South Africa became the first country to file an application to the UN’s high judicial arm, the International Court of Justice, instituting genocide proceedings against Israel for “acts threatened, adopted, condoned, taken, and being taken by the Government and military of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people.”
In wrenching and horrifying detail, South Africa’s 84-page document describes a litany of Israeli actions as “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.”
A Horrifying Civilian Toll in Gaza and the West Bank
2023 was the bloodiest year in the Palestinian territories since the destruction of historic Palestine and the founding of the state of Israel.
In the first half of the year, Israeli assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank had already reached a fever pitch, with successive waves of mass arrests, settler pogroms, and military attacks against Palestinian towns and refugee camps, including the ethnic cleansing of entire villages. At the same time, millions of civilians in Gaza were suffering unbearable hardship under a 17-year-long Israel-imposed siege.
On October 7, Gaza-based militants launched a devastating attack on Israeli military and civilian targets and seized more than 200 military personnel and civilian hostages. In an appalling act of mass collective punishment, Israel immediately cut off all food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. Then it began a relentless campaign of annihilation through massive bombing and missile strikes followed by a ground-level invasion that brought shocking reports of massacres, extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings, and mass civilian detentions.
More than 22,000 civilians and counting have since been killed in Gaza, the overwhelming majority children and women — along with record numbers of journalists and more UN aid workers than in any other conflict situation. Thousands more are still trapped under the rubble, dead or dying from untreated injuries, and now more are dying from rampant diseases caused by Israel’s denial of clean water and medical care, even as the Israeli military assault continues. Eighty-five percent of all Gazans have been forced from their homes. And now Israeli-imposed starvation is taking hold.
The Legal Standard for Genocide
Genocide analysts and human rights lawyers, activists, specialists around the globe — no strangers to human cruelty — have been shocked by both the savagery of Israel’s acts and by the brazen public declarations of genocidal intent by Israeli leaders. Hundreds of these experts have sounded the genocide alarm in Gaza, noting the point-by-point alignment between Israel’s actions and its officials’ stated intent on the one hand, and the prohibitions enumerated in UN Genocide Convention on the other.
The South African application “unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.” But it reminds the Court: “No armed attack on a State’s territory, no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defense to, breaches of the [Genocide Convention] whether as a matter of law or morality.”
Unlike many aspects of international law, the definition of genocide is quite straightforward. To qualify as genocide or attempted genocide, two things are required. First, the specific intent of the perpetrator to destroy all or part of an identified national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Second, commission of at least one of five specified acts designed to make that happen.
South Africa’s petition to the ICJ is filled with clear and horrifically compelling examples, identifying Israeli actions that match at least three of the five acts that constitute genocide when linked to specific intent. Those include killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group, and, perhaps most indicative of genocidal purpose, creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” As South Africa documents, Israel has shown the world, at levels unprecedented in the 21st century, what those conditions look like.
For specific intent, South Africa points to dozens of statements made by Israeli leaders, including the President, Prime Minister, and other cabinet officials, and as well as Knesset members, military commanders, and more.
Accustomed to decades of U.S.-backed impunity, Israeli officials have been emboldened, describing openly their intent to carry out “another Nakba,” to wipe out all of Gaza, to deny any distinction between civilians and combatants, to raze Gaza to the ground, to reduce it to rubble, and to bury Palestinians alive, among many other similar statements.
Their deliberately dehumanizing language includes descriptions of Palestinians as animals, sub-human, Nazis, a cancer, insects, vermin — all language designed to justify wiping out all or part of the group. Prime Minister Netanyahu went so far as to invoke a Biblical verse on the Amalek, commanding that the “entire population be wiped out, that none be spared, men, women, children, suckling babies, and livestock.”
The U.S. May Also Be Complicit in Israel’s Genocide
The petition to the ICJ is sharply focused on Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention. It does not deal with the complicity of other governments, most significantly of course the role of the United States in funding, arming, and shielding Israel as it carries out its genocidal acts.
But the active role of the United States in the Israeli onslaught, while hardly surprising, has been especially shocking. As a State Party to the Genocide Convention, the U.S. is obliged to act to prevent or stop genocide. Instead, we have seen the United States not only failing in its obligations of prevention, but instead actively providing economic, military, intelligence, and diplomatic support to Israel while it is engaged in its mass atrocities in Gaza.
As such, this is not merely a case of U.S. inaction in the face of genocide (itself a breach of its legal obligations) but also a case of direct complicity — which is a distinct crime under the Genocide Convention. The Center for Constitutional Rights, on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations and individual Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, has filed a suit in U.S. federal court in California focused on U.S. complicity in Israel’s acts of genocide.
South Africa’s Genocide Complaint is a Rallying Cry for Civil Society
In a situation such as this, framed by shocking Western complicity on one side and a massive failure of international institutions fed by U.S. pressure on the other, South Africa’s initiative at the ICJ may hold significance beyond the Court’s ultimate decision.
This case comes in the context of the extraordinary mobilization of protests, petitions, sit-ins, occupations, civil disobedience, boycotts, and so much more by human rights defenders, Jewish activists, faith-based organizations, labor unions, and broad-based movements across the United States and around the world.
As such, this move puts South Africa, and potentially the ICJ itself, on the side of the global mobilization for a ceasefire, for human rights, and for accountability. One of the most important values of this ICJ petition may therefore be in its use as an instrument for escalating global civil society mobilizations demanding their governments abide by the obligations imposed on all parties to the Genocide Convention.
Predictably, Israel has already rejected the legitimacy of the case before the Court. Confident that the U.S. and its allies will not allow Israel to be held accountable, the Israeli government is defiantly continuing its bloody assault on Gaza (as well as the West Bank). If Israel and its Western collaborators are once again successful in blocking justice, the first victims will be the Palestinian people. Then the credibility of international law itself may be lost as collateral damage.
But South Africa’s ICJ action has opened a crack in a 75-year-old wall of impunity through which a light of hope has begun to shine. If global protests can seize the moment to turn that crack into a wider portal towards justice, we may just see the beginnings of real accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, and attention to the long-neglected root causes of violence: settler-colonialism, occupation, inequality, and apartheid.
A Jew coined the word ‘genocide.’ Now it’s being used against the Jewish state.
Israel has vehemently denied the accusation that the International Court of Justice will begin hearing Thursday.
(RNS) — Though the word has been applied over the decades to mass killings of Rwandans, Bosnians and Cambodians, the word “genocide,” coined by a Jewish lawyer after World War II, is still nearly synonymous with the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust.
Now, in a remarkable twist of history, the Jewish state is being accused of the crime.
On Thursday (Jan. 11), the International Court of Justice in The Hague will begin considering a complaint filed by South Africa that accuses Israel of genocide in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. More immediately, the complaint asks the court to issue a provisional measure to halt the fighting in Gaza, where more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed and millions displaced.
The South African filing says that Israel has attempted to eradicate the Palestinian people in Gaza by creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who fled to the United States in 1942, lost most of his family, including his parents, in the Holocaust, in which at least 6 million Jews died. Lemkin became determined that international law recognize and outlaw the systematic destruction of any national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Raphael Lemkin. Photo courtesy of United Nations Archives
The crime needed a name, and Lemkin furnished one by combining geno — from the Greek word for race or tribe — with cide, from the Latin word for killing.
Thanks to his efforts, the United Nations in 1948 approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. A total of 153 countries (out of 195 in the world) have since signed onto the genocide convention, committing them to “undertake to prevent and punish” genocide. Israel signed the convention in 1951; South Africa in 1998.
Israel has vehemently denied that it has engaged in genocide, saying its battle in the Gaza Strip is against the terrorist group Hamas, not the Palestinians themselves. It has dispatched Aharon Barak, an esteemed retired justice of Israel’s Supreme Court and — no less ironically — a survivor of the genocide of European Jews, to defend against the charge.
“There’s nothing more atrocious and preposterous than this claim,” President Isaac Herzog of Israel said on Tuesday, pointing out that the Hamas’ 1988 charter calls for the elimination of Israel.
Here are a few keys to the impact of the hearing and its possible outcomes:
What authority does the International Court of Justice have?
The ICJ, founded in 1945 as part of the U.N. charter, adjudicates questions of international law among states.
In 1986, Nicaragua brought a case to the ICJ claiming the U.S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Sandinistas. The court agreed. Last year, Ukraine alleged that Russia abused the genocide convention to justify launching its invasion there. The case is still pending but as a provisional measure the ICJ asked Russia to suspend its military operations.
It also hears genocide allegations from among states that have signed the genocide convention.
While South Africa is not being attacked or suffering directly from Israel’s prosecution of the Hamas war, its complaint is based on the U.N. treaty.
“South Africa is claiming standing based on the fact that both Israel and South Africa are parties to the 1948 genocide convention,” said Thomas Kelley, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who teaches international law.
Who will hear the case and how long will it take?
The ICJ is composed of 15 judges, each representing a different country. In this case, it has added two more: a South African judge and an Israeli judge.
Typically, the ICJ takes years to rule on a claim of genocide, but South Africa has asked for an emergency order for Israel to immediately halt its military operation as a first step. No one seems to know whether the ICJ would issue such an order promptly. Oral arguments are scheduled for Thursday and Friday.
Palestinians look at the destruction of the Al-Gatshan family building after an Israeli strike in Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, on Dec. 18, 2023. Satellite data shows that one-third of structures across Gaza have been destroyed. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)
How do you prove genocide?
In cases alleging abuse of the genocide convention, the court looks at material evidence of killings or forced transfer of a group. In addition, a finding of genocide must establish an intent to destroy a group of people.
In its 84-page application to the ICJ, South Africa cited statements by Israeli officials that South Africa says “constitute clear direct and public incitement to genocide.”
Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have made public comments that could suggest genocidal intent. Announcing the siege of Gaza after Hamas’ invasion of Israel that killed 1,200 people, Gallant was quoted saying, “We are fighting against human animals.” Some of the Israeli officials’ statements cited in South Africa’s complaint that call for removal of Palestinians, the flattening of Gaza or the dehumanization of Palestinians may count as evidence of intent.
“Israel will argue is that these statements don’t actually translate into policy,” said Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University.
How does the ICJ enforce its rulings?
The ICJ does not have any mechanisms for enforcing its rulings. Essentially its judgments are “advisory opinions,” Kelley said.
ICJ judgments can be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. But the Security Council, made up of 15 member nations, often deadlocks along the lines of their informal or formal alliances, and its permanent five members — the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France — can veto resolutions.
In March, the ICJ called on Russia to suspend its military operations in Ukraine, but Russia essentially ignored it.
Do ICJ rulings have any impact?
Judgments by the court can have political and legal implications that may affect a country’s standing and reputation.
Other countries may also be implicated.
For example, Bartov said, the U.S. is a major supplier of weapons to Israel. If the ICJ rules that Israel committed genocide, the U.S. would then technically be in violation of its own laws against providing munitions to countries suspected of breaches of international law.
But the biggest impact of ICJ decisions may be reputational.
“If a country loses credibility on the world stage, it has less influence and it may have economic effect,” Kelley said. “Most countries, outside of maybe North Korea and a few other pariah states, don’t want to be outlaws.”
Rhetoric on Eve of ICJ Trial
"I stand behind my words," said Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi. "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."
Israeli Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi speaks on March 9, 2021
(Photo: Nissim Vaturi/Facebook)
BRETT WILKINS
Jan 10, 2024
Two Israeli lawmakers from right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party doubled down Wednesday on calls to destroy or depopulate Gaza, prompting an admonition from the country's attorney general on the eve of an emergency hearing in the South African-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
In an interview with Hakol Baramah radio, Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi said he did not regret his November call for Israel to "stop being humane" and "burn Gaza now."
"I stand behind my words," Vaturi said, according toThe Times of Israel. "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."
Referring to Palestinian civilians trapped in northern Gaza, Vaturi added that he has "no mercy for those who are still there."
"We need to eliminate them," he asserted.
On Tuesday, Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara cautioned government officials against making inflammatory statements like Vaturi's.
Baharav-Miara said officials are "obligated to act according to the principles of international law and the laws of war."
"Statements that call for, among other things, intentional harm to uninvolved citizens, are against the prevailing policy and may constitute criminal offenses, including incitement," she added.
Vaturi's remarks came as more than 90,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded, or left missing by 96 days of largely indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of Gaza, where around 90% of the territory's 2.3 million residents have been displaced and most of its infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials.
Meanwhile, Haaretzreported that Danny Danon, a former United Nations ambassador now serving in the Knesset, said in a Wednesday radio interview that Israel must "not do half a job" in Gaza.
That, Danon said, means "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from Gaza—a euphemism, critics say, for an ethnic cleansing campaign akin to the Nakba, or "catastrophe," in which more than 750,000 Arabs were forcibly expelled from Palestine during the war to establish the modern state of Israel in 1948.
In November, Danon co-authored a Wall Street Journalopinion piece suggesting the ethnic cleansing of some of Gaza's population to Western countries that would accept the refugees.
Danon and Vaturi's remarks came as the International Court of Justice prepared to convene an emergency hearing Thursday in The Hague in a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and backed by nations including Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Venezuela, Jordan, and Bolivia.
The filing in the World Court specifically mentions "direct and public incitement to genocide by senior Israeli officials and others."
These include individuals from Netanyahu and other senior Cabinet and military officials to Knesset members and municipal leaders.
Meanwhile, leftist Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif is being targeted for removal from the Knesset after becoming the first parliamentarian to express support for the ICJ genocide case against his country.
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