Israel rejected the case as ‘baseless’, insisting that its forces are operating in Gaza according to law.
To accuse any country of genocide is a serious matter. But to accuse Israel, a country largely founded on the guilt of Hitler’s attempted genocide of Jews when more than 6 million were murdered, is not only extremely serious, it’s also unprecedented and not without an element of irony. On Thursday, Israel faced down accusations under the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, drawn up after WWII following the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Two weeks ago, South Africa filed the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing it of crimes of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Pretoria claimed that Israel’s conduct, after three months of relentless bombardment which has resulted in widespread death and destruction in the besieged enclave, violates the UN’s Geneva Convention. In calling for an expedited hearing, South Africa requested the court to indicate provisional measures to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people” under the convention.
A furious Israel immediately rejected the case as “baseless”, insisting that its forces are operating in Gaza according to International Law. Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat writing on X said “Israel rejects with disgust the blood libel spread by South Africa and its application to the ICJ”. “Blood libel”, a thinly veiled accusation of anti-Semitism, is a reference to ancient conspiracies against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also insisted that Israel had displayed “unparalleled morality” in the Gaza war as he, too, dismissed South Africa’s charge.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that Israel is taking the accusations very seriously by appointing a British expert in international law, Professor Malcolm Shaw, to represent it at the ICJ. The government also sent a cable to all its embassies last week instructing them to press diplomats and politicians in their host countries to issue statements against South Africa’s case in order to prevent any injunction that orders Israel to suspend its military campaign in Gaza.
The Biden administration also immediately rejected South Africa’s claims saying “we find this submission meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”. A number of countries, including The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a grouping of 57 Muslim countries, as well as Jordan, Turkey and Malaysia support South Africa’s claims.
Unlike the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals for war crimes and which in March last year issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the ICJ, also called the World Court, is a UN civil court that adjudicates disputes between countries. Both South Africa and Israel are members of the ICJ and are bound by decisions of the court. In the past, Israel’s policies in Gaza have been compared by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to his own country’s apartheid regime of racial segregation imposed by the white-minority rule that ended in 1994.
So what is South Africa’s case against Israel?
In what many consider to be a well-written, well-argued and thoroughly documented (there are 573 references) description of what Israel is doing in Gaza, South Africa’s 84-page application detailed at great length the horrors that Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) have inflicted on the Palestinians since 7 October and explains why much more death and destruction is in store for them. Most shocking in the report are the words used by Israeli leaders and those in positions of the highest responsibility about how they should deal with the people of Gaza, reminding many of the time the Nazis talked about dealing with the Jews in the 1930s. All the following quotes are meticulously recorded and referenced in the report.
From the start of the war, Netanyahu in various messages referred to the IDF campaign as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle”, a dehumanising theme to which he returned on a number of occasions. Most notably was Netanyahu’s invocation on 28 October of the Biblical story of the total destruction of the Amalek by the Israelites. He referred to it again in a letter on 3 November: “you must remember what the Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”, he said. Netanyahu was reminding his troops of the biblical passage: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and assess”. This was his way of telling them to do the same to the Palestinians and, from the death and destruction in Gaza over the past three months, they appear to have followed Netanyahu’s instructions.
On 12 October, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog made it clear that his country was not distinguishing between militants and civilians in Gaza, stating in a press conference to foreign media “it’s an entire nation out there that’s responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true, and we will fight until we break their backbone”. Herzog is one of many Israelis to have handwritten “messages” on bombs to be dropped on Gaza.
Israeli Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, on 9 October insisted that his country was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”. He later announced that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces. A month later, Israeli Minister for National Security, the extreme right-wing Itamar Ben-Gvir, clarified his government’s position in a televised address, stating “to be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy – they’re all terrorists and they should also be destroyed”. Ben-Gvir was convicted of racial incitement against Palestinians in 2007.
A truly shocking genocidal “motivational speech” was delivered by 95-year-old Israeli army reservist, Ezra Yachin, a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba, also known as the “Palestinian Catastrophe”. Allegedly called up by the government for reserve duty to “boost moral” among Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion, and dressed in Israeli army fatigues while driven around by an Israeli army vehicle, Yachin is quoted saying: “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live. Every Jew with a weapon should go and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him. We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what’s in front of us and destroy houses, then destroy the one after it. With all our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Drop bombs on them and erase them”.
Foretelling what the Israeli army is currently achieving, former Head of the Israeli National Security Council and advisor to the Defence Minister, Major General Giora Eiland wrote in the on-line Fathom Journal: “The people of Gaza should be told that they have two choices; to stay and starve, or to leave. The State of Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in”. He later proposed that Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza compelling hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf. “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist”.
The Israeli government argues that these are just words, and words do not constitute genocide, although many Israeli’s are angry because they think that the case was only made possible because of irresponsible statements by far-right politicians, that in their view don’t represent actual policy. But neutral observers are finding an uncanny similarity between what was said by these leaders and what is currently happening on the ground. Four percent of Gaza’s population, more than 90,000 people, are now dead or severely wounded and approximately seventy percent of the Strip’s civilian facilities and infrastructure has been destroyed. The death toll includes 12,040 children, 6,103 women, 241 health workers, and 105 journalists, according to Euro-Med Monitor, the Geneva-based human rights independent organisation. Approximately 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes, 67,946 housing units have been completely destroyed and 179,750 have been partially damaged. Facilities targeted by Israel include 318 schools; 1,612 industrial facilities; 169 health facilities, including 23 hospitals, 57 clinics and 89 ambulances; 201 mosques, three churches; and 169 press offices.
Although Israel consistently dismisses these figures as absurdly high, many recall that in the short war between Israel and Hamas in 2014, Gaza’s Ministry of Health gave a figure of 2,310 dead, while the UN later arrived at an estimate of 2,252 and Israel put it at 2,125.
But does all this constitute genocide? Among the number of acts constituting genocide, defined by the UN, are: “killing members of a group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; or, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. On Thursday, South African lawyers argued at the ICJ hearing in The Hague that “genocidal intent” was evident “from the way in which this military attack is being conducted. The intent to destroy Gaza has been nurtured at the highest level of state. Every day there is mounting, irreparable loss of life, property, dignity and humanity for the Palestinian people”.
Few in the Israeli mainstream are willing to accept the genocide allegations. They mostly view the war as one of self-defence against Hamas, which due to the latter’s tactics results in wide but unintended harm to civilians. This was the basis of Israel’s argument in its defence on Friday. If, however, the ICJ eventually rules that Israel is directly responsible, this will be the first time it has found that a state has committed genocide. A ruling could take years to prove, but South Africa has also asked the court to issue “provisional measures” ordering Israel to stop its war on Gaza, which it says are “necessary to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people”. A provisional measure is a temporary order to halt actions, or an injunction, pending a final measure.
Should this be the outcome later this month, it’s unlikely to be accepted by Israel. In 2004, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion declaring Israel’s separation barrier in the occupied West bank to be in violation of international law, and called for it to be torn down. Israel ignored that decision and is likely to do the same in this case. Currently, polls show that Israeli’s overwhelmingly support the war, giving encouragement to Netanyahu’s government to continue its death and destruction.
In the meantime, despite US and UK attacks on their military infrastructure on Thursday, the Iran-backed Houthis who support Hamas, will continue to attack ships transiting the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait into the Red Sea, through which 15 percent of global seaborne trade passes; and Iran-backed Hezbollah will continue to destabilise northern Israel, which at any time could explode into a full-scale battle.
The Middle East is hotting up.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.