The International Court of Justice held the first day of hearings on Thursday about South Africa’s petition that accuses Israel of genocide, and immediate measures to halt the war in Gaza. So many viewers around the world wanted to watch that the United Nations Web TV site sputtered, due to overload.
Over three hours, South Africa made its case to the court; Israel will make its arguments on Friday. No one knows just what Israel’s legal arguments will be, but its public arguments – hasbara – have been on overdrive this week.
On Wednesday, Israel’s government launched a special new website only accessible outside of Israel, showing gruesome photos of atrocities from October 7, so that the world can know about “Hamas’ crimes against humanity.” In The Hague, the Israeli foreign ministry is organizing a public screening of a documentary film about the Hamas massacre at the Nova festival– to be projected on a building across from the ICJ.
The day before the hearings, Israeli media reported that Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, had recommended that Israel’s strategy for the ICJ should be to “humiliate the UN,” by showing how UNWRA facilities have been implicated in Hamas’ activities, including October 7.
And at 10:49 PM on Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu also posted a video with arguments certain to feature in Israel’s case, including that Israel is fighting Hamas, not Palestinians, and that it tries its best to protect civilians, “in full compliance with international law.”
But in Thursday’s hearing, South Africa’s delegation seemed intent on dismantling these arguments, pre-emptively.
For three months, Israel’s most prominent argument has been that Israel is defending itself in response to October 7 – this is a defensive war. But as anyone with knowledge of international law can confirm, the cause of a war doesn’t matter for accusations of committing genocide. In the early part of its arguments, the South African delegation addressed this point.
After first reiterating South Africa’s condemnations of the October 7 attacks (a condemnation repeated in the application itself), Justice Minister Ronald Lamola stated: “No armed attack on a state territory, no matter how serious, even an attack involving atrocity crimes, can provide any justification for, or defense to, breaches to the [Genocide] Convention whether as a matter of law or morality – Israel’s response to the 7th of October 2023 attack has crossed this line…”
In other words, Israel’s self-defense is not on trial – and can’t justify breaching any part of the Genocide Convention. Put simply, Israel’s defense defense offers little, well, defense.
Another Israeli argument relates to those nasty genocidey comments made by various Israeli officials.
The automatic response here in Israel is that these were just silly things said by insignificant politicians in the heat of the war. But it wasn’t hard for South Africa’s lawyers to present quotes from Netanyahu (speaking of the biblical orders to wipe out all traces of the enemy Amalek), or from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (“human animals”) or from then-Minister of Energy, Israel Katz (now foreign minister) calling for sweeping denial of basic supplies for the civilian population.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, not only argued that the whole population of Gaza was responsible for Hamas, but signed bombs for good measure, and all before mentioning the steady stream of hate from Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security.
South Africa was unimpressed by putative backtracking: “These statements are not open to neutral interpretations, or after the fact rationalizations or reinterpretations by Israel…it is simple, if the statements are not intended, they would not have been made.” Soldiers on the ground took these sentiments seriously, said South Africa’s counsel, showing a video of Israeli soldiers singing feverish chants of “Wipe out the seed of Amalek,” and “There are no bystanders!”
Next, Israel is depending heavily on its claim that it aims to protect civilian lives. Netanyahu said yesterday: “The IDF is doing its utmost to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas is doing its utmost to maximize them by using Palestinian civilians as human shields.”
Israel might well point to its mass evacuation of the entire north of Gaza to prove that it has tried to get them out of harm’s way. But South Africa’s Adila Hassim took direct aim at this argument. She told the court Gazan civilians are facing death not only by direct military action, but by “starvation, dehydration and disease,” wherever they are, since Israel has created obstacles to distribution of what scant aid has gotten through.
As for the military campaign, she argued, “The level of Israel’s killing is so extensive that nowhere is safe in Gaza.” As evidence, she submitted that people have been bombed in schools, hospitals, mosques and churches. Most damning, “They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, in the places to which they have fled, and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes.”
A final Israeli argument damaged today was Israel’s axiomatic belief that the ICJ, all arms of international justice, and the UN itself, is anti-Israel “by definition,” as a news anchor said this week on Israeli radio.
The heart of this argument is that these bodies “single out” Israel for accusations that everyone else in the world gets away with. Then how to explain South Africa’s repeated reference to earlier ICJ rulings, such as in Gambia’s case accusing Myanmar of the genocide of the Rohingya?
The South African delegation stated, “The detailed material before the court is marshaled to show a case for provisional measures based firmly on this court’s prior decisions, and South Africa advances its case on the basis that Palestinian rights are equally as worthy of protection…[as] the victim groups that this honorable court has previously protected by its issuance of provisional measures in the past.” The same Court also ruled against Russia in 2022, ordering an immediate suspension of its military operations against Ukraine.
Unfortunately, it didn’t much help.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate