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South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice is crammed with evidence of breaches of the 1948 international genocide convention.
The 84-page case submitted to the court by South Africa is crammed with devastating evidence that Israel has breached its obligations under the 1948 international genocide convention, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The document before the court is meticulously footnoted and sourced, and many experts say the legal argument is unusually strong.
Top Israeli political and military leaders have themselves helped to bolster the case against their government. The words of Israeli officials are being offered as evidence of intent: from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging Israelis to “remember” the Old Testament account of the carnage of Amalek (“Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings,” reads one passage); to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowing that “Gaza won’t return to what it was before — we will eliminate everything”; to the minister of energy and infrastructure pledging, “They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave this world.” By speaking openly about destroying Gaza and dispersing its residents, Israeli leaders have publicized what has, in other cases of genocide, been hidden or denied.
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Given the sheer power of the United States and its track record of international impunity, the odds of any significant consequences may be small — but, nevertheless, Americans should understand that the case is both substantial and serious, and that their own government is implicated.
Within hours of the Hamas attack, Israel imposed a brutal blockade on the Gaza Strip, cutting off electricity, water, fuel and food to a trapped population of roughly 2.2 million, about half of whom are children.
To understand this extraordinary spasm of violence as an act of national self-defense, you’d have to accept that Israel’s only chance for safety depends upon Gaza being crushed and emptied — by death or displacement — of virtually all Palestinians.
The Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy has repeatedly called the South African case a “blood libel” — a reference to antisemitic European conspiracy theories that have fueled the persecution of Jews since the Middle Ages.
To hear the charge of genocide turned against the Jewish state often provokes a visceral disbelief among people — including many Americans — who were carefully educated about the Holocaust while the desperate plight of Palestinians was downplayed or ignored.
Speaking before the tribunal on Thursday, the South African barrister Max du Plessis argued that Israel’s decades-long oppression of Palestinian rights must be regarded as crucial context of the violence in Gaza, which he said “is not correctly framed as a simple dispute between two parties.”
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