Israel on Friday rejected what it called the \u201cgrossly distorted\u201d accusation of genocide leveled against it by South Africa, telling the United Nations\u2019 top court the case was an attempt to \u201cpervert the meaning\u201d of the term. <\/p>\n
In the second and final day of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel argued its war in Gaza was fought in self-defense, that it was targeting Hamas rather than Israeli citizens, and that its leadership had not displayed genocidal intent. <\/p>\n
South Africa on Thursday had alleged Israel\u2019s leadership was \u201cintent on destroying the Palestinians as a group in Gaza,\u201d and that its aerial and ground assaults on the enclave were intended to \u201cbring about the destruction of its Palestinian population.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel said the case was \u201ca concerted and cynical effort to pervert the meaning of the term \u2018genocide\u2019 itself.\u201d It asked the court, which sits in The Hague, the Netherlands, to dismiss the case as groundless and refuse South Africa\u2019s request for the court to order a halt to the war. <\/p>\n
In a statement issued after the second day of hearings at the ICJ, a German government spokesperson said that\u00a0Germany\u00a0\u201cexpressly rejects\u201d allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. <\/p>\n
Spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said\u00a0Germany\u00a0acknowledges diverging views in the international community on Israel\u2019s military operation in Gaza but said that \u201cthe German government decisively and expressly rejects the accusation of genocide brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice.\u201d <\/p>\n
The ICJ was established in 1945 in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust. It hears cases brought by states accusing others of violating their UN treaty obligations. South Africa and Israel are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, meaning they are obliged not to commit genocide and to prevent and punish it. <\/p>\n
In its opening remarks, Israel said it was \u201csingularly aware\u201d of why the genocide convention was adopted. \u201cSeared in our collective memory is the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, as part of a premeditated and heinous program for their total annihilation,\u201d said Tal Becker, a lawyer representing Israel. <\/p>\n
But Israel argued the convention was adopted only to \u201caddress a malevolent crime of the most exceptional circumstances,\u201d and was \u201cnot designed to address the brutal impact of intensive hostilities\u201d on civilians during warfare. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe live in a time when words are cheap,\u201d said Becker. \u201cBut if there is a place where words should still matter, where truth should still matter, it is surely a court of law.\u201d He said South Africa\u2019s case was an \u201cattempt to weaponize the term \u2018genocide\u2019 against Israel.\u201d <\/p>\n
The UN defines genocide as an act \u201ccommitted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,\u201d and says the term was developed in response to the Nazis\u2019 systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust. <\/p>\n
A final ruling on the case will take years, and this week\u2019s hearings relate only to South Africa\u2019s request for \u201cprovisional measures,\u201d which act like a restraining order to stop a dispute from escalating while the court considers the full case based on its merits, which could take years. <\/p>\n
For provisional measures the court need only decide if prima facie, or \u201cat first glance,\u201d the acts complained of \u2013 including Israel\u2019s use of 2,000-pound bombs and its restriction of food and water to Gaza \u2013 could fall foul of the genocide convention. \u201cIt is necessary to establish only whether at least some of the acts alleged are capable of falling within the provisions of the convention,\u201d South Africa argued Thursday. <\/p>\n
South Africa has asked the court to order Israel to suspend its military campaign in Gaza. But even if the court does find it has prima facie jurisdiction, the provisional measures it decides would not necessarily be those requested by South Africa. <\/p>\n
The ICJ has in the past granted similar requests. In January 2020, the court\u00a0granted\u00a0The Gambia\u2019s request for provisional measures to protect the Rohingya people remaining in Myanmar from genocide. The court has granted similar measures to protect Ukrainians from ongoing Russian aggression, and to Bosnians during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. <\/p>\n
The court\u2019s rulings are final and binding, but in practice it <\/strong>has no way of enforcing them. A 2022 report by Human Rights Watch found continued abuses against the Rohingya remaining in Myanmar, despite the provisional measures. And, despite the court in March 2022 ordering Russia to immediately suspend its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow\u2019s war rages nearly two years later. <\/p>\n Israel said it felt \u201ccompelled\u201d to share with the court a \u201cfraction of the horror\u201d meted out on Israeli civilians by Hamas during its murderous rampage, when more than 1,200 people were killed and 240 hostages were taken back to Gaza. <\/p>\n Becker, the lawyer, said Israel wanted to share evidence of Hamas\u2019 atrocities \u201cnot because these acts, however sadistic and systematic, release Israel of its obligations to uphold the law as it defends its citizens and territory,\u201d but because it was necessary to understand \u201cthe nature of the threat Israel is facing.\u201d <\/p>\n Legal experts warned ahead of the trial that focusing excessively on Hamas\u2019 October 7 attacks would not benefit Israel\u2019s case because it would be beside the point. South Africa had stressed that \u201cnothing can ever justify genocide, no matter what some individuals within the group of Palestinians in Gaza may have done.\u201d <\/p>\n Nonetheless, <\/strong>Israel shared multimedia evidence of the \u201ccarnage and sadism\u201d committed by Hamas militants and of the \u201cgenocidal intent\u201d its leadership \u201cproudly declared.\u201d Hamas\u2019 founding charter mandates the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel. <\/p>\n The court was shown a video of an interview shortly after October 7, in which Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader, told a Lebanese TV channel: \u201cWe will do this again and again.\u201d He said the attack was \u201cjust the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf there have been acts that may be characterized as genocidal, then they have been perpetrated against Israel,\u201d said Becker. <\/p>\n Much of South Africa\u2019s argument focused on the alleged genocidal intent of Israeli leadership, which it said was echoed in the actions of its military. Israel\u2019s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 people since October 7, according to Palestinian officials. <\/p>\n South Africa cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s address to Israeli forces on October 28, ahead of the imminent launch of its ground offensive in Gaza. \u201cRemember what Amalek did to you,\u201d Netanyahu said in his address, which South Africa said was a biblical reference to the divine command from God for the retaliatory destruction of the Amalekites. <\/p>\n Malcolm Shaw, representing Israel, said the language was merely \u201crhetorical\u201d and pointed instead to other statements by Netanyahu, which he said \u201cdemonstrates the precise opposite of genocidal intent.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAny careful review of the official and binding policy decisions made by the relevant authorities in Israel clearly evidence that such decisions lack any genocidal intent. The contrary is true,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Israel stressed it was complying with international humanitarian law and attempting to minimize civilian casualties, despite Hamas\u2019 embedding its military operations in buildings like schools and hospitals. <\/p>\n South Africa on Thursday said the evacuation order issued by Israel on October 13 to residents in northern Gaza was \u201cgenocidal,\u201d since it \u201crequired immediate movement\u2026 while no humanitarian assistance was permitted.\u201d <\/p>\n Israel said it was \u201castonishing\u201d that \u201ca measure intended to mitigate harm to the civilian population\u201d had been taken by South Africa as proof of the country\u2019s genocidal intent. <\/p>\n Israel concluded its hearing by asking the court to refuse South Africa\u2019s request for provisional measures, since it said these would constrain Israel\u2019s ability to defend itself while allowing Hamas to continue attacks. <\/p>\n If \u201cresort to force in self-defense against an enemy hiding behind civilians can be portrayed as genocide and trigger provisional measures,\u201d then \u201can inevitable tension will be created between the genocide convention and states defending themselves against the ever-increasing capacities of terrorist organizations,\u201d argued Gilad Noam, an Israeli lawyer. <\/p>\n Christopher Staker, another of Israel\u2019s lawyers, said provisional measures ought to be a \u201ctemporary shield\u201d to preserve rights, but were in this case being used as \u201ca sword to give an advantage to one party in a conflict over another.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s absurd to suggest that the only way to ensure observance of the genocide convention in a military operation is to prevent the operation from being conducted at all,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Staker also argued that, in ordering Israel to \u201cdesist\u201d from committing genocidal acts, South Africa had implied that \u201cviolations of the convention by Israel are occurring\u201d and so sought \u201can implied ruling on the merits\u201d of the full case. <\/p>\n It could be days or weeks before the ICJ\u2019s 15-judge panel \u2013 expanded by an additional judge from each side in this case \u2013 issues a decision on the emergency measures. <\/p>\n Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that the case is before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), not the International Criminal Court (ICC).<\/em> <\/p>\n\n Israel on Friday rejected what it called the \u201cgrossly distorted\u201d accusation of genocide leveled against it by South Africa, telling the United Nations\u2019 top court the case was an attempt to \u201cpervert the meaning\u201d of the term. In the second and final day of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel argued its <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Genocidal acts \u2018perpetrated against Israel\u2019<\/h2>\n
No \u2018genocidal intent\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Absurd\u2019 provisional measures<\/h2>\n