When\u00a0members of\u00a0the legal team representing\u00a0South Africa in its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) arrived home this week, they were\u00a0mobbed like rockstars\u00a0by a crowd gathered at\u00a0an\u00a0airport in Johannesburg,\u00a0waving South African and Palestinian flags. <\/p>\n
Many expressed collective pride\u00a0at how the case was presented.\u00a0One of the activists greeting the lawyers\u00a0lauded them for \u201chaving the courage to take Israel to the ICJ when no one else had that courage.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a case brought before the court in The Hague in December, the team argued that Israel had violated its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its war with Hamas in Gaza \u2013 a\u00a0charge Israel has strongly denied. <\/p>\n
Hailed as heroes in the pursuit of justice, the multi-racial\u00a0team\u00a0of lawyers\u00a0symbolized South Africa\u2019s \u201cRainbow Nation\u201d\u00a0ethos\u00a0that celebrates its diversity, and\u00a0has allowed the country to flex its diplomatic muscle\u00a0as a moral arbiter on global issues, three decades post-apartheid. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe significance of the fact that the country bringing the case is South Africa \u2013 an icon of the ravages of colonialism, settlement and apartheid \u2013 cannot be lost on anyone,\u201d\u00a0wrote\u00a0Nesrine Malik, a\u00a0Sudanese journalist and author, in The Guardian newspaper.\u00a0\u201cIt\u00a0symbolizes a vast racial injustice, too raw and recent to be dismissed as ancient history.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel saw the racial symbolism quite differently, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing South Africa of \u201chypocrisy\u201d that \u201cscreams to the high heavens.\u201d Hamas had carried out \u201cthe worst crime against the Jewish people since the Holocaust,\u201d he\u00a0said\u00a0in a televised speech, but \u201cnow someone comes to defend it in the name of the Holocaust.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel launched its war against Hamas after the group\u2019s brutal\u00a0attack on the country left roughly 1,200 people dead and 250 taken hostage.\u00a0The subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza has so far killed more than 24,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. <\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s genocide case has put the spotlight on a deeper fault line in global geopolitics. Beyond the courtroom drama, experts say divisions over the war in Gaza\u00a0symbolize a widening gap between Israel and its traditional Western allies, notably the United States and Europe, and a\u00a0group\u00a0of nations known as the Global South \u2014 countries located primarily in the southern hemisphere, often characterized by lower income levels and developing economies. <\/p>\n
Reactions from the Global North to the ICJ case have been mixed. While some nations have maintained\u00a0a cautious diplomatic stance, others, particularly Israel\u2019s staunchest\u00a0allies\u00a0in the West, have criticized South Africa\u2019s move. <\/p>\n
The US has stood by Israel through the war by continuing to ship arms to it, opposing a ceasefire, and vetoing many UN Security Council resolutions that aimed to bring a halt to the fighting. The Biden administration has rubbished the claim that Israel is committing genocide as \u201cmeritless,\u201d while the UK has refused to back South Africa. <\/p>\n
The decision by South Africa to initiate\u00a0legal proceedings against Israel at the ICJ\u00a0marked a departure from the usual diplomatic channels taken in such disputes, as the angry voices against Israel\u2019s campaign in Gaza grow louder. <\/p>\n
As a nation whose history is rooted in overcoming apartheid, South Africa\u2019s move carries symbolic weight that has resonated\u00a0with other nations in the developing world, many of whom have faced the burden of oppression and colonialism from Western powers. <\/p>\n
Nelson Mandela, the face of the anti-apartheid movement,\u00a0was a staunch supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat, saying in 1990:\u00a0\u201cWe align ourselves with the PLO because, akin to our struggle, they advocate for the right of self-determination.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme\u00a0at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that while South Africa\u2019s case is a continuation of its long-standing pro-Palestinian sympathies, the countries that have rallied behind it show deeper frustrations by the Global South. <\/p>\n
Much of the non-Western world opposes the war in Gaza; China has joined the 22-member Arab League in calling for a ceasefire, while several Latin American nations have expelled Israeli diplomats in protest, and several Asian and African countries have joined Muslim and Arab nations in backing South Africa\u2019s case against Israel at the ICJ.\u00a0
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For many in the developing world, the ICJ case has become a focal point for questioning the moral authority of the West\u00a0 and what is seen as the hypocrisy of the world\u2019s most powerful nations and their unwillingness to hold Israel to account.\u00a0\u00a0
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One of the reasons for this is that Israel has long been a \u201cWestern-facing country by virtue of its history and predominant heritage,\u201d said Lovatt.\u00a0\u00a0
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Israel sided with the West against Soviet-backed Arab regimes during the Cold War, and Western countries largely view\u00a0it \u201cas a fellow member of the liberal democratic club,\u201d he added. \u201cSome of this explains the continued strong Western support for Israel \u2013 which has now largely become reflexive.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cBut the strong support of Western governments is increasingly at odds with the attitudes of Western publics which continue to shift away from Israel,\u201d Lovatt said. <\/p>\n
Israel has framed the war in Gaza as a clash of civilizations where it is acting as the guardian of Western values that it says are facing an existential threat. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas,\u201d Israeli President Isaac\u00a0Herzog told MSNBC\u00a0in December. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a war that is intended \u2013 really, truly \u2013 to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization.\u201d <\/p>\n
So far, no Western countries have supported South Africa\u2019s case against Israel. \u00a0
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Among Western states, Germany has been one of the most vocal supporters of Israel\u2019s campaign in Gaza. The German government has said it\u00a0\u201cexpressly rejects\u201d allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and\u00a0that it plans to intervene\u00a0as a third party on its behalf at the ICJ. <\/p>\n
An opinion poll by German broadcaster ZDF this week however found that\u00a061% of Germans\u00a0do not consider Israel\u2019s military operation in the Gaza Strip as justified in light of\u00a0the civilian casualties. \u00a0Only 25% voiced support for Israel\u2019s offensive. <\/p>\n
But it is in Germany\u2019s former colonial territory, Namibia, that it has attracted the fiercest criticism. <\/p>\n
The Namibian President Hage Geingob in a statement on Saturday chided Berlin\u2019s decision to reject the ICJ case, accusing it of committing \u201cthe first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions.\u201d The statement added that the German government had not yet\u00a0fully atoned for the killings. <\/p>\n
Bangladesh, where up to three million people were killed during the country\u2019s war of independence from Pakistan in the 1970s, has gone a step further to file a declaration of intervention in the ICJ case to back South Africa\u2019s claims, according to the Dhaka Tribune. <\/p>\n
A\u00a0declaration of intervention\u00a0allows a state that is not party to the proceedings to present its observations to the court. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith Germany siding with Israel, and Bangladesh and Namibia backing South\u00a0Africa\u00a0at the ICJ, the geopolitical divide between the Global South and the West appears to be deepening,\u201d Lovatt said. <\/p>\n
Traditionally, the West has wielded significant influence\u00a0in international affairs, but South Africa\u2019s move signals a growing assertiveness among Global South nations that threatens the status quo, says Adekoya. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne clear pattern emerging is that the old Western-dominated order is increasingly being challenged, a situation likely to only further intensify as the West loses its once unassailably dominant economic position,\u201d Adekoya said. <\/p>\n\n
When\u00a0members of\u00a0the legal team representing\u00a0South Africa in its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) arrived home this week, they were\u00a0mobbed like rockstars\u00a0by a crowd gathered at\u00a0an\u00a0airport in Johannesburg,\u00a0waving South African and Palestinian flags. Many expressed collective pride\u00a0at how the case was presented.\u00a0One of the activists greeting the lawyers\u00a0lauded them for \u201chaving <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14342","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\/14342","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=14342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}