{"id":1441630,"date":"2024-01-12T12:28:19","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T12:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/01\/south-africa-genocide-case-israel\/"},"modified":"2024-01-12T13:35:26","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T13:35:26","slug":"south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel-is-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/12\/south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel-is-strong\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa\u2019s Genocide Case Against Israel Is Strong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Oral arguments in South Africa\u2019s genocide case against Israel have concluded. The International Court of Justice now has the chance to order a halt to Israel\u2019s mass slaughter in Gaza.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Minister of Justice and Correctional Services of South Africa Ronald Lamola answers the questions of press members related to the public hearings of South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, on January 11, 2024. (Dursun Aydemir \/ Anadolu via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

\u201cNo one is spared, not even newborn babies.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is how Adila Hassim, speaking at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, Netherlands yesterday, described the deliberate destruction of Palestinian life taking place in Gaza. Hassim was one of six lawyers who represented South Africa in appealing to the ICJ, the United Nations\u2019 juridical body, to order a halt to Israel\u2019s attacks on Gaza.<\/p>\n

South Africa contends that Israel is committing genocidal acts prohibited by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, better known as the Genocide Convention. As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Israel has accepted the International Court of Justice (ICJ)\u2019s jurisdiction in enforcing it. And in the past, the ICJ has recognized that because states have an affirmative obligation to prevent genocide, any signatory to the Genocide Convention can bring claims against another signatory if they believe they are carrying out genocide.<\/p>\n

In making the case that Israel had breached the Genocide Convention, South African lawyer Hassim recounted to the court the grim statistics of Israel\u2019s slaughter. As of January 9, Israel had killed 23,210 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, with an additional 7,000 Palestinians missing, \u201cpresumed dead under the rubble.\u201d One-third of those killed have been under eighteen, leading Gaza to be dubbed a graveyard for children.<\/p>\n

An additional sixty thousand Gazans have been wounded or maimed, and as another member of South Africa\u2019s legal team, Irish lawyer Blinne N\u00ed Ghr\u00e1laigh, pointed out, many people have been wounded not once, but again and again. Each day in Israel\u2019s assault, an average of ten Palestinian children have had one or both legs amputated. Given the siege to which Israel has subjected Gaza, most of these amputations are performed without anesthesia. Israel\u2019s \u201cgenocidal assault,\u201d N\u00ed Ghr\u00e1laigh noted, had given birth to a \u201cterrible new acronym\u201d: WCNSF, for Wounded Child \u2014 No Surviving Family.<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s legal team documented not just the extent of the death and destruction, but the methods. Since the start of the war, Israel has dropped an average of six thousand bombs per week. It has unleashed two hundred or more two-thousand-pound bombs, including on refugee camps. Because Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth \u2014 over 80 percent of its inhabitants are refugees<\/a> \u2014 Israel\u2019s bombardment, one of the largest in modern history, has been shockingly deadly.<\/p>\n

As Hassim told the court:<\/p>\n

Palestinians in Gaza are subjected to relentless bombing wherever they go. They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches and as they try to find food and water for their families. 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 \u201csafe routes.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It isn\u2019t just the brutal bombing. Israel has also imposed on Gazans conditions that cannot sustain human life. The goal of such conditions, South Africa argues, is the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in whole or in part \u2014 i.e., genocide.<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s legal team cited several ways that Israel has made Gaza unlivable, including forcibly displacing Palestinians. Early in the war, Israel ordered over a million people, including those confined to hospitals, to immediately evacuate or be bombed. Over the course of the war, Israel has destroyed nearly 355,000 Palestinian homes. Israeli soldiers, Hassim told the court, have filmed \u201cthemselves joyfully detonating entire apartment blocks and town squares; erecting the Israeli flag over the wreckage seeking to re-establish Israeli settlements on the rubble of Palestinian homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to displacement, Israel\u2019s brutal military campaign has inflicted starvation, dehydration, the spread of disease, and the collapse of Gaza\u2019s already fragile health system. South Africa alleges that this has been deliberate. Not only is Israel making delivery of aid difficult through its extensive bombing, Israel, which controls the border crossing, is preventing sufficient levels of aid to arrive. Between December 26 and January 8, Israel on five separate occasions blocked the UN from ferrying medical supplies to Gaza\u2019s hospitals \u2014 an assault on Gaza\u2019s health care system.<\/p>\n

While South Africa was arguing that Israel\u2019s mass killings of Palestinians, its denial of aid, and attacks on health care infrastructure amounted to genocidal acts, Israel was carrying on with these very acts. The same day<\/a> as South Africa\u2019s oral arguments, Israel blocked UN humanitarian aid from entering Israel, denied a World Health Organization medical mission, and killed four Palestinian ambulance drivers, a killing that the Palestinian Red Crescent Society labeled intentional.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

South Africa\u2019s Case<\/h2>\n \n

At this stage in the proceedings, the ICJ is not being asked to rule definitively whether Israel has carried out genocide. If past cases are any indicator, such a determination will take years. Under the Genocide Convention, the ICJ can and has ordered what are called \u201cprovisional measures.\u201d In layman’s terms, the ICJ does not have to allow a party to perpetrate a likely genocide until a lengthy legal process takes place. Instead, under exceptional circumstances where there are plausible violations of the convention and grave urgency, they can order protections for the populations under assault.<\/p>\n

While the merits will ultimately be decided later, South Africa clearly laid out the framework for the contention that Israel has committed genocide. Genocide is not just mass killing, something Israel\u2019s unprecedented scale of destruction in Gaza certainly constitutes. It requires genocidal intent \u2014 that is, the perpetrator must intend to destroy a specific national, racial, religious, or ethnic group in whole or in part.<\/p>\n

The case for genocidal intent was made by Tembeka Ngcukaitobi. His argument was twofold. First, Israel\u2019s conduct is itself evidence of genocidal intent. After all, everyone knows what the outcome of dropping two-thousand-pound bombs on residential neighborhoods, having snipers fire on civilians, targeting family homes, or ordering people to evacuate and then killing them as they flee will be.<\/p>\n