South Africa never really had a chance in its genocide claims against Israel if applying the laws of war, being that the entire “show” before the International Court of Justice is a political stunt designed to blacken Israel’s name, using legal-sounding language to launder an anti-Israel agenda.
But many of the arguments that its lawyers made on Thursday were so specious that they removed any veil of seriousness that they might have held onto.
From the start, South Africa really had two arguments to go on that had any remote legal significance – and forget about having any chance to actually prove genocide.
They were that top
Israeli officials had made horrible statements (many of them should not have been said and were very morally problematic even if legally insignificant) that could allegedly be used to infer genocidal intent, and that the IDF had allegedly killed 23,000 Palestinians, likely 60% to 70% of them being civilians.
If
South Africa had stuck to these arguments, any serious lawyer or judge still would have tossed them out of court because: None of the statements they have provided from public officials were official policy or legal statements; many were by officials without real influence over the war; those by key officials could easily be read in context as metaphorical; Israel has publicly produced vast amounts of evidence that it has expended enormous resources to avoid killing Palestinian civilians; and it acknowledged and explained errors, which happen in all wars, where errors have occurred.
South Africa's disconnected argument
Here is a list of some of the worst offenders:
South Africa did not mention Hamas’s systematic use of the Palestinian civilian population and civilian locations, including schools, mosques, and UN buildings, as human shields.
The US and other European countries have condemned Hamas for doing this.
Even the International Criminal Court has made statements implicitly acknowledging that Hamas has done this, with its criticism sometimes being narrower about whether Israel has properly applied the proportionality test – something, even in the worst case, that is far away from genocide.
South Africa clung to prior arguments from the 2004 ICJ case against the legality of Israel’s West Bank security barrier, saying Israel had no self-defense right because it was an occupier acting in Palestinian territory.
But this time, there was an “armed attack” by Hamas on October 17, invading 22 Israeli towns, killing 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and more than 3,000 rockets were fired against Israel’s home front.
So putting aside the 2004 ruling that Israel rejected at the time, even according to the logic of the ICJ at the time, in 2023, there is no question that Israel had the right to counter-strike as part of self-defense.
South Africa claimed that Israel is settling Gaza, but it provided no evidence. Of course, it provided no evidence, because there is none. True, there are some ministers who are not part of the critical five-member war cabinet who dream about resettling Gaza, but the war cabinet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, all official policy and legal positions, and the actual view in the field show that there has not been a single move to settle Jews in Gaza.
(full article online)
South Africa really only has two arguments to go on which have any remote legal significance - forget about having any chance to actually prove genocide.
www.jpost.com