South Africa lays out devastating genocide case against Israel

The evidence is “chilling” and “incontrovertible”

Yesterday, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, South Africa’s legal team laid out a devastating against Israel, painstakingly detailing the many ways in which Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza demonstrates a clear pattern of genocidal intent and conduct — i.e., is intended to bring about, and is in fact bringing about, “the destruction of a substantial part of… the Palestinians in Gaza” — as already laid out in their 84-page application to the Court.

South Africa’s first legal representative to speak was Adila Hassim. “Genocides are never declared in advance”, Hassim said, “but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts”.

She began by explaining how, over the past three months, Israel has subjected the 2.3 million people of Gaza to an unprecedented level of attacks from the air, land and sea — described by several experts as one of the heaviest bombing campaigns in modern warfare — resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians and the destruction of homes and essential public infrastructure, Hassim said.

She noted that Israel had dropped 6,000 bombs a week in the first three weeks after 7 October, and had used 900kg (2,000lb) bombs — “some of the biggest and most destructive bombs available” — 200 times in southern areas of Gaza it had designated as safe zones.

Palestinians in Gaza are subject 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 tried to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they have failed to evacuate the places to which they have fled and even if they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes.

She then went on to list a number of “genocidal acts” committed by Israel. The “first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza”, at least 23,570 people so far, she said while showing photos of mass graves where bodies were buried “often unidentified”. No one — including newborns — was spared, she added.

“Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians”, she said. “With the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take. More than 1,800 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members and hundreds of multi-generational families have been wiped out with no remaining survivors. … This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life”.

The second genocidal act is the serious bodily or mental harm inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in violation of Article 2B of the Genocide Convention, Hassim argued. Israel’s attacks have left close to 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. Hassim argued that large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including children, have been arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress, loaded onto trucks and taken to unknown locations.

In addition to the thousands killed, mostly women and children, Hassim said the bodily and mental harm inflicted on Palestinians and the imposition of conditions intended to bring about their destruction — such as the refusal to let food, fuel, water and aid into Gaza, the mass displacement of Gazans, and the annihilation of the Strip’s healthcare system — were further evidence of genocide.

Here’s Hassim’s full 25-minute statement:

The second lawyer representing South Africa to speak was Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, who focused on the countless statements by Israeli officials, soldiers and even representatives of Israeli civil society demonstrating a “chilling” and “incontrovertible” intent to commit genocide in Gaza. “There is an extraordinary feature in this case: that Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and officials have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent”, Ngcukaitobi said.

Here’s a two clips from his speech:

Irish lawyer Blinne Ni Ghralaigh then brought the focus back on the scale of the violence unfolding in Gaza. She explained that on the basis of the current figures, 247 Palestinians — including 117 children and 48 mothers — are being killed every day.

Overall, there is no doubt that South Africa presented a “very impressive” and compelling case, as Thomas MacManus, senior lecturer in state crime at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera. “They set out in a very concise way some devastating accusations strung together in such a legally sound way”.

Today it’s Israel’s turn to present its counterarguments.

However this plays out in the end, I would argue that it’s a win-win for South Africa — and for the Global South as a whole:

If the ICJ rules against Israel, it will be a massive, irreparable blow to Israel and to its Western backers and enablers.

If the ICJ refuses to acknowledge the obvious — that Israel’s actions in Gaza are at the very least “plausibly genocidal” — it is the entire Western-led “rules-based order” that will suffer a massive, irreparable blow.

Either way, a big win for the Global South — if not necessarily for the Palestinians.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

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