“Israel has a genocidal intent against the Palestinians in Gaza,” Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, advocate of the High Court of South Africa, told the International Court of Justice at the Hague on January 11, 2024.
That day will be etched in human consciousness for generations in hundreds of years.
The South African lawyer speaking for millions of Palestinians and a huge part of humanity went on to explain why what is happening in Gaza is genocide by the government of Israel against the Palestinian people.
“That is evident from the way in which this military attack is being conducted,” he said, adding: “The intent to destroy Gaza has been nurtured at the highest level of state.”
They asked judges to impose binding preliminary orders on Israel, including an immediate halt to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
South Africa’s governing African National Congress party has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Black people to “homelands” before ending in 1994.
South Africa told judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and pleaded with the court to issue an interim order for an immediate halt to Israel’s military actions.
The country’s lawyers immediately sought to broaden the case beyond the narrow confines of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“The violence and the destruction in Palestine and Israel did not begin on Oct. 7, 2023. The Palestinians have experienced systematic oppression and violence for the last 76 years,” said South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola.
Rieaz Shaik, South Africa’s High Commissioner to Canada, told CBC News this week that the country expects a finding on genocide “will take a considerable amount of time.”
“What’s more important is that there will be a declaration on interim measures that we are asking for,” Shaik said, which include a “cessation of hostilities” in Gaza and the provision of humanitarian aid.
Israel in 1951 ratified the Geneva Conventions, the international humanitarian laws that regulate conduct in armed conflict, though it often considers UN and international tribunals unfair and biased.
The Foreign Ministry in Tel Avi said South Africa’s case lacks legal foundation and constitutes a “despicable and contemptuous exploitation” of the court.
Eylon Levy, an official in the Israeli prime minister’s office, in a statement accused South Africa of “giving political and legal cover” to Hamas and promised a vigorous defence on Friday.
‘International moral failure’
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 23,200 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. About two-thirds of the dead are women and children, health officials say. The death toll does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Last week, the UN humanitarian chief called Gaza “uninhabitable” and warned about famine.
Palestinian Red Crescent personnel check a destroyed ambulance in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday. The group said an Israeli strike on an ambulance the previous day killed four medics and two other people inside the vehicle.
South African lawyers highlighted the deaths of women, children and health-care workers, captured on traditional and social media.
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, from Ireland speaking on behalf of the South African position, argued before the court it was “the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time, in the desperate but so far vain hope that the world might do something.”
“Gaza represents nothing but an international moral failure,” she said. “The failure has repercussions not only on the people of Gaza, but for generations to come.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed South Africa’s case as “meritless” in a visit to Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
So far Israeli government defense has been ridiculous.
“We were attacked by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 and we have a right to defend ourselves.”
That is not in dispute fellas, yes indeed you have a right to defend Israel as a country. But do you have the right to commit terrorist acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza including slaughtering babies even in their hospital beds?
No, you don’t have that right under international laws and the Genocide rules of which Israel is a signatory at the UN.
No country can commit crimes against humanity and then say it is their right to commit those crimes. If that is the case then why does the world have the UN and other international institutions like ICJ to provide peace and stability at the global level?
This is Israel’s defense from Benjamin Netanyahu and it is pathetic.
Israel seethes after genocide hearing; PM: South Africa representing Hamas monsters
Foreign Ministry also says South Africa ‘functioning as the legal arm of Hamas’; opposition leader says ‘integrity of the international community’ is on trial in The Hague
Israeli officials reacted with rage and indignation to South Africa’s presentation of its accusations of genocide against Jerusalem at the International Court of Justice Thursday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Pretoria for “representing monsters” in Hamas and “accusing Israel of genocide as it fights against genocide.”
South Africa’s case at The Hague is evidence of a “world turned upside down,” the prime minister said in a video statement. “A terror organization carries out the worst crime against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and now someone comes along to defend them in the name of the Holocaust… What brazenness.”
“South Africa’s hypocrisy cries out from the heavens,” he added. “Where were you, South Africa, when millions of people were killed or displaced from their homes in Syria and Yemen, and by whom? By Hamas’s partners.”
South Africa is alleging that the Jewish state is perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza during the IDF’s ongoing war against Hamas, in what the court was told is a deliberate effort to destroy life in the Strip.
Israel has vehemently rejected the accusations, saying it is engaged in a war of self-defense in the small territory that is home to over two million people and is making efforts to avoid harm to civilians.
This is not the ICC where Israel can dodge and dance around crimes against humanity being committed against the Palestinian people. This case by the South African government is the real deal and that is why Israel is at the Hague trying to defend themselves.
If our friends and comrades in South Africa pull this off to unplug the Israeli occupation with this catastrophic genocide in Gaza then those dear South African fighters would have put an end to two apartheid systems in the world. One lasted from 1948 to 1994 in South Africa and in Palestine, the apartheid has lasted 76 years.
One thing is certain. Through this trial which could take a long time the whole world is going to see the horrors that IDF had been committing in Gaza. The Western media has not been in Gaza at all. It has just been Aljazeera whose journalists are getting killed by the IDF every day.
Now for the first time, the whole world is going to see that horrific library of dead Palestinian kids being buried in mass graves because the parents have nowhere to bury them. The world is going to see things that we can’t describe yet.
Thank you, South Africa.
Amandla! Amandla! Amandla!
