Genocidal Tremors: Taking Israel to the International Court of Justice
Litigating against countries is the stuff of esoteric delight for international lawyers. Such matters become yet more complex when it comes to claims of genocide or broader crimes against humanity. Accusations, however motivated, are always easy to make. Proving them in a court of law is quite another proposition. International law remains a terrain of punctures and potholes, rather than smooth lines and fine paving. Working around those punctures is a skill worthy of prize and praise.
The ongoing flattening, mauling and extirpation of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s armed forces has drawn interest from jurists and litigants. The potholes and punctures, in that sense, seem to be filling up. It’s hard not to see why, when you have such startlingly grotesque admissions as those from Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a chief spokesman for the IDF, that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
Then come such background briefs as those from retired Colonel Pnina Sharvit Baruch, former director of the wing celebrated for advising IDF commanders about complying with the rules of war. A dive into the short overview from Baruch makes for grim reading. The aim, not method, is what matters, namely, the destruction of Hamas. “Without achieving this goal, Hamas will succeed in de facto denying Israel the exercise of its sovereignty in the areas adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip. In light of this significant military advantage, even if many civilians in Gaza are harmed during the attacks, this is not necessarily excessive incidental damage and therefore would not be disproportionate attacks that are illegal.” Mass murder can thereby be excused.
Leonard Rubenstein, a professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was sufficiently troubled by such reasoning to suggest that Israel had “asserted a theory of justifiable conduct in war that, contrary to this body of [humanitarian] law, elevates claims of military necessity in achieving the war’s aims over protection of civilians, particularly in a just war.”
In the international community, a number of actions are testing the waters of legality regarding Israel’s novel view of waging what is increasingly looking like a war of ghoulish extermination. In November, the New York Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a suit on behalf of Palestinian human rights groups, US citizens with relatives in Gaza and Palestinians in Gaza arguing that the Biden administration had been complicit and failed to prevent “the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide”. It notes the language of various Israeli government figures that demonstrate “clear genocidal intentions” while deploying “dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including ‘human animals’.”
That same month, South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti, according to Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, expressed the view that an investigation of “the situation in the state of Palestine” should take place. Khan accordingly declared that an investigation into the events in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank from March 2021 was duly expanded to include “the escalation of hostilities and violence since the attacks that took place on October, 2023.” Despite Israel not being a member of the ICC, the prosecutor called “upon all relevant actors to provide full cooperation with my office.”
South Africa has decided to test the validity of Israel’s methods of war in Gaza through the offices of the International Court of Justice, a body of feeble, if acceptable dignity. On December 29, Pretoria filed an application regarding, in the words of the relevant press release, “alleged violations by Israel regarding the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide […] in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” The application makes the claim that “acts and omissions” by the Israeli government “are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”
It further claims that “the conduct of Israel – through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence – in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of the obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
The application instituting proceedings gives more detail to the South African case, noting such alleged genocidal acts as “killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”
South Africa requests a number of provisional measures in its ICJ application, namely, that Israel immediately suspend military operations in and against Gaza; ensure all its military or irregular units under the state’s control “take no further steps in furtherance of the military operations” aforementioned; “desist from the commission of any and all actions within the scope of Article II” of the Genocide Convention (killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group); intentional infliction upon the group of conditions “calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”; and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
The response from Israel was hardly one of chastened reflection. Its government rejected “with contempt the blood libel by South Africa in its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).” The Israeli Foreign Ministry scorned the South African claim as lacking any “factual and judicial basis and is a despicable and cheap exploitation of the court.” Pretoria was, in effect, “collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of Israel.”
In some ways, South Africa, with its historically thick layering of scar tissue regarding racial hatred, segregation, policing and administrative detention may be better suited than most in understanding the zealots prosecuting the war in Gaza. Far from proving a blood libel, the case may turn out to be something of a bloody revelation.
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andyfiftysix
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Some Village Hampden
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andyfiftysix
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New England Cocky
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New England Cocky
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andyfiftysix
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New England Cocky
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Clakka
Return to home pageThe Israeli propaganda machine marches on.
In the age we have a piece about how Hamas brutalised women on October 7, from the NYtimes. Now I suspect, they are heavily influenced by American Zionist money. It’s America, who can you trust in the media…… Nobody.
Earlier in the week we were shown Hamas tunnels……..look over there ……don’t look at what we are doing.
I am sorry if it sounds like I am trivialising Israeli trauma, but I have long understood your propaganda methods. You have little credibility already. Such blatant ” look over there…” Appeals to our sense of fair play have a chicken little feel to them. The Douglas Murray school of talking points with little empathy for the other side or a belittling of your opponent by saying “you don’t know what your are talking about ..” Shows how fragile they really are. Another ” journalist who presents an aura of being a superior holder of facts…” . Just so obviously in somebody’s pocket.
Let us suppose for a moment that the allegations of war crimes having been committed are true and are justicable. Who are going to be the defendants in any proceedings? You cannot prosecute a state, only individuals. Who are they to be? Netanyahu? Yeah ok, he seems to be the deciding figure. Who else? The executive government of Israel? Possibly. They have the notional power to depose him and have chosen not to take action but not doing something you collectively could have is not an offence. The other non-executive members of Likud and its allies in the Knesset? Doubtful. There has been, so far as I can tell, no Parliamentary endorsement of the methods of waging war in Gaza. The military commanders of the IDF? Maybe – if they knew or were reckless about the likely consequences of any particular offensive action. Individual IDF personnel? Possibly but they are unlikely to be identifiable.
And not to put too fine a point on it: where is the evidence to be obtained? Media images are not likely to be sufficient.
So talking about Israel committing war crimes is a complete waste of time.
SVH, you took the words righ to out of my………..
Another punch to the face of democracy. You cant prosecute the whole government so a diluting of responsibility and a cover for some very bad decisions. And you want to know why democracy is on the nose……….Israel is the ” shining light of democracy in the middle east..”. It was a stupid statement to make but i guess it served as a cover for all those years. Its a deo-mocracy ( interesting slip of the finger…lol) therefore its actions are just. Politicians just cant seem to understand the difference between legal and moral. A country that claimed the moral high ground all these years is throwing away the covers and showing its true self. Just another barking mad country of cultists. Another self fulfilling gluttony of self interest that will lead to its own demise. History has a way of repeating.
Regardless of the propaganda from the ZION@ZIS & IDF, this military action is STATE SPONSORED GENOCIDE with the objective as announced very quietly of ”driving ALL Palestinians into the sea”, thus dispossessing and displacing Indigenous Palestinians for the benefit of the American & European entrepreneurs who will fund the clean up and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip for the benefit of fresh colonist settlers from America and the world looking to have uncontested ownership of their new residences.
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The stated alternative objective is to force all Gaza residents into the concentration camps to be established in the Egyptian desert where the Palestinians become the responsibility and cost for international aid agencies.
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The overall beneficiaries of this military action will be the US NE Military Industrial Complex generating huge profits from sales of armaments paid for by US taxpayers.
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Australians should remember that any nation that has had the USA (United States of Apartheid) as an ally and armaments supplier has no need of any other enemy. WE saw that back in 1975 when Henry Kissinger is credited with personally overseeing the Dismissal of the democratically elected Whitlam Labor government.
@ andyfiftysix: Your description of the ZION@ZI position: ”A country that claimed the moral high ground all these years is throwing away the covers and showing its true self. Just another barking mad country of cultists. Another self fulfilling gluttony of self interest that will lead to its own demise. History has a way of repeating” appears to challenge the accuracy usually attributed in AIMN to GG & PP.
NEC, i dont challenge accuracy, i destroy BS.
If your going to get to the real facts, analyse all your assumtions. In electronics, FIFO was a thing, in the media Shit In Shit Out seems to be the way of life.
Yes i too was always under the assumption Israel was pure of heart. Then it dawned on me, i was brain washed into beleiving what i wanted to beleive. And really, 70 odd yrs and still no resolution to the dispute says it all really. Israel is bristling with the latest war gadgets and a concentration camp level of palestinian monitoring.
Here i was, thinking that all the middle eastern countries were the intransigent ones and israel was acting in good faith. Really? Israel is right yet every other country is wrong? i looked at insanity from the wrong perspective.
Yes we were all guilty of being faux christians with an unspoken crusade. What assumptions did we all make?
Make jews safe in their own hangout, never mind…its terra nullus and they can do what they want. We laughed at the ayatolla, muslims are such cruel bastards….they cant be trusted to run anything…….all the while closing our own eyes to our own stupidity.
Assumptions like ” democracy is the best of all evils…” comes with the assumption we cant fix it. “Capitalism is a dead horse because………” again comes with the assumption it cant be fixed.
So why do we assume the israeli government which is populated by palestinian hating , cult inspired land steeling arseholes is going to do the right thing?
Hamas sure did understand the beast. They knew the israelis would go nuts and be consumed by their own hatreds. Israel will Kill lots of palestinians so they wait for their heirs to get revenge.
Israel is so focused on the battle, they cant see they have lost the war. Strategic thinking is not their strong card.
Their assumption is that they can root out all of hamas with no blow back. Even now they have no plan. Sounds like iraq all over again. They assume that palestinians will just go away…………hate to break the news, they aint going away quietly into the night.
When you assume things about human behaviour, you have got to undertand you could be wrong. When you make assertions ” they want to kill us all…..” , i will ask you what did you do to help create this …..what assumptions have you made about your own behaviour.
@ andyfiftysix: Your expanded comment makes excellent sense. Thank you.
Perhaps the IDF is expecting to follow the Roman model of killing all the subjugated people to prevent an inter-generational blow back.
Trying to kill an ideal, Palestine for the Palestinians, seems to have failed everywhere else and doubtless Bibi et al will reap the whirlwind of retribution in the future.
It’s been an ever-increasing farce through and since the Byzantine era. Continuing its trickle-down right through to today. To what end? Control by Rome, Europe, and the ‘West’ commercially and strategically. Since the Great War, the imperialists, mainly Britain then the USA, their 5-eyes and others took numerous opportunities to turn their own shit-show into a redemptive pantomime in the Fertile Crescent and the Levant – Israel and the Jews being the convenient cover.
Rome, Europe and the ‘West’ has never had a problem with deceit, duplicity, theft, oppression and brutality, and as a club, had marshaled and refined all the language, panoply and accoutrements necessary to superimpose themselves over, and obliterate culture.
Despite their bloodbaths, obsessively focused on slaking their greed and ambitions, they fail miserably to account for nothing ever remaining unchanged. Again it is coming to pass.