Israel says South Africa has weaponised the term genocide
The state of Israel says South Africa has presented a “profoundly distorted factual and legal picture” of claims of genocide being committed against Palestinians in Gaza and has weaponised the term genocide.
Israel is confronting accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday, after South Africa told the top UN court that Gaza is a concentration camp where genocide is taking place.
Like South Africa, Israel will have three hours to argue its case before a bench of 15 judges at the Peace Palace in the Hague to rebut the claims of genocide in Gaza.
Weaponising genocide
In Israel’s opening statement, legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry Tal Becker argued that South Africa case hinged on “a deliberately curated, decontextualized, and manipulative description of the reality of current hostilities”.
“South Africa purports to come to this court in the lofty position of a guardian of the interest of humanity.
“By delegitimizing Israel’s 75-year existence in its opening presentation yesterday, that broad commitment to humanity rang hollow. And in its counter-factual description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seemed to erase both Jewish history and any Palestinian agency or responsibility,” Becker said.
Distortion
Becker said the delegitimizes of Israel sounded “barely from Hamas’ rejectionist rhetoric.”
“It is unsurprising therefore that in the applicant’s telling, both Hamas’s responsibility for the situation in Gaza and the very humanity of its Israeli victims are removed from view. The attempt to weaponize the term genocide against Israel in the present context does more than tell the court a grossly distorted story.
“It does more than empty the word of its unique force and special meaning, it subverts the object and purpose of the convention itself with ramifications for all states seeking to defend themselves against those who demonstrate total disdain for life and for the law,” Becker argued.
Genocide can’t by justified
During its oral argument on Thursday, Professor Vaughan Lowe told the IJC nothing can ever justify genocide, no matter how great the threat to Israeli security may be.
Lowe said the prohibition on genocide is an absolute, peremptory rule of law.
“No matter what some individuals within the group of Palestinians in Gaza may have done, and no matter how great the threat to Israeli cities may be, genocidal attacks on the whole of Gaza and the whole of its population with the intent of destroying them cannot be justified.
“No exception can be made in a provisional measures order to allow a state to engage in actions that violate its obligations under the Genocide Convention. It is unthinkable that a court would ever do such a thing That is the simple point in this case: genocide can never be justified in any circumstances.” Lowe said.
Urgent measures
South Africa has asked the ICJ to grant interim measures to stop Israel’s attacks in Gaza while it decides on the merits of the genocide accusations.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the death toll in Gaza has soared to more than 23 400 people, about 70% of them women and children, while 59 600 have been injured.
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