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The International Court of Justice is set to hear South Africa’s 84-page case of genocide levied against Israel, a charge supported by some members of the Israeli Knesset, from January 11th to 12th.
Israel has denied all wrongdoing, and in fact implicitly accused the South African ANC ruling party of antisemitism by referring to the charges as “blood libel.” However, they have admitted they must go and defend themselves at the ICJ, which is a rarity for various right-wing administrations in Israel over the years, who’ve considered the court biased and antisemitic.
The Biden Administration has also come out in favor of Israel, not only with the transfers of huge amounts of bombs to drop on Gaza, but also in support of their legal defense at the ICJ.
“We find this submission meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said White House National Security Advisor John Kirby.
An Israeli lawmaker from the left-wing Jewish and Arab Hadash-Ta’al party caused an uproar in the Israeli Parliament, known as the Knesset, when he signed South Africa’s ICJ petition which asks that Israel be investigated for war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, reports Haaretz.
The lawmaker (or MK as it’s known, rather than MP) Ofer Cassif, explained his reasoning on X, saying his duty was “to Israeli society and all of its residents, not to a government and its coalition members who call for ethnic cleansing and even actual genocide”.
“The information that emerges from the lawsuit is both horrific and credible. Israel is indeed taking systematic and thorough steps to wipe out the population of Gaza; to starve, abuse, and displace it. It has implemented a policy of erasing options for livelihood, which is leading to genocide,” said Cassif.
That’s true, as two of the highest-ranking members of Netanyahu’s cabinet have both called for what is at least termed ethnic cleansing, and at most genocide, and repeated the calls after being challenged on them. It’s also true that one leading Holocaust scholar referred to the current slaughter in Gaza as an “unashamed” genocide, and that another referred to what those cabinet members have called for as “genocidal statements”.
“Most of us don’t understand why John Kirby, Joe Biden, and Jake Sullivan [the national security adviser] don’t take Israeli leaders at their word when they say they want to wipe Gaza off the face of the planet,” Usamah Andrabi, the communications director of Justice Democrats, told The Guardian. “If Vladimir Putin said these things, I’m sure they would believe it.”
If it pleases the court
It would take years for the ICJ to rule on the charge of genocide one way or another. The ICJ demands that a genocide claim come with proof of the intent and desire to implement a genocide, described as the major destruction or removal of an ethnic group and its heritage through war, resettlement, and cultural erasing, and proof that acts reflecting that desire and intent are being carried out.
However, part of South Africa’s petition is for the ICJ to call for an immediate end to the acts that South Africa claims are genocidal in order for investigations to be carried out. The chance of any of this happening is fairly low; a nation-state that knows it’s committing genocide is motivated by a force that can’t be diminished by the fear of legal reprisal, and won’t stop solely in order to clear its name.
Whether or not South Africa knows it or not, their petition has put quite a lot of additional pressure on the Biden Administration. The die has been well cast for Biden, Sullivan, and Blinken following Kirby’s remarks at the White House. If the court rules in favor of South Africa then they have outrightly defended the highest crime against humanity in international law.
The ICJ has ruled against criminal US foreign policy before during the Reagen Administration’s backing of the Contra insurgents in Nicaragua. The ICJ held that the US had violated international law in several ways relating to aggression by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Sandinistas, and by mining illegally in Nicaragua’s harbors. In response, the US announced it was withdrawing its participation from the court, and vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have enforced the ICJ ruling that granted large sums of reparations to Nicaragua.
The US and Israel decided on similar courses of action for the International Criminal Court (ICC), another attempt by the United Nations to create an organ of international law that could actually punish criminal governments.
In the voting to establish the ICC, Israel’s delegate said that “it fails to comprehend why it has been considered necessary to insert into the list of the most heinous and grievous war crimes ‘the action of transferring population into occupied territory'”. It doesn’t stretch the imagination to consider why they objected to that particular point.
Previous US administrations have been incredibly hostile to the ICC, particularly over any attempt to bring Israel to trial over crimes against humanity, including going so far as to designate the court a “national security threat” and closing the token Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington over a 2018 ICC court filing that claimed human rights abuses in Gaza.
Past evidence therefore suggests any recourse for the now 22,000 dead Palestinians is a fool’s hope without some kind of international coalition willing to implement court decisions in force against both Israel and the US who would without doubt take revenge on her behalf.
However, the New York Times reports that polling data on the Biden Administration’s handling of Israel’s alleged genocide is devastating, with 57% saying they disapprove and just 33% saying they approve. Furthermore, prospective candidate Trump was found in the same poll to be considered the better man on the Gaza question by a margin of 8%. Among young voters these numbers worsen for Biden considerably.
Haaretz also published a feature story in their magazine detailing the catastrophic response the Biden Administration has now incurred with its support for Israel, which would be all the more disastrous if the highest court of international settlement on Earth ruled that the Gaza slaughter is a genocide.
“I think this moment is a paradigm-shifting moment,” Shibley Telhami, Director of the Critical Issues Poll at the University of Maryland, told Haaretz. “The perception of Joe Biden on his stance on Gaza has been firmly imprinted on the consciousness of many young Americans, defining his character and influencing how a vast number of people see him”.
It’s a reputation that should be firmly imprinted, having earned the nickname “Genocide Joe” among his own party members. WaL
PICTURED ABOVE: Then-Vice President Joe Biden visit to Israel in March 2016 to meet with PM Benjamin Netanyahu. PC: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv
