South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is, without any doubt, not a sincere one. South Africa has its own domestic issues, and it’s siding with Russia, so it generally cannot be trusted. But even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day. In this case, the document provided to the ICJ in Hague clearly proves the genocidal intent of the state of Israel. So maybe it’s time for us all to acknowledge this fact.

Links

As I’m writing this, I’m afraid that the case is best covered by Al Jazeera English. Everyone else is “unconditionally supporting Israel” (to use the wording of Annalena Baerbock, the inept German Foreign Minister). So they wouldn’t care about the truth. Alternatively, you could look for the daily Verbatim Records on ICJ’s Case 192 page — case name: Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel).

The long document submitted by South Africa can be read:

Excerpts

Page 9: The document is citing Julia Frankel, “Israel’s military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in history, experts say”, AP News (21 December 2023):

In just over two months, Israel’s military attacks had “wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol, or proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II.” The destruction wrought by Israel is so extreme that “Gaza is now a different colour from space. It’s a different texture”.

Citing UN OCHA’s flash updates from December:

Entire multi-generational families have been wiped out completely. Over 355,000 homes equivalent to more than 60 per cent of Gaza’s housing stock in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed. 1.9 million Palestinians — approximately 85 per cent of the total population — have been internally displaced.60 Many fled the north of the territory to the south, having been ordered to do so by Israel, only to be bombed again in the south, and told to flee once again further south or the south west, where they are reduced to living in makeshift tents in camps with no water, sanitation or other facilities. Israel has bombed, shelled and besieged Gaza’s hospitals, with only 13 out of 36 hospitals partially functional, and no fully functioning hospital left in North Gaza. Gaza’s healthcare system has all but collapsed, with reports of operations, including amputations and caesarean sections, taking place without anaesthetic. … Contagious and epidemic diseases are rife amongst the displaced Palestinian population, with experts warning of the risk of meningitis, cholera and other outbreaks. The entire population in Gaza is at imminent risk of famine.

The blockade of Gaza was genocidal even before this new outbreak. Page 15:

Between 2008 and 2021, the World Health Organization (‘WHO’) recorded that 839 Palestinians from Gaza had died while waiting for medical permits to leave Gaza for urgent medical treatment.

Citing UNCTAD and UN OCHA:

Israel’s parallel implementation of a wide buffer zone inside Gaza’s eastern border fence (estimated to restrict access to approximately 24 per cent of Gaza) severely impacts internal food supply, by reducing the main agricultural area for farming. Israel also made fishing extremely hazardous for Palestinians, who have not had full access to the fishing zone of 20 nautical miles stipulated in the Oslo Accords. … In 2020, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 described the impact of Israel’s blockade on Gaza as having turned Gaza “from a low-income society with modest but growing export ties to the regional and international economy to an impoverished ghetto with a decimated economy and a collapsing social service system”. In 2022, he described the situation as follows:

“In Gaza, the apparent strategy of Israel is the indefinite warehousing of an unwanted population of 2 million Palestinians, whom it has confined to a narrow strip of land through its comprehensive 15-year-old air, land and sea blockade (with further restrictions by Egypt on the southern border of Gaza). Ban Ki-moon has called this political quarantining of the population a “collective punishment”, which is a serious breach of international law. The World Bank reported in 2021 that Gaza had undergone a multi-decade process of dedevelopment and deindustrialization, resulting in a 45 per cent unemployment rate and a 60 per cent poverty rate, with 80 per cent of the population dependent on some form of international assistance, in significant part because of the hermetic sealing of the access of Gaza to the outside world. The coastal aquifer, the sole source of natural drinking water in Gaza, has become polluted and unfit for human consumption because of contamination by seawater and sewage, substantially driving up water costs for an already destitute population. Gaza is heavily dependent on external sources — Israel and Egypt — for power, and Palestinians live with rolling power blackouts of between 12 and 20 hours daily, severely impairing daily living and the economy. The entry and export of goods is strictly controlled by Israel, which has throttled the local economy. The health-care system in Gaza is flat on its back, with serious shortages of health-care professionals, inadequate treatment equipment and low supplies of drugs and medicines. Palestinians in Gaza can rarely travel outside of Gaza, which is a denial of their fundamental right to freedom of movement. More acutely, they have endured four highly asymmetrical wars with Israel over the past 13 years, with enormous loss of civilian life and immense property destruction. The suffering was acknowledged by Antonio Guterres in May 2021, when he stated: “If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza”.”

Pp. 16-17:

Between 29 September 2000 and 7 October 2023, approximately 7,569 Palestinians, including 1,699 children, were killed, including in those “four highly asymmetrical wars”, as well as other smaller military assaults, with tens of thousands of others injured. A further 214 Palestinians, including 46 children were killed during the ‘Great March of Return’, a large-scale peaceful protest along the separation fence between Gaza and Israel, in which thousands of Palestinians participated every Friday for over 18 months, demanding that “the blockade imposed on Gaza be lifted and the return of Palestinian refugees” to their homes and villages in Israel. On one particularly lethal day alone, Israel killed 60 Palestinian protesters. As determined by the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the protests in the occupied Palestinian territory (‘Commission’): “[D]uring these weekly demonstrations, the Israeli Security Forces (ISF) killed and gravely injured civilians who were neither participating directly in hostilities nor posing an imminent threat to life. Among those shot were children, paramedics, journalists, and persons with disabilities.”

… A total of over 36,100 Palestinians, including nearly 8,800 children, were injured by Israel, including 4,903 people who were shot in the lower limbs, “many while standing hundreds of metres away from the snipers, unarmed”. 156 of them had to have at least one limb amputated, and over 1,200 required specialised limb reconstruction treatment. The Commission found that the maiming was not accidental: the rules of engagement adopted by Israel permitted snipers to shoot at the legs of the “major inciters”. One Israeli soldier admitted that he shot “42 knees in one day”.

The Commission found that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers “intentionally shot” children, knowing them to be children, and they also “intentionally shot” health workers and journalists “despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such”. It further found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Israeli snipers shot disabled demonstrators “intentionally, despite seeing that they had visible disabilities” and despite them not presenting an imminent threat.

Pp. 19-21, citing from the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict established pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-9/1 of 12 January 2009 (25 September 2009):

629. Taking into account the weapons used, and in particular the use of white phosphorous in and around a hospital that the Israeli armed forces knew was not only dealing with scores of injured and wounded but also giving shelter to several hundred civilians, the Mission finds, based on all the information available to it, that in directly striking the hospital and the ambulance depot the Israeli armed forces in these circumstances violated article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and violated customary international law in relation to proportionality. . . .

1027. The Mission . . . found that the systematic destruction of food, production, water services and construction industries was related to the overall policy of disproportionate destruction of a significant part of Gaza’s infrastructure.

1214. Through its overly broad framing of the “supporting infrastructure”, the Israeli armed forces have sought to construct a scope for their activities that, in the Mission’s view, was designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza . . . .

1889. The repeated failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians appears to the Mission to have been the result of deliberate guidance issued to soldiers, as described by some of them, and not the result of occasional lapses. . . .

1891. It is clear from evidence gathered by the Mission that the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces. It was not carried out because those objects presented a military threat or opportunity, but to make the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population. . . .

1892. Allied to the systematic destruction of the economic capacity of the Gaza Strip, there appears also to have been an assault on the dignity of the people. This was seen not only in the use of human shields and unlawful detentions sometimes in unacceptable conditions, but also in the vandalizing of houses when occupied and the way in which people were treated when their houses were entered. The graffiti on the walls, the obscenities and often racist slogans, all constituted an overall image of humiliation and dehumanization of the Palestinian population. . . .

1893. … Its in these circumstances that the Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability. . . .

Pp. 21-22, citing from the Report of the independent commission of inquiry established pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-21/1 (24 June 2015):

55. . . . warnings to evacuate were meant to create “sterile combat zones”, and the people remaining in the area would no longer be considered civilians and thus benefit from the protection afforded by their civilian status. For example, the Head of the Doctrine Desk at the Infantry Corps Headquarters, . . . , reportedly stated: “… In peacetime security, soldiers stand facing a civilian population, but in wartime, there is no civilian population, just an enemy.” . . .

56 . . . inferring that anyone remaining in an area that has been the object of a warning is an enemy or a person engaging in “terrorist activity”, or issuing instructions to this effect, contributes to creating an environment conducive to attacks against civilians.

Page 24:

In 2019, the then Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) held that “there is a reasonable basis to believe” that the Israeli army committed “war crimes… in the context of the 2014 hostilities in Gaza”, in particular.

As for the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), pp. 26-27:

Palestinians in the West Bank are also subjected to routine violence by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers. Prior to 7 October 2023, between 1 January and 6 October 2023, 199 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank and 9,000 more had been injured. By September 2023, Save the Children had already declared 2023 the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the West Bank since 2005 with at least 38 Palestinian children having been killed. Since 7 October 2023, a further 295 Palestinians, including 77 children, have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers, and a further 3,803, including 576 children, wounded — many seriously. A total of 495 Palestinians have been killed in total in the West Bank, making it “the deadliest year for Palestinians” since 2005.

… Since 7 October 2023, Israeli forces have carried out airstrikes and military raids on refugee camps in the West Bank, killing many Palestinians, bulldozing roads, and imposing severe restrictions on movement. There have been 236 attacks on ‘healthcare’ — including hospitals — in the West Bank, with Israeli forces detaining health staff and ambulances and preventing ambulances from accessing the wounded. Armed Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians — overtly supported by Israeli politicians — have also escalated dramatically.156 Settlers — often accompanied by Israeli soldiers — have killed at least eight Palestinians and injured at least 85 others, instilling terror among Palestinians, especially farming communities, and damaging property. 2,186 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 1,058 children, have been internally displaced since 7 October 2023 as a result of extreme Israeli settler violence, alongside punitive or administrative house demolitions carried out by the Israeli army and damage caused to homes during Israeli military raids and operations. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court indicated in December 2023 that he was “accelerating investigations” into Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank.

The attacks in Israel of 7 October 2023 are considered in pp. 28-29.

The killing of Palestinians in Gaza are limited to the figures available as of 27 December 2023.

Page 32, citing UN OHCHR:

Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in their homes, in places where they sought shelter, in hospitals, in UNWRA schools, in churches, in mosques, and as they tried to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, in the places to which they fled, and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli declared “safe routes”. Reports are multiplying of Israeli soldiers performing summary executions, including of multiple members of the same family — men, women and older people. One such account is the reported execution in Gaza City of at least 11 male members of the Annan family and their relatives — boys and men, said to have been separated out by Israeli soldiers and shot in front of their family — before the women and children were then attacked. There are also reports of unarmed people — including Israeli hostages — being shot dead on sight, despite posing no threat, including while waving white flags.

Page 33:

Israel is said to be dropping ‘dumb’ (i.e., unguided) bombs on Gaza, as well as heavy bombs weighing up to 2,000 lbs (900 kgs), which have a predicted lethal radius “of up to 360m”, and are “expected to cause severe injury and damage as far as 800 metres from the point of impact”. This weaponry is being deployed in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, where approximately one in every 100 people has now been killed.

Page 34:

144 United Nations employees have also been killed, the “highest number of aid workers killed in UN history in such a short time”.

Page 36:

Alongside its military campaign, Israel has engaged in the dehumanisation, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of members Palestinians in Gaza. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including children, have reportedly been arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress and remain outside in the cold weather, before being forced on to trucks and taken to unknown locations. Medics and first responders, in particular, have been repeatedly detained by Israeli forces, with many being detained incommunicado at unknown locations. Videos published by Israeli media on Christmas Day appeared to show hundreds of Palestinians, rounded up inside Al Yarmouk football stadium in Gaza City, “including children, older people and persons with disabilities, being forced to strip to their underwear in degrading conditions”. Many Palestinian detainees who have been released report having been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including the deprivation of food, water, shelter and access to toilets; the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (‘OCHA’) reports “video footage showing bruises and burns on the … bodies” of detainees. Images of mutilated and burned corpses — alongside videos of armed attacks by Israeli soldiers — billed as ‘exclusive content from the Gaza Strip’, are reportedly circulated in Israel via a social media ‘Telegram’ channel called ‘72 Virgins – Uncensored’.

[Someone should tell those retarded Muslims that the Koran actually said ‘72 white grapes’, in Aramaic.]

Page 37:

It is estimated that over 1.9 million Palestinians out of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people — approximately 85 per cent of the population — have been forced from their homes. There is nowhere safe for them to flee to, those who cannot leave or refuse to be displaced have been killed or are at extreme risk of being killed in their homes. Israel is repeatedly issuing ‘evacuation orders’ demanding that Palestinian civilians in certain areas of Gaza leave their homes for other areas. The first such order, issued on 13 October 2023 demanded that the 1.1 million Palestinians living or otherwise present in the North of Gaza, including Gaza City, move to the South of Gaza within a 24-hour window.237 The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that the evacuation directive, impacting approximately 36 per cent of Gaza’s territory — combined with the complete siege of Gaza — was not compatible with international humanitarian law. The World Health Organization warned that it “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for hospital patients. The evacuation was, however, maintained and has been reissued on a number of occasions, including on 28 October 2023, ahead of the Israeli announcement of ground operations in northern Gaza, and again thereafter. Israel has also issued more specific evacuation notices, ordering people in certain parts of Gaza City to evacuate to other parts. Many of those who are unwilling or unable to evacuate are then bombed in their homes.

Page 38:

Palestinians fleeing the North pursuant to Israel’s evacuation orders were urged to move south along Gaza’s main traffic artery, Salah Al Din Road, on certain days, during certain designated hours. However, there were numerous reported instances of shelling along the routes and of other violence by Israeli forces against evacuating Palestinian civilians, including inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, and killings. Israel has also continued bombing south of Wadi Gaza throughout this time, killing many Palestinians who evacuated, initially prompting many Palestinian families to seek to return north to at least risk being bombed in the familiar surrounding of their homes. Some of those attempting to return north during the temporary pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas were shot at by Israeli forces, who killed at least two people, and injured others.

Page 39:

Palestinians are not safe, even in those “small … slivers”: as United Nations chiefs keep reiterating. “No place is safe”, there is “nowhere safe to go”. The Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza has pleaded that “[p]eople in Gaza are people … they are not pieces on a checkerboard – many have already been displaced several times. The Israeli Army just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing airstrikes”. This is creating terror. The increased population density as a result of the evacuation ‘orders’ is also rendering Israeli strikes ever more lethal. On Christmas Eve itself, the Israeli army bombed Al Maghazi Refugee Camp in the Middle Area — an area to which tens of thousands of Palestinians had fled from the North — killing an estimated 86 people, including many women and children, and injuring many others.
… Israel has now damaged or destroyed an estimated 355,000 Palestinian homes — amounting to 60 per cent of the entire housing stock in Gaza. The extent of the destruction in the North of Gaza, in particular, has rendered it largely unliveable, with the destruction in the South reaching a similar level. As noted by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, “Gaza’s housing and civilian infrastructure have been razed to the ground, frustrating any realistic prospects for displaced Gazans to return home, repeating a long history of mass forced displacement of Palestinians by Israel”. The forced displacements in Gaza are genocidal, in that they are taking place in circumstances calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.

I’ll skip the many pages dealing with the dire sanitary conditions, with the lack of food or health care. OK, here’s a small excerpt from pp. 51-52:

Those hospitals which are still functioning are described as scenes from a “horror movie”. The critical shortages of staff and supplies –– including anaesthetics, analgesics, medicine and disinfectants –– have led not only to otherwise unnecessary amputations of limbs, but also to amputations without anaesthesia, often undertaken by flashlight. Pregnant women are also being subjected to caesareans without anaesthetic. Patients are being treated on dirty floors covered with blood, with family members having to stand holding saline bags, where saline is even available. There are insufficient staff and resources for adequate wound or post-operative wound care: unclean wounds –– often infested with worms and flies –– rapidly become infected, necrotic or gangrenous. Patients plead for food and water. Even basic pain-management treatment is often unavailable, and patients are at risk of dying from treatable conditions. One doctor described having to do procedures without anaesthetic, he said:

“I was forced to do dressing changes on massive wounds, excruciatingly painful wounds. There was a girl with just her whole body covered in shrapnel. She was nine. I ended up having to change and clean these wounds with no anaesthetic and no analgesic. I managed to find some intravenous paracetamol to give her … her Dad was crying, I was crying, and the poor child was screaming…”.

In addition to the war wounded, there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who still need routine medical care for conditions such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are also in need of urgent care for kidney disease and cancer, and an estimated 130 premature babies are dependent on incubators for survival at any given time.

Fast-forward to the section starting at page 59, “D. Expressions of Genocidal Intent against the Palestinian People by Israeli State Officials and Others”.

…
— President of Israel: On 12 October 2023, President Isaac Herzog made clear that Israel was not distinguishing between militants and civilians in Gaza, stating in a press conference to foreign media — in relation Palestinians in Gaza, over one million of whom are children: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”
…
— Israeli Minister of Defence: On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” He also informed troops on the Gaza border that he had “released all the restraints”, stating in terms that: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”
…
— Israeli Minister for National Security: On 10 November 2023, Itamar Ben-Gvir clarified the government’s position in a televised address, stating: “[t]o be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”

— Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure: ‘Tweeting’ on 13 October 2023, Israel Katz stated: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.” On 12 October 2023, he ‘tweeted’: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”
…
— Israeli Minister of Heritage: On 1 November 2023, Amichai Eliyahu posted on Facebook: “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes … We must talk about the day after. In my mind, we will hand over lots to all those who fought for Gaza over the years and to those evicted from Gush Katif” [a former Israeli settlement]. He later argued against humanitarian aid as “[w]e wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”, and “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”. He also posited a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip.

— Israeli Minister of Agriculture: On 11 November 2023, Avi Dichter in a television interview recalled the Nakba of 1948, in which over 80 percent of the Palestinian population of the new Israeli State was forced from or fled their homes, stating that “[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.

— Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee: On 7 October 2023, Nissim Vaturi ‘tweeted’ that: “[n]ow we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be replaced.”

Pp 64-65:

— Israeli Army reservist “motivational speech”: On 11 October 2023, 95-year old Israeli army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1948 Nakba — reportedly called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion, was broadcast on social media inciting other soldiers to genocide as follows, while being driven around in an Israeli army vehicle, dressed in Israeli army fatigues:

“Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live . . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him . . . We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what’s in front of us, and destroy houses, then destroy the one after it. With all of our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase them.”

— Head of the Israeli army’s Air Operations Group: On 28 October 2023, Lieutenant colonel Gilad Kinan described the Air Force as “work[ing] together with all the bodies in the IDF when the goal is clear — to destroy everything that has been touched by the hand of Hamas”.

— Commander in the 2908th Battalion of the Israeli army: In a video posted online on 21 December 2023, Yair Ben David said that the Israeli army had “entered Beit Hanoun and did there as Shimon and Levi did in Nablus,” and that “[t]he entire Gaza should resemble Beit Hanoun”, referring to the city in northern Gaza which has been entirely devastated by the Israeli army. The biblical passage in issue reads: “On the third day, when they were in pain, Simeon and Levi, two of Jacob’s sons, brothers of Dinah, took each his sword, came upon the city unmolested, and slew all the males”.
…
— Israeli Army Colonel, Deputy Head of COGAT: speaking in a video filmed in Beit Lahia — one of the areas of Gaza which appears to have suffered particularly severe levels of destruction — and broadcast on Israeli television on 4 November 2023, Colonel Yogev Bar-Sheshet stated: “[w]hoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future;” another Army Colonel recorded in the same video, Colonel Erez Eshel (Reserve), also commented that: “Vengeance is a great value. There is vengeance over what they did to us … This place will be a fallow land. They will not be able to live here”.

— Israeli army soldiers: Israeli soldiers in uniform have been filmed on 5 December 2023 dancing, chanting and singing “May their village burn, May Gaza be erased”; and, two days later, on a separate occasion inside Gaza on 7 December 2023, dancing, singing and chanting, “we know our motto: there are no uninvolved civilians” and “to wipe off the seed of Amalek”.

Pp 65-67:

This genocidal rhetoric of governmental and military officials is also widespread and commonplace amongst non-cabinet members of the Israeli Knesset (‘MKs’) who have repeatedly called for Gaza to be “wiped out”, “flatten[ed]”, “eras[ed]”, and “[c]rush[ed] . . . on all its inhabitants”. Parliamentarians have publicly deplored anyone “feel[ing] sorry” for the “uninvolved” Gazans, asserting repeatedly that “there are no uninvolved”, that “[t]here are no innocents in Gaza”, that “the killers of the women and children should not be separated from the citizens of Gaza”, that “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves”, and that “there should be one sentence for everyone there — death”. Parliamentarians have stated “[w]e must not forget that even the ‘innocent citizens’ — the cruel and monstrous people from Gaza took an active part . . . there is no place for any humanitarian gesture — the memory of Amalek must be protested”, and that “[w]ithout hunger and thirst among the Gazan population, we will not be able to recruit collaborators”. Parliamentarians have also called for “mercilessly” bombing “from the air”, calling for the use of nuclear (“doomsday”) weapons, and a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48”.

Similar genocidal rhetoric is also commonplace in Israeli civil society, with genocidal messages being routinely broadcast — without censure or sanction — in Israeli media. The media reports call for Gaza to be “erase[d],” turned into a “slaughterhouse”, that “Hamas should not be eliminated” but rather “Gaza should be razed”, on the repeated claim that “[t]here are no innocents… There is no population. There are 2.5 million terrorists”. One local official, reportedly called for Gaza to be “desolate and destroyed” like the Auschwitz Museum, “demonstrating the madness of the people who lived there”. Former MKs have called for a level of destruction akin to that of Dresden and Hiroshima, asserting that it would be “immoral” for the Israeli army not to show themselves to be “vengeful and cruel”. In an Israeli news interview, one former MK called for all Palestinians in Gaza to be killed saying:

“I tell you, in Gaza without exception, they are all terrorists, sons of dogs. They must be exterminated, all of them killed. We will flatten Gaza, turn them to dust, and the army will cleanse the area. Then we will start building new areas, for us, above all, for our security.”

Those statements by prominent members of Israeli society — including former parliamentarians and news anchors — constitute clear direct and public incitement to genocide, which has gone unchecked and unpunished by the Israeli authorities. That such sentiment appears to be so widespread and mainstream in Israeli society is of particular concern, in circumstances where the soldiers serving in Gaza are largely reservists, drawn from and informed by civil society.

Conclusion

I stopped reading here. The 84-page document has 574 footonotes that are references to documents, reports, tweets, etc. The genocidal intent is documented.

The ICJ (International Court of Justice) doesn’t have the competences of the ICC (International Criminal Court), the one that indicted Vladimir Putin, so it cannot sentence individuals. But the international community should finally admit that Israel is not anymore a victim, and it almost never was. The Jews of the past were victims during the Holocaust, but today’s Israel is conducting a genocide against Palestinians.

The international community should also condemn the unconditional support that the so-called civilized countries are offering to Israel. The United States pretend to care about the loss of lives in Gaza, but Biden and Blinken couldn’t change a thing, and they’re not diminishing their support for Israel. Germany, out of a retarded reaction to the guilt for the past, can only support Israel unconditionally. Should Israel drop a nuclear bomb in Gaza, Olaf Scholz and Annalena Baerbock would say that, well, it must have been in self-defense.

Should the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide have been signed earlier, it would have covered the genocidal bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. As it was not the case, we should at least make use of it now.

Follow-up: Germany enters the game

Friday, January 12, 2024, via CNN:

“Colleagues who have managed to make it to the north in recent days describe scenes of utter horror: Corpses left lying in the road. People with evident signs of starvation stopping trucks in search of anything they can get to survive,” Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told members of the UN Security Council on Friday.

On the same day, Steffen Hebestreit, the Spokesperson and Head of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government of Germany, on Twitter:

Die Bundesregierung weist den gegen Israel erhobenen Vorwurf des Völkermordes entschieden zurück. Er entbehrt jeder Grundlage. Wir werden uns daher in der Hauptverhandlung vor dem Internationalen Gerichtshof als Drittpartei äußern: Erklärung der Bundesregierung zur Verhandlung am Internationalen Gerichtshof.

Translation:

The federal government firmly rejects the accusation of genocide made against Israel. It has no basis whatsoever. We will therefore speak as a third party in the main hearing before the International Court of Justice: Statement by the Federal Government on the hearing at the International Court of Justice.

Some people expressed their disapproval. Tarek Baé:

Sehr verehrte Bundesregierung,

Sie irren sich in Ihrer Einschätzung gewaltig. Nicht direkt in der, ob es sich um einen Genozid/Völkermord handelt oder nicht, das kann der Internationale Gerichtshof (IGH) ja ruhig selbst entscheiden. Nein, sie irren sich darin, dass Sie der Konvention gegen Völkermord mit Ihrer aktuellen Haltung verbunden wären. Sie irren sich darin, dass Sie dem Auftrag „nie wieder“ ein würdiges Erbe sind.

Sie sprechen von Instrumentalisierung, während es Israel ist, das den Auftrag „nie wieder“ auf perverse Weise missbraucht. Wollen Sie sich wirklich zum Handlanger eines solchen kriegsverbrecherischen Regimes machen? Mit keinem Wort erwähnen Sie die Palästinenser. Um die es in der Klage Südafrikas geht. Als gäbe es sie nicht. So wie Israels Regierung es gerne darstellt und regelmäßig fordert. Sie sprechen von einer „Militäroperation in Gaza“. Nennen Sie uns eine vergleichbare Militäroperation, die derart zerstörerisch ist? In keiner Militäroperation werden durchgängig mehr Zivilisten als Bewaffnete getötet.

Sie erlauben sich die Behauptung, der Vorwurf entbehre jeder Logik, während hochintelligente Juristinnen und Juristen ihre detaillierten Belege präsentieren. Liegt etwa eine vorauseilende Ignoranz und Arroganz vor? Wollen wir wirklich wieder auf zum alles-besser-wissender-Westen machen?

Sehr verehrte Bundesregierung, Sie sind dem Grundgesetz verpflichtet. Das ist das Mindeste, das wir als Bürgerinnen und Bürger von Ihnen erwarten dürfen. Sie widersprechen der Unantastbarkeit der Würde des Menschen in Artikel 1, wenn sie das Leid der palästinensischen Zivilisten weglassen und sich auf die Seite der Aggressoren, nämlich Israels Armee, stellen. All die Verbrechen gegen Zivilisten sind nicht mit dem Angriff der Hamas zu rechtfertigen. Eine solche Rechtfertigung gibt es juristisch nicht. Bewegen Sie sich nicht weg vom Rahmen des Rechts für einen fragwürdigen Alliierten. Die Verantwortung aus unserer Geschichte lässt eine solche Fehlentscheidung schlichtweg nicht zu!

Sie haben für uns zu sprechen, nicht für Israel. Und hiermit sprechen Sie definitiv nicht in unserem Namen!

Translation:

Dear Federal Government,

You are very wrong in your assessment. Not directly in terms of whether it is a genocide or not, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) can decide for itself. No, you are wrong about your current stance being committed to the Convention Against Genocide. You are mistaken in thinking that you are a worthy heir to the “never again” mandate.

You speak of instrumentalization, while it is Israel that is perversely abusing the “never again” mandate. Do you really want to become a henchman of such a war criminal regime? You don’t mention the Palestinians at all. Which is what South Africa’s lawsuit is about. As if they didn’t exist. Just as Israel’s government likes to portray it and regularly demands. You speak of a “military operation in Gaza.” Can you name a comparable military operation that is so destructive? No military operation consistently kills more civilians than gunmen.

You take the liberty of claiming that the accusation lacks any logic, while highly intelligent lawyers present their detailed evidence. Is this a case of anticipatory ignorance and arrogance? Do we really want to go back to the West that knows everything better?

Dear Federal Government, you are bound by the Basic Law. That is the least we as citizens can expect from you. You contradict the inviolability of human dignity in Article 1 when you omit the suffering of Palestinian civilians and side with the aggressors, namely Israel’s army. All the crimes against civilians cannot be justified by the Hamas attack. There is no such justification in legal terms. Do not move away from the framework of law for a questionable ally. The responsibility arising from our history simply does not permit such a wrong decision!

You have to speak for us, not for Israel. And you are definitely not speaking on our behalf!

Peter Horn:

Sehr geehrter Herr @RegSprecher,
der internationale Gerichtshof wurde geschaffen, um bei internationalen Konflikten die Sachlage im Sinne internationaler Gesetze, insbesondere des Völkerrechts, zu analysieren und am Ende zu bewerten. Meines Wissens erkennt die Bundesrepublik Deutschland den internationalen Gerichtshof an.
Wir sollten deshalb, aus meiner Sicht, auf die Neutralität und die juristische Kompetenz des Gerichtshofs vertrauen und dessen Bewertung und Urteil abwarten. Mit Ihrer entschiedenen Zurückweisung des im Raum stehenden Vorwurfes sprechen Sie indirekt dem Gerichtshof das Vertrauen ab.
In unserem Grundgesetz wurde bewusst das Prinzip der Gewaltenteilung aufgenommen, u.a. um einen politischen Einfluss auf gerichtliche Prozesse auszuschließen. Dieses wichtige Prinzip sollten wir auch im internationalen Kontext berücksichtigen. Sie machen mit Ihrer Erklärung genau das Gegenteil: Sie versuchen von Seiten der Politik Einfluss auf ein Gericht zu nehmen.
Ich gebe zu, dass ich kein Experte für internationales Recht bin und möglicherweise ist Ihre Vorgehensweise in diesem Fall rechtlich zulässig. Sie widerspricht aber aus meiner Sicht unseren eigenen Werten.

Translation:

Dear Mr. @RegSprecher,
The International Court of Justice was created to analyze and ultimately assess the facts of international conflicts in accordance with international law, in particular international law. As far as I know, the Federal Republic of Germany recognizes the International Court of Justice.
In my view, we should therefore trust in the neutrality and legal competence of the Court and await its assessment and judgment. With your decisive rejection of the accusation in question, you are indirectly denying confidence in the Court.
The principle of separation of powers was deliberately incorporated into our Basic Law, among other things in order to exclude political influence on judicial processes. We should also take this important principle into account in the international context. With your statement you are doing exactly the opposite: you are trying to exert political influence on a court.
I admit that I am not an expert in international law and your approach may be legally permissible in this case. In my view, however, it contradicts our own values.

Obviously, not everyone agrees. On the same Twitter thread, some are unconditionally supporting Israel themselves; other object that a democratically elected Government can speak on behalf of ALL its citizens. In theory, yes, but even a democratic Government can face e.g. massive demonstrations, which are a sign of becoming disconnected from what its subjects really want, think, believe, need. Also, a democracy is based on majority, not on a pensée unique, which would mean totalitarianism. Finally, justice being justice, and Germany not being a part in the conflict, what the fuck is the Federal Government trying to do? “The Nazis killed 6 million Jews, so now we want to make sure that Israel has the right to kill all 5.3 million Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank?” Is that what you mean? If so, why don’t you state it clearly?

Let me give you a free advice, Herr Regierungssprecher: not everyone in Israel agrees with Bibi Netanyahu. There are Israeli citizens of Jewish descent (not Arabs) who consider that their Government is commiting genocide. There are also Jews outside Israel who think that. But, of course, the Bundesregierung knows better. “Nie wieder” should include “never should a German Government believe to be in the possession of the absolute truth”! We all know what this has led to in the past…