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Does this case belong in court?
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided in its January 26th provisional ruling to move forward with a peculiar case that South Africa brought against Israel, alleging that Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians living in Gaza. South Africa claimed that it was simply enforcing rights protected by the international Genocide Convention to which both countries are signatories.
The ICJ is enabling South Africa to weaponize against the Jewish State of Israel the Genocide Convention, which was enacted in 1948 when the genocide of Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust was still fresh in peoples’ minds. To hurl an accusation of genocide against Israel, where at least one of the nearly 150,000 Holocaust survivors still living in Israel was killed during Hamas’s October 7th attack, is obscene.
Hamas initiated the war with Israel when it invaded Israel on October 7th and went on a genocidal rampage against Israeli civilians. Israel’s military operations in Gaza following that attack are a legitimate exercise of Israel’s inherent right of self-defense, which is recognized in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter when “an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”
The ICJ deferred making a final judgment on the merits of South Africa’s genocide claims, which could take months or even years to decide. However, the ICJ issued provisional orders to take immediate effect, which are prejudicial to Israel’s inherent sovereign right of self-defense. Fortunately, the ICJ has no mechanism to enforce its ruling, although technically it is legally binding. Nevertheless, the ICJ’s decision that South Africa has presented a plausible case of genocide against Israel will put increased pressure on Israel to quickly wind down its military operations in Gaza.
While the ICJ did not order an immediate ceasefire, it did order Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this [Genocide] Convention.”
Article II of the Genocide Convention prohibits its member states from committing certain acts with the “intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” (Emphasis added) The following acts are covered by the Convention, which are only violations if the accused party is proven to have intended to commit them for the purpose of destroying one of the protected groups:
“(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The ICJ’s order that Israel “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission” of such prohibited acts under Article II as killing or causing serious harms to members of the Palestinian “group” is deceptively overbroad. It lists the prohibited acts but omits the requirement that these acts must be committed with specific malevolent intent to constitute a violation of the Genocide Convention. Moreover, just as the casualty figures that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry provides fail to distinguish between the genocidal Hamas terrorists and innocent civilians, the ICJ order makes no such distinction either…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (frontpagemag.com)
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