Tel Aviv denies allegations at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accuses Johannesburg of collaborating with terrorists seeking to destroy the Jewish state and says it is fighting Hamas and not the people of Gaza. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main actor The United Nations justice agency reported on Friday (December 29) that it had received a complaint from South Africa against Israel for its involvement in “acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Israel responded to the announcement, calling the report a “repugnant defamation” and “baseless.”
South Africa, home to the continent's largest Jewish community, claims that Israel's “actions and omissions are genocidal in nature because they are accompanied by the specific intent required.” […] “the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza as part of the larger national, racial and ethnic group of Palestinians.”
The whistleblower alleges that “Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians in Gaza through its state organs, state agents and other persons and organizations acting under its instructions or under its direction, control or influence violates its obligations under the Genocide Convention.” a Opinion of the International Court of Justice based in The Hague, Netherlands.
Johannesburg is also asking the court to issue an interim order so that Israel can immediately end its military operations in the Palestinian enclave.
“Israel has failed, particularly since October 7, to prevent genocide and to prosecute direct and public incitement to commit genocide,” said a statement from South Africa’s Department of International Relations.
The minister reacted that the action was “unfounded slander” and that he was cooperating with terrorists
Israeli Foreign Minister Lior Haiat called the action a “repugnant” and “unfounded” defamation, blamed the Islamist fundamentalist group Hamas for the suffering of the Palestinians and stressed that Israel respects international law and acts in accordance with it.
“South Africa is collaborating with a terrorist group that calls for the destruction of Israel,” Haiat said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “The residents of the Gaza Strip are not the enemy of Israel, which is making every effort to limit damage to civilians and facilitate humanitarian access.”
Israel classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, like the United States, Germany, the European Union and several other countries.
Support for Palestinians
The South African government had previously warned that a lawsuit would be filed. At the end of November, the country's Congress agreed to sever diplomatic relations with Israel in response to the bombing of the Gaza Strip this in turn was a response by Tel Aviv to the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. The measure still needs to be approved by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The country claims to base its complaint on the Genocide Convention, to which both Johannesburg and Tel Aviv are signatories.
Speaking to DW, Ran Greenstein, a political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said almost no other African country has expressed as much support for the Palestinian cause as South Africa. “There is widespread identification with the Palestinian struggle because “many South Africans feel that Palestinians are going through the same experiences that they themselves had during apartheid.”
What is genocide?
The term genocide was defined as an intention to exterminate a specific group of people and first emerged amid the horrors of the Holocaust during World War II.
In 1943, lawyer Raphael Lemkin defined the concept partly in response to the systematic mass murder of Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. With the exception of his brother, Lemkin lost his entire family in the Holocaust.
The Polish and Jewish lawyer advocated for the recognition of genocide as a crime in international law, paving the way for the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Suppression of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, which came into force in 1951.
Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as any act “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
According to the UN definition, these measures include:
murders of group members;
cause serious physical or psychological harm to group members;
create conditions that threaten the lives of group members and may destroy life in whole or in part;
take measures to prevent births within the group;
and the forced transfer of children to another group.
ra/le (dpa, DW, ots)
Deutsche Welle is Germany's foreign broadcaster and produces independent journalism in 30 languages.