- By Danai Nesta Kupemba
- BBC News
1 hour ago
Image source: Getty Images
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President Hage Geingob has appealed to Germany to withdraw its support for Israel
Namibia has condemned former colonial ruler Germany for rejecting a UN court case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
Germany has offered to intervene on behalf of Israel in the case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
President Hage Geingob called on Germany to “reconsider its premature decision to intervene in defense as a third party.”
German colonizers massacred more than 70,000 Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908. Historians consider this to be the first genocide of the 20th century.
President Geingob said Germany cannot “morally commit to the United Nations Convention against Genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia” and at the same time support Israel.
“The German government has yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil,” he added.
On Friday, the federal government declared that the accusation of genocide against Israel was completely unfounded and amounted to a “political instrumentalization” of the UN Genocide Convention.
“In view of Germany's history and the crime against humanity of the Holocaust, the government sees itself as particularly committed to the Genocide Convention,” it said.
It says that Hamas – which attacked Israel on October 7, triggering the current war – aimed to destroy Israel, which was acting in self-defense.
Hamas killed about 1,300 people, most of them civilians, and took about 240 others hostage on October 7.
Since then, Israel has killed nearly 24,000 people, mostly children and women, in its retaliatory attacks on Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. The United Nations and humanitarian organizations warned of the risk of famine in Gaza and the spread of disease among displaced people and urged more aid to be allowed into the area.
The scale of Israel's response prompted South Africa to ask the International Court of Justice to consider whether Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The Pretoria case covered a range of alleged Israeli crimes, from the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians to the wholesale destruction of Gaza's infrastructure.
Israel strongly denied the accusation, calling it “baseless,” and its legal team was harsh on South Africa's submission, arguing that if anyone was guilty of genocide, it was Hamas.