Israeli genocide charges to be heard Jan. 11-12

ICJ panel will decide whether to grant South African motion to suspend Gaza slaughter pending ruling

By Jeff Armstrong

A 15-member panel of the International Court of Justice will hear arguments this week on whether to order a cessation of Israeli military actions against Palestinians on the Gaza Strip while it considers a comprehensive claim of ongoing genocide that may take years to decide.

The genocide case is filed by South Africa, a successor state to a white minority regime that ruled under a racial caste system it termed apartheid, a label often attached to Israel in recent decades due to its oppression and subjugation of indigenous Palestinians. Both South Africa and Israel are parties to the Genocide Convention, which was inspired in large part by the genocidal extermination campaign waged by Nazi Germany against Jews and other minorities during World War II, which in turn gave rise to the creation of a Jewish state.

South Africa’s ICJ filing has been endorsed by the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, while at least 19 other government officials have joined the accusation of genocide, some having imposed some sort of diplomatic sanctions upon Israel.

While the ICJ retains no mechanism to enforce its decisions, a favorable ruling would intensify pressure on US and Israeli officials to implement a ceasefire to avoid further international isolation, political destabilization of regional allies and potential future criminal culpability under the terms of the Genocide Convention.

The Biden Administration has twice vetoed UN Security Council resolutions for a ceasefire on Oct. 18 and Dec. 8, while bypassing Congress to insure the uninterrupted flow of deadly munitions whose deployment has surpassed in its relative scale of brutality any armed conflict since the Genocide Convention was adopted.

The civilian death toll in Gaza has already exceeded that of the infamous allied bombing of Dresden in WWII, with no end in sight. Biden is seeking an additional $14 billion to carry on the bloodshed indefinitely, earning himself the nickname “Genocide Joe” in some quarters.

Despite growing unrest within his own government over Biden’s steadfast opposition to a ceasefire, National Security Agency spokesman John Kirby dismissed South Africa’s genocide complaint as “counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

In fact, South Africa’s 84-page submission to the ICJ is an exhaustive review of the unimaginable and unrelenting horror and cruelty that grinds on more than three months after Palestinians launched their largest act of resistance in more than 75 years of occupation. It is not easy reading, nor will it be easily refuted in its assertion that the so-called Israel-Hamas war is in truth a war on the indigenous people of Palestine aimed at eliminating them as a people and removing them from the sliver of their remaining homelands.

According to the report, more than 85% of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced from their homes, with more than 70% of housing units at least partially destroyed. Hospitals and UN facilities where they have taken refuge have themselves been targeted by bombs and snipers. Only 13 of 36 hospitals in Gaza are even partially functioning, with these forced to deal with 55,243 war injuries without access to clean water, electricity and anesthesia. The documented death toll in Gaza has now reached approximately 2% of the population, including thousands buried in the rubble without access to machinery for rescue efforts.

At least 570 Palestinians have been killed at hospitals, along with more than 300 healthcare workers, including many skilled specialists who will not be easily replaced. Hundreds more have died trying to take refuge at crammed UN shelters where an average of 486 people must share a single toilet with diarrhea running rampant among children. More than 130 UN workers have given their lives in the relentless assault, along with more than 100 journalists—both unprecedented numbers in any war of the last century.

Starvation is rampant and expected to gradually outstrip the still-mounting death toll from the bombing. Amputations, cesarean sections and other essential surgeries are often carried out by flashlight without access to anesthesia.

South Africa’s legal submission to the ICJ convincingly demonstrates that Israel is not only seeking to extinguish any basis for a future Palestine, but also to erase its past:

“Just as Israel is destroying the official memory and records of Palestinians in Gaza through its destruction of Gaza’s archives and landmarks, it is obliterating Palestinian personal lives and private memories, histories and futures, through bombing and bulldozing graveyards, destroying family records and photographs, wiping out entire multigenerational families, and killing, maiming and traumatising a generation of children.”

The primary obstacle to genocide prosecutions is ordinarily demonstrating intentionality, since war criminals customarily seek to conceal their motives. The South Africa report, however, includes more than seven pages of direct quotations demonstrating genocidal intent. It includes this statement from a former member of the Israeli parliament: “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.”

Although the ICJ is presided over by an American citizen, who might be expected to throw out procedural or jurisdictional hurdles, there are grounds for optimism for a favorable ruling. Of the 13 judges hearing the case, only five represent countries which voted to abstain in the Oct. 27 UN General Assembly vote for a ceasefire. Of those five, only Slovakia and Germany failed to vote in favor of the ceasefire resolution on Dec. 12.

It is not unreasonable to anticipate that the judges hearing the case are cognizant of the fact that failure to act in what one UN official termed a “textbook case” of genocide might not only render the Genocide Convention irrelevant, but might record for posterity their own individual complicity.