Israel Scrambles for a Defense Against Charge of Genocide

Jan. 13—Representatives of Israel did exactly what South Africa warned them against Jan. 11 in presenting its case for charging Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice in the Hague. South Africa had made a point of saying that they had deliberately avoided using inflammatory photos and/or videos of the horrors in Gaza, so the court would concentrate on the actual case. However, Israel on Jan. 12, presented their Oct. 7 horror video show replete with added claims of savagery that have been long discredited by journalists and others investigating the Hamas invasion and attack on Israel

Tal Becker, legal advisor for Israel’s Foreign Ministry,  presenting the Israeli defense, stated as fact: “They (Hamas) tortured children in front of parents and parents in front of children, burned people, including infants alive, and systematically raped and mutilated scores of women, men and children.” That Becker would, with reckless disregard for the truth, repeat such proven falsehoods, betrays a level of desperation. Just one of Israel’s many canards was that Hamas burned a baby in an oven, another that 

Hamas beheaded 40 babies—false stories meant to do nothing but inflame. The terror of Oct. 7 is horrible enough, it is both unnecessary and disgraceful to lie about it. But, as South Africa made clear Jan. 1,  even the most atrocious terrorist act has no bearing on the deliberate policy to carry out genocide.

Becker concluded that the charges Israel is facing should be leveled at Hamas. “If there have been acts that may be characterized as genocidal, then they have been perpetrated against Israel,” Becker said. Hamas has, he said, a “proudly declared agenda of annihilation, which is not a secret and is not in doubt … Hamas seeks genocide against Israel.”

Becker said that South Africa’s interpretation of events was “grossly distorted. The appalling suffering of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, is first and foremost the result of Hamas’s strategy…. Israel is in a war of defense against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people.” Further, South Africa’s request for an immediate halt to the Gaza fighting, he said, amounts to an attempt to prevent Israel from defending itself against that assault. Another member of the Israeli defense team, Christopher Staker, called South Africa’s request “frankly astonishing.” He said that, if granted, it would mandate “unilateral suspension of military operations by one party to the conflict, only leaving the other party free to continue attacks which it has a stated intention to do" --that is, stopping Israel’s invasion into Gaza will cause Hamas to invade Israel.

Becker argued that “the key component of genocide, the intent to destroy a people in whole or in part, is totally lacking”—and they left the support of that claim to Israel's hired gun, the U.K.’s Malcolm Shaw, an international law expert. Shaw’s response to South Africa’s documentation of genocidal statements, from the top of Israel’s chain of command down to individual soldiers, was to call them “random quotes not in conformity with government policy.” It is “the decisions of the (israeli) security cabinet and the war cabinet” alone that can provide evidence on Israel’s intent. 

Another member of the Israeli legal team, Dr. Galit Raguan, argued that donated ambulances and incubators that made it into Gaza were evidence of Israel’s efforts to provide humanitarian aid, as was allowing the supply of food and water through the Rafah crossings and allowing Palestinian supporters to erect four field hospitals in southern Gaza, as well as two floating hospitals in the Mediterranean Sea. The good doctor must assume that no one knows that Israel deliberately blockaded everything into four weeks, and then begrudgingly slow-walked aid trucks through the Rafah crossing, most days at less than 10% of pre-war levels. But Raguan extrapolated from such examples: “Even this mere fraction is enough to demonstrate how tendentious the allegations of the South Africans are and how the allegations of genocide are baseless.”

ICJ President Joan E. Donoghue said that the court would rule on the South African request for urgent measures “as soon as possible.” Experienced observers of the ICJ suggest that it could even be a week or two