Live : South Africa presents its case against Israel at the ICJ
Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Now the legal process begins in The Hague, where Israel is accused of genocide in Gaza. 87-year-old Aharon Barak, who has been appointed by the Netanyahu government as Israel's judge in the case, is one of the country's most famous lawyers.
He is also one of the government's harshest critics, which causes concern among the far-right.
On Thursday, the process begins in the International Court of Justice, ICJ, in The Hague, where South Africa has sued Israel. Both South Africa and Israel are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, which came into being after the Holocaust, and South Africa claims that Israel is violating it by waging war against Hamas in Gaza.
First up is South Africa, which will present its reasons for the accusation of Israel's "genocide-like actions against the residents of Gaza". According to South Africa, Israel is trying to "destroy" Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including by starving them.
On Friday it is Israel's turn to defend itself. Israeli President Isaac Herzog considers South Africa's accusations to be "cruel and nasty".
- We will, when the trial begins, proudly present our right to use self-defense under international humanitarian law, where we do our utmost under extremely complicated circumstances on the ground, to ensure that there are no unintended consequences and no civilian casualties, Isaac Herzog told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week.
Photo: Fatima Shbair/AP
The process in the ICJ could take several years – unless South Africa succeeds in getting the court to demand an immediate halt to the Israeli offensive as an emergency measure.
Such a court order could have an enormous effect, even if Israel as a state could conceivably reject it. Other countries could, for example, cite it in the UN Security Council in attempts to impose military and economic sanctions against Israel. And worse, for Israel, an order from the ICJ could cause the US to waver in its solid support for Israel's war against Hamas, which could have both military and economic consequences.
Before the Gaza case, the usual panel of judges in the ICJ is increased from 15 people to 17, as both South Africa and Israel have each been appointed a judge.
Israel's choice, 87-year-old Aharon Barak, made many raise their eyebrows. Not because Barak lacks experience or competence - on the contrary, he has a good international reputation - but because the 87-year-old spent most of last year working against the current Israeli government. Mass protests erupted as a result of the government's ambition to reform the legal system, which would mean, among other things, less power for the Supreme Court, and Aharon Barak joined the critics.< /span>
- Giving the keys to Aharon Barak is a mistake. This decision has been taken by the prime minister without our being consulted, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said after the news about Barak became public.
Photo: Fatima Shbair/AP
Smotrich leads the party Religious Zionism and stands for a policy that stays on the extreme right, and was one of the strongest proponents of the legal reforms.
- With this decision, Netanyahu has humiliated the right, humiliated his voters, said Netanyahu's party mate in Likud, parliamentarian Tally Gotliv.
The evidence South Africa presents against Israel concerns, among other things, statements from Israeli politicians on the right. Bezalel Smotrich has said "If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million, the whole 'day after the war' discussion will look different". Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for "voluntary migration of Gazans". Israel's Minister of Cultural Heritage Amichai Eliyahu stands for a quote that has aroused disgust all over the world: "one way is to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza".
Photo: Menahem Kahana/AP
Israel has strongly rejected the accusations. What the ministers have stated is not the official Israeli line, Israel takes every possible consideration for civilians and that civilians are harmed is not Israel's fault, but Hamas's, says the defense.
But since the ministers in question continue to speak freely without any visible reprimands, it is difficult for the outside world not to take them seriously. Why have people minister if they go against the official line, time and time again?
The election of Aharon Barak can be seen as a signal that Israel is taking the impending trial seriously.
The choice also fell on a man with personal experience of genocide. Aharon Barak was born in Lithuania and survived the Holocaust with his family. In interviews, he has told how a Lithuanian farmer saved his life by hiding him under a sack of potatoes and smuggling him out of the Kaunas ghetto.
Amichai Cohen is a law professor at the Israel Democracy Institute. He tells the New York Times that the criticism from the right shows that the election is right and lends credibility to Barak's objectivity.
- The appointment shows that Israel takes the process seriously and does everything to achieve success in it.
British lawyer Malcolm Shaw will lead Israel's defense.
cornelius...@gmail.com
Gaza: The Death Toll
It’s not just post-Apartheid South Africa but the rest of humanity created in God’s image and likeness, the whole world that has been witnessing with horror and disgust, what is blatantly obvious as the hard evidence of Israel’s brutality and cruelty: the bloody footage of the on-going carnage the past 98 days with over 10, 000 non -Israeli children massacred.
If indeed it was a civil war and not a war imposed on occupied territories, we are to suppose that the wickedness, the death and destruction, and the casualty figures would have been very different.
Malcolm is supposed to rhyme with Shalom
Is Malcolm Shaw, Israel's defence attorney going to defend not only genocide but all of Israel’s crimes against humanity, all the evidence that’s available with Amnesty International of Israel’s wilful, intentional genocide by trying to show a “quantitative” difference between the on-going Genocide and the Holocaust?
cornelius...@gmail.com
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju:
Information Clearing House also weighing in
Imagine - for just a minute, if it had been the other way around, if it had been Hamas/ Gaza/ Islamic Jihad/ Hezbollah/ the Arab League/ Turkey/ OIC / Saddam/ Iran / North Korea/ Russia/ China that for the past 98 days had been relentlessly pounding little Haifa, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or London or New York City, the way that Israel has been pounding the people of Gaza, the world's most densely populated open-air prison and concentration camp, no water, no food, no medicines, no electricity, bombed-out hospitals, homes, mosques, schools, refugee camps, putting 1.8 million refugees on the unarmed road of flight
In this USA-AfricaDialgue Series, it would seem that for now, burning Pan-African issues have taken a seat backstage, that such issues are now smoking on the backburner whilst Israel’s war on Gaza continues to escalate and continues to occupy that special niche in our hearts and at the forefront of the civilised world's and the United Nations’ humanitarian concerns
You say that you “look forward to seeing Israel's defense”. Please make sure that as always you remain forward-looking, even as you keep on looking forward to what the goons in Israel are going to say about the indefensible.
Why man thou doth bestride this series like a colossus as we can all gather from your numerous posts on this forum, updating us about the war crimes that the Israelis (not to be conflated with the Biblical “Israelites “) are committing in Gaza, with such impunity - like the beginning of Marcus Garvey’s poem about today's so-called Israel and their war crime enablers :
“Lying and stealing is their only game;
For rights of God and man, he has no shame”
What I’ve heard so far from their defence team is patently ridiculous. Is it with the same kind of supercilious nonsense arguments that the representatives of Israel such as mealy-mouthed Alan Dershowitz and his former students would defend themselves against the charge of genocide when kneeling in the dock, before the throne of God, on the fabled Day of Judgment?
What I have heard is so cynically being presented as Israel’s ”defence”, stinks to the highest heavens - where the odour of such a “defence” and such legalese would pollute the nostrils of the one that the so-called religious Zionists refer to as “Avinu Malkeinu”
In my opinion, an international arrest warrant should have been issued for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu a very long time ago, for his various crimes against humanity …
I’m looking forward to what George Galloway has to say about the miscreant on Day 1 in the defence box before they are sent to the gallows to await the resurrection.
cornelius...@gmail.com
Question: When is genocide, not genocide? It’s not a trick question.
Answer: A genocide is supposedly not a genocide when it is manifestly being committed by “God’s only chosen people “ - their “God” of course - the Supreme Judge, on a daily basis, hence the blessing ” Baruch dayan ha-Emet”. For God’s one and only people it could be a divine exception to the rule, some kind of special immunity, even if the perpetrators are bonafide atheists and sinners and that’s why successive Israeli Governments appear to be, are, or pride themselves on being above International Law and as “God’s children” spitting on UN Security Resolutions 242 and 33 8 with impunity and with disdain.
Prof. John Mearsheimer: Israel reignited and is attacking again - Not a war crime, but GENOCIDE.
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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