South Africa Has Unwittingly Given Israel a Chance to Rebut Charges of ‘Genocide’

The government of South Africa has brought its claim of “genocide” against Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The court allows for Israel and South Africa to each appoint one judge of their own to join the 15 judges already on the panel. Israel has appointed Aharon Barak, former Chief Justice of the Israel Supreme Court, to represent Israel on the ICJ. It was an inspired choice by Netanyahu, for Barak, esteemed for his intellect, is also on the left of the political spectrum in Israel, a ferocious opponent of the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial reform that had divided the country so deeply before October 7. The Hamas attack on that day brought the country together; the proposed judicial reform that had proved so divisive until then was now put to one side, as Israelis have come together to fight for the survival of their state. And by charging Israel with “genocide,” the South Africans have provided Israel with a forum to make their case, as they show, point by point, how outrageous that charge turns out to be.

South Africa has now unwittingly given Israel the pulpit it will use to rebut, before the world, over the heads of the international media whose anti-Israel animus has so often prevented Israel from making its case, this charge of “genocide.” More on this “law of unintended consequences” can be found here: “ICJ Gaza genocide case: South Africa set to discover law of unintended consequences,” by Howard Feldman, Jerusalem Post, January 8, 2024:

In 1958, Mao Zedong decreed that Chinese citizens should destroy the humble sparrow because the birds were eating much-needed grain in a country where hunger was a constant companion.

Dutifully, people took up the challenge, shooting the birds, breaking up nests, smashing eggs, and beating drums to scare the animals and prevent them from landing to rest. After two years, hundreds of millions of birds were dead as the sparrow approached extinction across China.

But destroying the sparrow resulted in one of the most devastating famines in recent history, killing 15-40 million Chinese citizens (the exact number remains subject to debate).

Why? Because it turned out that sparrows didn’t just eat grain. They also ate insects, including locusts with an appetite for crops. With its major predator effectively side-lined, the locust roamed rampant across China.

This is the law of unintended consequences, something that the South African government is about to discover.

This seems to be the perfect opportunity for the African National Congress (ANC) to reclaim some of its lost luster. A chance to showcase their values and their deep-seated concern for citizens of the world. Well, aside from Zimbabweans [one million Zimbabwean migrants live in South Africa, often subject to persecution by Pretoria, and the victims of extrajudicial killings by South African vigilantes], the people of Iran, Muslims in China, and those of Ukraine, Cuba, Sudan, and so on. And well, aside from their own people of South Africa who boast the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, horrendous crime, poor healthcare, and a crippling power crisis.

South Africa is apparently indifferent to its own crimes against minorities at home — that is, the persecution and extrajudicial killings of Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa, of whom there are more than one million. It has had nothing to say about Iran, where girls refusing to wear the hijab have been beaten to death, and where political dissidents, Bahais, and Christians often face imprisonment or even execution. It has not once raised the case of the Muslim Uighurs, who in Xinjiang Province of China have seen restrictions put on their faith, with mosques destroyed, religious beards outlawed; Muslim names banned, and at least one million of the Uighurs are, at any one time, kept in “re-education” camps to persuade them to give up their Muslim faith. The brutal dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, and China have attracted any attention for their denial of human rights. Only Israel, a country so tiny it is hard to spot on a world map, is singled out for South Africa’s condemnation, for being guilty of “genocide.”

Finally, they [the officials in the S.A. government who brought this absurd charge] can prove to South Africans, ahead of the 2024 national elections, that they are able to follow through on something. Israel, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa, is guilty of genocide. He claims “they [the Israelis] are indiscriminately killing civilians in Gaza and they need to be urgently stopped.

The legal team that has been assembled by the ANC is a formidable one. Well versed, and well respected. Leaders in the field.

There are a few reasons, however, that make the case against Israel far from a “slam dunk.”

Hamas, in its charter, in its actions, and in its words vows to kill every Jew in the region (literally the definition of genocide).

The Hamas Charter of 1988 calls for the “obliteration” of the state of Israel and the “eradication” of the Jews — that is, a call for their mass killing. Isn’t this the textbook definition of “genocide”?

Hamas has affirmed its actions of October 7 and has publicly stated that it will do it “Again and again and again.”…

Some members of Hamas deny that the atrocities of October 7 ever took place. Others proudly own up to the “resistance” the Hamas combatants demonstrated on that day, without going into the damning details of the attacks. Aharon Barak will provide his fellow judges of the ICJ the horrifying details: It’s fine to behead babies, burn children alive, gang-rape, torture, and murder girls, slice breasts off women, gouge out eyes and cut off the genitalia of men — your friends and families in Gaza of course are proud (one Hamas killer phoned home from a kibbutz, proudly announcing “Mom, I killed ten Jews with my own hands”), but it’s still best that denials of such atrocities be made to the outside world.

At the ICJ, the Israelis can turn the tables, and insist that “the only genocide in the Middle East today is that resulting from what Hamas declared in its 1988 Charter to be central to its mission: the “obliteration” of Israel. And the only acts of genocide are those murders carried out by Hamas and other terrorist groups against men, women, and children, because they are Jews. The latest, and deadliest example of this genocidal impulse took place on October 7, where 1,200 innocent Israelis were beheaded, burned alive, mutilated, raped and gang-raped, tortured in fiendish ways, and shot to death, all by frenzied Palestinians, who also kidnaped 240 Israelis, for the express purpose of swapping them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. At least two dozen of those kidnapped have been killed while in captivity, and many of the kidnapped girls subject to repeated sexual assault.