From its seat in the ‘Peace Palace’, located in The Hague (Netherlands), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) vindicated South Africa’s legal accusation against Israel, overwhelmingly ruling that a plausible case was made that Tel Aviv is violating the Genocide Convention. Although those who are suffering and those in solidarity with them have made their reservations of the court’s decision clear, after it failed to order a ceasefire, the decision this Friday represents a major blow to Israel.
This case, presented by the South African government’s legal team against Israel, was in truth, not only a challenge to the Israeli government and its genocidal war in Gaza, but was also a historic challenge to the very image and standing of the ICJ. The International Court of Justice, otherwise known as The World Court, was created in 1945 and is one of six principal organs of the United Nations (UN). The court’s predecessor was the Permanent Court of International Justice, which functioned as part of the League of Nations. The League of Nations, which we all know today was replaced by the UN following the Second World War, is historically understood to have amounted to a failed transnational organization and has the record of having failed to prevent WW2 and the litany of war crimes which occurred during this period.
What is happening in the Gaza Strip today, with upwards of 32,000 deaths — when including those missing under the rubble — represents what UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, has called “the worst ever” humanitarian crisis. Making this genocide unique is that it is being committed in the social media age, where we have access to minute by minute updates, live feeds, and reports from prominent personalities experiencing it first hand. This genocide has become personal to people who do not necessarily have any direct connection to Gaza itself, but feel compelled to act over what they witness on a daily basis. Therefore, the ICJ was tasked with preventing the very thing that its predecessor failed to, a genocide.
No Call For A Ceasefire
The ICJ’s lopsided adoption of South Africa’s provisional measures — for which at least 15 out of the 17 judges ruled in favor of each measure adopted — fell short of calling for a ceasefire. This has evidently enraged many who hoped that the court would have taken the step to demand a complete cessation of hostilities, something that South Africa’s representatives have express their own displeasure with. However, South Africa has been vindicated by the decision of the court and is “not disappointed” over the rulings.
The strongest possible outcome from the ICJ’s provisional measures would have been a call for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Gaza, which Hamas had previously announced that it would have complied with in the event that Israel did the same. Despite the failure of the court to order this, which would have perhaps pleased those concerned with seeing this genocide end, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has already gone on the record as having stated that The Hague will not make his government stop the war.
In addition to this, if the ICJ did order a ceasefire, the next step would have been for the issue to be transferred over to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), where the US would have simply vetoed the resolution and delivered its usual ramblings about Hamas and Israel’s right to murder tens of thousands of children in “self defense.”
Now, what will happen is that the provisional measures ordered by the court that demand Israel abide by the Genocide convention, to allow sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza, and to stop all calls from public officials that incite genocide, will be what goes to the UNSC for a vote. Regardless, the US government, which will have a tougher time vetoing the measures called for by the court, is most likely going to protect Israel at all costs anyway.
Understanding that the ICJ ruling was never going to force Israel to stop its war in Gaza is crucial to interpreting what just happened. While the court has ruled in favor of South Africa and against Israel, effectively saying that a plausible case has been made for multiple accounts of violations of the genocide convention, it has simply fell short of demanding the only real step that would prevent genocide.
A Massive Blow For Israel?
Israel now stands plausibly accused of Genocide by the preeminent court on earth, as its defense failed to convince all but the Ugandan judge — out of the ICJ’s 15 elected judges — that South Africa’s case did not present plausible arguments as to why the Israelis had violated the Genocide convention. Although many were skeptical about the judges from Western nations — specifically the US judge, Joan E. Donoghue, who happens to be The World Court’s current President — it was shocking to see that they all ruled in favor of South Africa. ICJ President Donoghue formerly worked for the State Department, yet she decided to rule in favor of all the provisional measures presented without issuing any reservations.
The bad faith attempts to cover up this damning indictment of Israeli war crimes has been to argue that Israel has only been ordered to comply with segments of the Genocide Convention that it is already careful not to violate. If this was the actual ruling of the court, then they would have simply tossed the South African case out. Instead, the ruling was that South Africa had made a compelling case that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention in multiple ways and hence the provisional measures were ordered for this reason.
When this issue is transferred over to the UNSC, where the US government will likely use its veto power, it will then travel to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where the some 153 nations that are signatories to the Genocide Convention will vote on it. This is where we can have some cautious optimism, as the UNGA is likely to overwhelmingly vote in favor of enforcing the provisional measures demanded by the ICJ. In this event, it is possible that at least a fraction of these States, who are bound by the Genocide Convention to take action to prevent a genocide from taking place, will take any number of measures against Israel. This could result in economic harm to the Israeli regime and the withdrawal of ambassadors by a number of countries.
All of this being said, the reason I argue that this is a massive blow to Israel, is not in the realm of tangible physical repercussions in the short term. As a life-long cynic when it comes to the constrains of the United Nations and the international legal system, I personally expected very little in terms of the ICJ’s ruling possessing the power to end the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The World Court would not have stopped Israel, only the US has the power to do that and Washington is fully complicit in the war crimes being carried out in Gaza.
Therefore, I see the ICJ ruling in a very different way. Israel has predicated its entire existence on the idea that due to the horrors of the Holocaust, they required a State for the Jewish people. In a way we don’t really see expressed by any other nation, the Israelis are in constant demand of validation for the existence of a State that is exclusively run by Jews and where only the Jewish people have rights. In the West, the Israeli argument has historically held up, that due to the genocide carried out against Jews, during the 1940’s in Europe, it is legitimate for there to be a Jewish State.
The concept is “never again”, that the world could not allow another genocide to occur again and the existence of a Jewish ethno-State is to serve the purpose of preventing a repeat of the holocaust. Now, Israel is accused plausibly in the highest judicial body on the planet of committing the very crime it argues its existence serves to prevent. Israel is the perpetrator of a Genocide.
At this time, it may not have sunk in for everyone, but this charge will stick with the Israeli regime until it’s dying day. The Israeli regime is a genocidal regime, accused of committing the very same sin that it uses to justify its own existence. Not only has the entire planet watched on in horror for months at the war crimes committed so brazenly by the Zionist regime, not only do all the major human rights groups say Israel is an Apartheid regime, South Africa is now standing up and calling out Israel’s Apartheid regime for committing a genocide. Israel’s very existence is now delegitimized and it will never be able to lie its way out of what it has committed.
