This week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held a hearing regarding South Africa’s formal request for interim measures against Israel following its military attack on Gaza. The South African legal team has argued that Israel is committing acts of genocide and should therefore be ordered to cease its military activities in the Gaza Strip.
The crime of genocide has two elements – intent and execution – both of which must be proven when charges are brought. In Israel’s case, the apparent devastation of Gaza constitutes a powerful argument that it is indeed committing genocide.
The massacre of more than 23,000 Palestinians, almost half of whom are children and youth, and thousands more missing; the forced displacement of nearly two million Palestinians who represent 90 percent of Gaza’s population; Israel’s imposition of a “total siege” that now threatens to kill hundreds of thousands of Palestinians through hunger and infectious disease in the months to come; the destruction of Gaza through massive indiscriminate bombing and the destruction of entire residential neighborhoods; targeting hospitals, doctors and other health professionals; the damage and destruction of cultural, educational and religious sites, including hundreds of schools, universities, mosques, churches and libraries – all of this constitutes the visible execution of genocide, and the team South African legal authorities made this clear during the hearing.
Intent is generally more difficult to prove when accusations of genocide are made; the petitioner must be able to prove “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”, in the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and repression of the crime of genocide. . But in the case of Israel, the intention was also exposed by ample evidence – as the South African legal team pointed out.
To make their case, they were able to rely on a comprehensive new database, compiled by Law for Palestine, which meticulously documents and collates 500 statements that embody the Israeli state’s intent to commit genocide and incitement to genocide since October 7, 2023. Statements from people with command authority – heads of state, war cabinet ministers and senior army officers – and other politicians, army officers , journalists and public figures reveal the widespread commitment in Israel to the genocidal destruction of Gaza.
Perpetrators of genocide rarely express their intentions directly and explicitly, so courts must infer such intent through an analysis of state actions or leaked memoranda. However, in the case of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, as the Law for Palestine database shows, individuals with command authority have made genocidal statements multiple times over the past three months.
They dehumanized Palestinians in their rhetoric and presented the population of Gaza, as a whole, as the enemy of Israel. Strengthened by the pride of colonial power and the knowledge that it killed, mutilated, destroyed, expelled, humiliated, imprisoned and dispossessed for more than seven decades of impunity, as well as the continued material and moral support of the United States- United, the Israelis are explicit. and are not ashamed of their genocidal intent because they imagined and waged a war against people they consider colonized “savages.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described the Palestinians as “human animals” in his proclamation of a “total siege” on October 9. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Gaza as “the city of evil” on October 7 and then, on December 24, he presented the Israeli attack as a fight against “monsters.” “This is not just a battle of Israel against these barbarians, it is a battle of civilization against barbarism,” he said.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog had declared a few weeks earlier, on December 5, that the Israeli attack on Gaza was “a war which aims, in reality, to save Western civilization… (from) an evil empire.”
Netanyahu and other senior Israeli ministers have left no doubt that saving “Western civilization” requires the total destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza by describing them as the biblical people of Amalek – a people seen as a whole as an enemy that must be destroyed – and like The Nazis.
This crude and dangerous weaponization of religion and the Holocaust indicates a genocidal mindset: perpetrators of genocide always see the group they attack as posing an existential threat to themselves, so that genocide, in their mind, is a legitimate and necessary defense. . This is how the Nazis understood their genocidal attack on the Jews during World War II, and this is how Israelis understand their genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza today.
The Law for Palestine database provides us with a comprehensive evidence base for tracing the language that motivates the Israeli genocide. Faced with this brazen genocidal language from those with commanding power in Israel, “the ICJ faces a difficult choice,” as international law expert Moshen al Attar recently said: “Declare in in favor of South Africa and indicate interim measures or damn international sanctions”. the law in oblivion. »
It remains to be seen whether the ICJ will fulfill its duty and rule in favor of the South African request. Regardless, Israel’s explicit talk of genocide and its unprecedented attack on Gaza should mark the end of its impunity in the international legal system and pave the way for a new stage in the fight to end violence, save the Palestinians in Gaza and put an end to Israeli violence. settler colonialism.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
