South Africa has invoked the Genocide Convention against Israel over Gaza

[HeidiInTheBigCity]

The entire filing is 84 pages long and, frankly, took me several hours to read - it's well worth the effort, though, in that it is rather (painfully at times) clinical and devastating in equal measure: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf

Go, South Africa!

It might not male that much of a difference in the short term - but: to see the former victims of Apartheid take the lead on the world stage, and offer support (the way they - after multiple decades of campaigning and pressure ... it's not as though world leaders hated Apartheid South Africa "by default") is just ... a little spark of light within the darkness!

Russia are at war with the Ukraine and the aggressor nation.
Was Bibi close to Russia after they invaded?

An Irish lawyer will be representing SA next week

https://twitter.com/BronzyGuevara/status/1743084273727418567

No, you missed the point. Purposely or unwittingly.

SA’s gesture is almost certainly motivated by either (its closely connected friend) Russia’s pressure to divert attention from and muddy the arguments about Putin’s ICC arrest warrants, or (its closely connected friend) Iran’s antisemitic hatred of Israel.

Netanyahu is not a good person. But any cosying up to Russia he engaged in four years ago is completely irrelevant to SA’s actions in respect of the ICJ and to this thread.

Replies to this tweet :

So BRICS member

And Useless who should be running our own country first

It doesn't matter what SAs motivation is. The court is impartial and will judge the facts. If SA have acted for a reason other than the humanitarian crisis the court will see that.
Equally if Israel are committing war crimes the court will see that too.

So it seems the argument that Israel hasn’t committed genocide hinges on the belief that South Africa is a morally worse country than Israel. Let’s hope the lawyers can argue a better case that this whatabouttery. ‘Oh no Israel could not possibly have committed genocide because a rape happens in South Africa every 29 seconds, I rest my case your honour’ 😆

Nobody really cares what the ICJ says. It has no power and operates like the Eurovision Song Contest’s nation scoring.

There isn’t even any obvious dispute between the two countries for the court to adjudicate on. It’s pure posturing, motivated by third parties.

@headstone it's not that, it's more that they've acted out of loyalty to parties they aligned to globally rather than a genuine sense of outrage.
As I said previously in the thread, the ruling ANC party has very cordial relations with Hamas.

Frankly their motivation or relevant morality is irrelevant to the question is whether Israel had committed genocide. The judges will not adjudicate on SA"s reasons for referral, purely on the question if it they have raised.

It's no different from any other crime. If someone who hates you reports you for a crime on a third party, their motivation has no bearing in whether or not a court will find you guilty.

It’s not a criminal court.

The principle is still the same though. It's utterly irrelevant for the judges. If there is nothing in the allegations then it will be dismissed. If there it's sufficient evidence it will not. Their motivation is irrelevant and they do not need to show themselves to be in any way morally superior.

That’s wrong. Civil disputes at a domestic or international level require genuine cause and standing. The E&W civil courts regularly throw out contrived cases on those bases.

Whether the ICJ does so I don’t know, but I suspect not, or at least not regularly, because it has political imperatives to meet. Which is part of the reason for it being regarded as a clown forum of law.

..... And Putin made them do it! I swear your honour. We had to starve all those people, because Hamas....

Sarcastic, but Dershowitz did actually try and defend himself against the allegations connecting him to Epstein, by blaming feminists and Hamas.

Its much more likely that they are motivated by their history as an apartheid state but either way it's a poor argument, the US and Europe ARE NOT outraged by a man made famine/draught because of who they ally with so we're hardly in a position in to criticise.

Its much more likely that they are motivated by their history as an apartheid state

It's election showboating.
These are not people of integrity. They're perfectly happy to cosy up to Omar al-Bashir for instance:
https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/icc-ruling-sudanese-president-s-south-africa-visit

But as you say, for those who wish to see Israel prosecuted, the motivation is neither here nor there, as infuriating as the sheer hypocrisy may be.

It's ICJ, not a criminal court so Israel is not being prosecuted.

It's a clown court with no punishment for the entity.

Sure, Israel will get condemnation but this will be motivated by anti semitism. They are used to that and will fight on as the world has proved again that Jewish people need somewhere safe to live.

Personally I don't buy into the "evil judges, enemies of the state". I think objective assessment is useful and necessary, and we need courts to operate and be respected to function as a population.

Dismissing the ICJ as a "clown court" looks to be a method for ignoring a ruling you don't like in future.

It’s not really a court at all, on one view at least. The countries’ judges just toe their country’s line. It’s not objective. The job of the ICJ is to give some legal veneer to matters of civil dispute between countries that are, rightly, debated openly politically in the UN proper.

The ICJ even fails at being the veneer. It’s a laughing stock.

This is not like the International Criminal Court which operates independently of the U.N. and has, in effect, distributed powers through signatories’ arrest and detention procedures, or an economically empowered court like the ECJ.

Yesterday, the UN/WHO made a delivery of medical supplies to southern gaza

The supplies included 'clean delivery kits' for 66 births - as there are 150 births/day this obviously isn't going to stretch far even if they were being supplied every day

Some pregnant women are giving birth in destroyed properties, in tents on the street etc without sufficient nutrition to support pregnancy/lactation or any healthcare provision

It's not just killing people which constitutes genocidal actions - it's also about impeding the birth of new members of the people at risk of genocide as described in SAs submission

Israel blaming the 'useless' UN for not getting enough aid into gaza is unlikely to wash IMO

@Efacsen I always think statements like that are easily provable one way or another in court.

Agree but won't be in Israels favour having seen the sort of claims they are making wrt how much effort they've put into increasing the supply of aid

We'll see of course

But neither of us know that for certain do we? We each carry our own bias. It will be interesting to see what evidence is given either way as it's pretty irrefutable.

@stomachameleon have you read the report South Africa has presented to the ICJ?
Its alot that we already know but having it all documented together is still shocking

Page 59 till about 67 has all the documented genocidal rhetoric from within Israel

There's a link to the document in the OP

@stomachameleon it will be interesting to see how the UN is expected to deliver aid without sufficient diesel for their vehicles and presumably fly over the roads that have been totally destroyed

I'll also be interested to hear why the Kerem Shalom gate was kept closed despite many pleas [particularly during the weeks ceasefire] until the the bombardment and destruction had moved to southern gaza

As I say we'll see