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!

Really interesting article about laws on genocide here

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/11/icj-case-against-israel-could-finally-empower-the-genocide-convention

The US angle is fascinating. I hadn't clocked that they could be concerned about being prosecuted for their own actions towards native Americans

Thank you I'll try there.

I can't even get on to the UNs website

What people want to be true and what is the reality are two separate things. Arabs today don't speak classical Arabic. They speak languages that derive from classical Arabic in the same way that French and Italian derive from Latin. Iraqis speak one language, Egyptians speak another.

You shouldn't think though that Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians speak different languages. They all speak a language called Levantine Arabic. There are different dialects just as in English there are different dialects.

I'm not saying that all Arabs are the same, I'm saying that when it comes to ethnicity there are objective criteria that allow us to see if two populations are ethnically distinct. Language is an important part of ethnicity. Culture is another.

The Shias of southern Lebanon have a different culture from the Sunnis. The Druze even more so. A Sunni Moslem in Lebanon has a very similar culture to a Sunni Moslem in Syria, Jordan or Palestine.

I'm not saying all this because it has any particular relevance to the genocide discussion. There have been several posts however where people have expressed indignation deriving from their lack of understanding of the facts. Not all Palestinians think the same way, and if some of them feel offended by the truth then that doesn't mean we can't point out the facts of the situation.

The British and the French divided large parts of the former Turkish empire between them. They drew lines on the map. The French got Syria/Lebanon which they chose to subdivide. The British got Palestine, which included Jordan (termed 'Transjordan' at the time). The British decided to divide Palestine into Palestine and Jordan. That didn't mean that two villages on either side of the river Jordan were now two different ethnicities.

Millions of Palestinians have fled to Jordan and are now fully naturalised. Jordan ruled the West Bank for decades. The Palestinians of the West Bank didn't see the Jordanians as foreigners.

South Africa's opening statement

''South Africa has recognised the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people through Israel’s colonisation since 1948, which has systematically and forcibly dispossessed, displaced and fragmented the Palestinian people, deliberately denying them the internationally recognised inalienable right to self determination and their internationally recognised rights of return as refugees to their towns and villages in what is now the state of Israel.

We are also particularly mindful of Israel’s institutionalised regime of discriminatory laws, policies and practices designed and maintained to establish domination, subjecting the Palestinian people to apartheid on both sides of the Green Line.
Decade’s long impunity for widespread and systematic human rights violations has emboldened Israel in its recurrence and intensification of humanitarian crimes in Palestine.

At the outset, South Africa acknowledges that the genocidal acts and omissions by the state of Israel inevitably form part of a continuum of illegal acts perpetrated against the Palestinian people since 1948.

The application places Israel’s genocidal acts and omissions within the broader context of Israel’s 25-year apartheid, 56-year occupation and 16-year siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.''

Sorry about the change of type-face half way thro'

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Right now the ICJ will be looking at preliminary measures such as ordering Israel to cease military action, in a general or specified way. For that they need only rule that there is risk of genocide. The preliminary ruling comes within a few months. The final ruling comes years and years later. The Bosnia genocide case was brought in 1993 and did not get final ruling until 2007. The countries have also ignored the ICJ- Putin did so in 2022- he was instructed by the ICJ to stop the war in Ukraine due to risk of genocide but has not done so. When ICJ ruled on the Genocide and Torture of the Rohingya in Myanmar in 2020, it also ruled to cease the killing, harm (torture) and displacement but while the pace of massacring civilians slowed down a bit, but the overall trend continued.

The ICJ is a good step, but I fear any preliminary ruling will be ignored by Israel as other countries have similarly ignored it. The final ruling always comes too late.

Watching on SABC's YouTube channel, which is working well

Respectfully, I'm not sure you know what you are talking about "sue".
Maybe save this minimisation for after the hearing.

@AdamRyan

Why are you not sure, Adam? What have I said that is not true. in your opinion?

The fact they speak the same Arabic language doesn’t indicate ethnicity because the whole area was under an Islamic empire that had different dynasties (different client kingdoms within the empire would take over as the empire level rulers) from the Sassinids in 250 AD through to the Ottomans who fell in 1922. The Ottomans were the only client kingdom with a different commoner spoken language to take over as they were Turkish. However, because the official court language of the empire had been Arabic for a thousand years by the time they took over, they continued to use it as the official court language of the Ottoman Empire.

Much like how the international language in Europe was Latin for over a thousand years after the Roman Empire fell in the west. Or how English or French or Spanish are spoken as the official language in their former colonies/conquests from their empires. We can’t ignore the fact that there was also an Islamic, Arabic empire that endured for over 1700yrs- approximately 4x longer than the British empire did.

Here's hoping that it will also be demanded that Hamas return the hostages, face the International Court for the events of October 7 and also for using civilians as human sheilds.

In its statements in the court in The Hague, South Africa is offering evidence of what it says is the mass killing of Palestinians within the Gaza Strip by Israel, which it says constitutes genocide.

It says Palestinians have been killed by the relentless bombing of Israel wherever they sought shelter:
In schools, in hospitals, in mosques, in churches, and as they tried to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, killed in the places to which they have fled, and even killed while they attempted to flee along Israeli declared safe routes.

The level of killing is so extensive that those whose bodies are found are buried in mass graves, often unidentified.

In the first three weeks alone, following 7 October, Israel deployed 6,000 bombs per week. At least 200 times it has deployed 2000lb bombs in southern areas of Palestine designated as safe. These bombs have also decimated the north, including refugee camps. 2000lb bombs are some of the biggest and most destructive bombs available.

Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians. With the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take.

More than 1,800 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members and hundreds of multigenerational families have been wiped out with no remaining survivors. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins, often all killed together.

This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies.

Al Aqsa hospital is under threat right now as the case is on going

@MercanDede I suppose Israel even attending and sending representation is a good thing though and represents a willing to listen.
I am not downplaying things rather trying to see the positives in a sea of negatives.

Presenting more of South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ in The Hague, Adila Hassim, advocate of the high court of South Africa, has outlined what she said were Israeli acts that were in violation of articles 2b and 2c of the genocide convention. She said:
''Israel’s attacks have left close to 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. This in circumstances where the healthcare system has all that collapsed.

Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including children, are arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress and loaded on to trucks taken to unknown locations. The suffering of the Palestinian people, physical and mental is undeniable.

Israel has deliberately imposed conditions on Gaza that cannot sustain life and are calculated to bring about its physical destruction … by displacement. Israel has forced – forced – the displacement of about 85% of Palestinians in Gaza. There is nowhere safe for them to flee to.

Israel’s first evacuation order on 13 October required the evacuation of over one
million people including children, the elderly, the wounded, and infirm.

The order itself was genocidal. It required immediate movement, taking only what could be carried while no humanitarian assistance was permitted. And fuel, water and food and other necessities of life had deliberately been cut off. It was clearly calculated to bring about the destruction of the population.''

I could barely read the article last night on the BBC about what British medics working there have been dealing with.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67929397

Not repeating it as so upsetting, but those poor children and doctors

@Efacsen This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies.

To add to this, not even unborn fetuses

“Millions of Palestinians have fled to Jordan and are now fully naturalised. Jordan ruled the West Bank for decades. The Palestinians of the West Bank didn't see the Jordanians as foreigners.”

Sue, Jordan had the West Bank following the Arab-Israeli war until 1967 largely because a delegation of Palestinians went to Jericho in 1948 and asked to be part of Jordan this was seven months after the British left and the entire region was in chaos. Bands of Jewish insurgents were roaming around destroying villages, a lot fewer and much worse armed bands of Arab defenders were attempting to fight off the insurgents and strike back using guerilla warfare tactics.

No one really agreed with these Palestinians, including the Jordanians because they do not view themselves to be the same people so the West Bank stayed a separate stateless territory. Jordan held on to West Bank because they thought it was the only way to protect the Palestinians from Israel’s ethnic cleansing as the Nakba is what caused the Arab league to invade in the first place. In 1967 Israel took it in the six day war and if you look at the maps, have been nibbling away at it, annexing it bit by bit. This was one reason why Oslo failed, Oslo required all illegal settlements to be removed but Nethanyu and other Israeli leaders did not want to surrender any of the land they had taken by force, felt they had a God given right to it anyway and did not want Palestine to ever be a full fledged nation state.

I'll reply after the hearing, meanwhile a bit of reading about Arab history (even just on wikipedia) would probably be informative for you

South Africa accuses Israel of 'a calculated pattern of conduct indicating a genocidal intent

'Closing her part of the case, Adila Hassim, advocate of the high court of South Africa, has said in The Hague:
''All of these acts individually and collectively form a calculated pattern of conduct by Israel indicating a genocidal intent. This intent is evident from Israel’s conduct in:

Targeting Palestinians living in Gaza using weaponry that causes large scale, homicidal destruction, as well as targeted sniping of civilians.

Designating safe zones for Palestinians to seek refuge and then bombing these.

Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of basic needs – food, water, health care, fuel, sanitation, and communications.

Destroying social infrastructure, homes, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, and killing, seriously injuring, and leaving large numbers of children orphaned.

Genocides are never declared in advance but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly, a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts''

.Israel has described South Africa’s case as “baseless” and a “blood libel”, and will have three hours at the court tomorrow to oppose it.

Israel has to send someone, it’s part of keeping membership in the UN and being recognised as a nation state with sovereignty. So they can’t refuse to show up in court. Also, it’s to their advantage to send an Israeli judge for the ICJ panel of judges because that way they have influence and a vote on the rulings.

I can't access UN TV. I'm guessing there are a lot of people trying to watch the proceedings.

If anyone else is struggling....I googled "international court of justice live feed" and got a few YouTube options which seem to be working.

If you go to SABC's YouTube channel it is working fine

The ICJ doesn’t work that way. The ICJ has no jurisdiction over Hamas. The ICJ is to resolve contentious issues between UN states or to call out other states if they are breaking charters like the genocide or torture charters. Hamas is not a nation state, nor a member of the UN.

The ICJ can condemn the actions of Hamas and likely will, but they can’t issue any rulings or legally enforceable demands.

They just showed the footage of loads of soldiers singing and dancing which includes the words 'there are no uninvolved civilians'