Will the court also be taking up the case of a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations launching an attack on civilians, which included rape and taking children and babies as hostages?
A legal battle is set to open at the top UN court over an allegation of Israeli genocide in Gaza
A legal battle over whether Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza amounts to genocide opens Thursday at the United Nations’ top court with preliminary hearings into South Africa’s call for judges to order an immediate suspension of Israel’s military actions. Israel stringently denies the genocide allegation.
The case, that is likely to take years to resolve, strikes at the heart of Israel’s national identity as a Jewish state created in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide in the Holocaust. It also involves South Africa’s identity: Its ruling African National Congress party has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to “homelands” before ending in 1994.
Israel normally considers U.N. and international tribunals unfair and biased. But it is sending a strong legal team to the International Court of Justice to defend its military operation launched in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.
“I think they have come because they want to be exonerated and think they can successfully resist the accusation of genocide,” said Juliette McIntyre, an expert on international law at the University of South Australia.
South Africa post-apartheid has long been a Jew hating nation. It’s also a shithole that’s falling apart. What’s in it for them?
In a statement after the case was filed, the Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry urged the court to “immediately take action to protect the Palestinian people and call on Israel, the occupying power, to halt its onslaught against the Palestinian people, in order to ensure an objective legal resolution.”
It’s simple, as we’ve known all along: release the hostages and all Hamas members surrender. Don’t attack Israel and its citizens. Don’t be terrorists. It’s not for nothing that no Arab nation is willing to take Palestinians in, and Egypt has a wall between Gaza and itself.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed the case as “ meritless ” during a visit to Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
“It is particularly galling, given that those who are attacking Israel — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, as well as their supporter Iran — continue to call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews,” he said.
Let’s not forget that none of those terrorists groups, including Hamas, are a part of the Geneva Convention, and, if they didn’t want to be on the losing side of a war, they shouldn’t have started it.
Read: UN High Court To Consider If Israel Is Engaged In Genocide »