How can this be? Part of the answer lies, of course, in the double standard that the world routinely applies to the Jewish state. The government of South Africa, which brought the genocide case against Israel, exemplifies this contemptible hypocrisy.
The same court to which South Africa now brings its case ruled on March 16, 2022, that Russia had to stop its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. Russia ignored that judgment and continues to target Ukrainian cities for destruction. The United Nations estimates that Russia has killed at least 10,000 Ukrainian civilians — a number that would far higher if not for Ukraine’s robust air defenses. The United Nations has also found “that Russian authorities have committed … the war crimes of torture, rape and other sexual violence, and deportation of children to the Russian Federation.” Meanwhile, China brutally oppresses its Uyghur minority, leading the United Nations to charge that its actions might constitute “crimes against humanity”; the United States calls China’s repression “genocide.”
Yet South Africa refuses join in condemnations of either China or Russia at the United Nations. Indeed, last year, South Africa participated in joint naval exercises with China and Russia.
China and Russia are far from the only countries whose crimes South Africa ignores. In 2015, South Africa made no attempt to arrest then-Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir when he visited the country, even though the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for him on charges of genocide and war crimes. This month, South Africa hosted Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a notorious Sudanese warlord whose militia has been accused of genocide in Darfur. Last month, South Africa welcomed a Hamas delegation to mark the 10th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death. Suffice it to say, the African National Congress government is rapidly squandering the moral authority banked from the struggle against apartheid.
Unfortunately, right-wing Israeli politicians have made it easy, with their over-the-top statements, for South Africa to buttress its case. As Haaretz notes, “Israel is paying the price for its bigmouths.” South Africa points to statements from the likes of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (“You want hell, you’ll get hell”), Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu (who suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told Israeli soldiers “remember what Amalek did to you,” referring to a biblical enemy that God commanded the Jews to destroy.
Israel’s defense team argued in The Hague that such statements do not represent official government policy. Yet there is no denying that Israeli forces have inflicted large-scale death and destruction in Gaza: The Wall Street Journal estimated that by mid-December roughly half the buildings in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed, and the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry claims that more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed. (The casualty figures are unverified, and the ministry does not specify how many of the dead are Hamas fighters, but Israel reports that it has killed about 9,000 combatants.) This is a great tragedy for the people of Gaza, but primary blame must lie with Hamas, because it launched an unprovoked attack on Israel and uses civilians as human shields in violation of the laws of war.
This is not to suggest that all of Israel’s targeting decisions were justified or could withstand after-the-fact scrutiny. No doubt Israeli forces have been more inclined — perhaps too inclined — to tolerate collateral damage than in the past because Israel had just suffered the worst one-day loss of life in its history and Israeli commanders feel the imperative to employ firepower more freely to protect Israeli troops in ground combat.
But while it’s easy to second-guess the actions of Israeli forces, there is no evidence that they have engaged in a deliberate campaign to “destroy, in whole or in part,” the Palestinian people — which is what “genocide” means in international law. Awful as the civilian deaths in Gaza have been, they still constitute less than 1 percent of the territory’s population. If Israel, with all the firepower at its disposal, had been trying to commit mass murder, the death toll would have been higher by orders of magnitude.
Far from trying to deliberately slaughter Palestinian civilians, Israeli forces have made extensive efforts to notify them in advance of military operations and urge them to move out of the line of fire. Israeli forces ordered “humanitarian pauses” to facilitate relief efforts and created a “humanitarian corridor” for evacuations from northern to southern Gaza. Israel has also facilitated the entry of more than 8,000 trucks carrying more than 145,000 tons of food to Gaza since the start of the war; unfortunately, Hamas has seized some of the aid for itself.
You can debate whether Israel’s efforts to safeguard civilians have been adequate — I believe Israel would be well-advised on both humanitarian and strategic grounds to do even more — but these are clearly not the actions of a nation bent on exterminating the Palestinian people.
That’s why the charge of genocide has been rejected not only by the United States but also by Canada, Britain and Germany, among others. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the South African case “meritless,” while British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was “completely unjustified and wrong.” Indeed, Israeli lawyers put up such a strong defense on Friday that many Israeli commentators are optimistic that the court will not endorse South Africa’s demand for an immediate cease-fire, because South Africa failed to prove Israel’s intent to commit genocide.
But, however the case turns out, one thing is certain: It will do nothing to relieve the suffering of Palestinians. These incendiary accusations only serve, for many Israelis, to discredit more legitimate, more measured criticism of Israel’s actions. They play into Netanyahu’s “us vs. the world” narrative in which the right-wing prime minister is the only person who can protect the Jews. Many Israelis, no doubt, will wrongly conclude that self-restraint on the part of their forces is pointless if they are going to be accused of genocide no matter what they do.
Then there is the damage that the South African case will do to Jews around the world at a time when antisemitism is already surging. “I believe it will be used against Jews and Israel’s supporters around the globe,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, told me. “At a time of historically high antisemitism around the world, much of it in the context of the current war between Israel and Hamas, weaponized terms like ‘genocide,’ which criminalize and delegitimize Israel, often lead to situations where Jews are singled out, isolated, and even attacked.”
In short, South Africa’s moral grandstanding, however meritless, carries a heavy price.
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