The ICJ, which is based in the Hague in the Netherlands, is the UN's highest court. It settles disputes between states and gives advisory opinions on international legal issues. It does not have the power to bring prosecutions. However, its opinions carry weight with the UN and other international legal bodies.
NATO member Turkey also announced its official support for the charge. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan argued on Wednesday that by giving "unconditional support" to Israel, Western nations had lost all credibility to talk about "principles, virtue and morality." He added that all of this is paving the way for a huge geostrategic rupture. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has even likened Israel's attacks to Nazi Germany's Holocaust against the Jewish people. He also suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was just as genocidal as Germany's Adolf Hitler.
However, both Israel and its top supporter, the United States, are standing firm in claiming that there is no genocide being committed in the beleaguered enclave. President Joe Biden's White House has insisted that it sees no indication West Jerusalem's forces are committing atrocities to destroy Hamas.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller denounced the allegations at the press briefing in the video below, saying that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are not committing genocide against the Palestinians. "Genocide is of course a heinous atrocity, one of the most heinous atrocities that any individual can commit," Miller said. "Those are allegations that should not be made lightly, and as it pertains to the United States, we are not seeing any acts that constitute genocide."
Also, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed that the allegations against Israel were "meritless," adding that the ICJ case filed by South Africa was "counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever."
Since the war started on October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel and killed more than 1,100 people, including nearly 700 Israeli citizens and took hundreds of hostages back to Gaza, protestors and other ruling classes around the world have claimed that Israel is trying to wipe the Palestinians off the map. More than 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities. Moreover, the United Nations warned last month that more than 500,000 Gazans were starving amid the Israeli bombardment and 85 percent of the population had been displaced.
Spokesman: Israel will fight genocide claim at ICJ
Meanwhile, Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy said that his country will fight South Africa's claim that it is committing "genocidal" acts in Gaza at ISJ. Following its application to the ICJ, South Africa's presidency said that the country was obliged "to prevent genocide from occurring." The 84-page document states that the "acts and omissions by Israel" are "genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group."
Israel condemns South Africa’s decision to play advocate for the devil.
History will judge South Africa for its criminal complicity with the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and it will judge it without mercy. pic.twitter.com/EzCc3ETT2L
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) January 2, 2024
South African government lawyers are preparing for the case to be heard on 11 and 12 January, Clayson Monyela, a spokesperson for South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation, said on X. But Levy is confident Israel could "win the fight to dispel South Africa's absurd blood libel." He said addressing South African leaders: "History will judge you and it will judge you without mercy." A blood libel is a term used to describe antisemitic false allegations against Jewish communities of bloodletting, originating in Europe in the Middle Ages. (Related: South Africa accuses Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention.)
Moreover, Netanyahu angrily rejected South Africa's allegations when it filed the lawsuit, saying "No, South Africa, it is not we who have come to perpetrate genocide, it is Hamas. It would murder all of us if it could. In contrast, the IDF is acting as morally as possible."
According to BBC, Israel is already facing an investigation by the ICJ, initiated by the Palestinians, into its "prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory." Also, the court has sat in judgment on Israel once before back in 2004, when it found that Israel's barrier built in and around the occupied West Bank was against international law. Israel said the barrier was built to thwart suicide bombings from the West Bank; Palestinians considered it a mechanism to take land.
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