The application filed by South Africa with the ICJ accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, supported by detailed evidence and historical context. The document highlights implications for the US and President Biden’s complicity, and points to the limited power of international courts.
By John J. Mearsheimer
I am writing to flag a truly important document that should be widely circulated and read carefully by anyone interested in the ongoing Gaza War.
Specifically, I am referring to the 84-page “application” that South Africa filed with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 29 December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.1 It maintains that Israel’s actions since the war began on 7 October 2023 “are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic … group in the Gaza Strip.” (1) That charge fits clearly under the definition of genocide in the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.2
The application is a superb description of what Israel is doing in Gaza. It is comprehensive, well-written, well-argued, and thoroughly documented. The application has three main components.
First, it describes in detail the horrors that the IDF has inflicted on the Palestinians since 7 October 2023 and explains why much more death and destruction is in store for them.
Second, the application provides a substantial body of evidence showing that Israeli leaders have genocidal intent toward the Palestinians. (59-69) Indeed, the comments of Israeli leaders – all scrupulously documented – are shocking. One is reminded of how the Nazis talked about dealing with Jews when reading how Israelis in “positions of the highest responsibility” talk about dealing with the Palestinians. (59) In essence, the document argues that Israel’s actions in Gaza, combined with its leaders’ statements of intent, make it clear that Israeli policy is “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.” (39)
Third, the document goes to considerable lengths to put the Gaza war in a broader historical context, making it clear that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza like caged animals for many years. It quotes from numerous UN reports detailing Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinians. In short, the application makes clear that what the Israelis have done in Gaza since 7 October is a more extreme version of what they were doing well before 7 October.
There is no question that many of the facts described in the South African document have previously been reported in the media. What makes the application so important, however, is that it brings all those facts together in one place and provides an overarching and thoroughly supported description of the Israeli genocide. In other words, it provides the big picture while not neglecting the details.
Unsurprisingly, the Israeli government has labelled the charges a “blood libel” that “has no factual and judicial basis.” Moreover, Israel claims that “South Africa is collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.”3 A close reading of the document, however, makes it clear that there is no basis for these assertions. In fact, it is hard to see how Israel will be able to defend itself in a rational-legal way when the proceedings begin. After all, brute facts are hard to dispute.
Let me offer a few additional observations regarding the South African charges.
First, the document emphasizes that genocide Is distinct from other war crimes and crimes against humanity, although “there is often a close connection between all such acts.” (1) For example, targeting a civilian population to help win a war – as occurred when Britain and the United States bombed German and Japanese cities in World War II – is a war crime, but not genocide. Britain and the United States were not trying to destroy “a substantial part” of, or all the people in those targeted states. Ethnic cleansing underpinned by selective violence is also a war crime, although it is also not genocide, an action that Omer Bartov, the Israeli-born Holocaust expert, calls “the crime of all crimes.”4
For the record, I believed Israel was guilty of serious war crimes–but not genocide—during the first two months of the war, even though there was growing evidence of what Bartov has called “genocidal intent” on the part of Israeli leaders.5 But it became clear to me after the 24-30 November 2023 truce ended and Israel went back on the offensive, that Israeli leaders were in fact seeking to physically destroy a substantial portion of Gaza’s Palestinian population.
Second, even though the South African application focuses on Israel, it has huge implications for the United States, especially President Biden and his principal lieutenants. Why? Because there is little doubt that the Biden administration is complicitous in Israel’s genocide, which is also a punishable act according to the Genocide Convention. Despite his admission that Israel is engaged in “indiscriminate bombing,” President Biden has also stated that “we’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel. Not a single thing.”6 He has been true to his word, going so far as to bypass Congress twice to quickly get additional armaments to Israel. Leaving aside the legal implications of his behavior, Biden’s name – and America’s name – will be forever associated with what is likely to become one of the textbook cases of attempted genocide.
Third, I never imagined I would see the day when Israel, a country filled with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, would face a serious charge of genocide. Regardless of how this case plays out in the ICJ – and here I am fully aware of the maneuvers that the United States and Israel will employ to avoid a fair trial – in the future Israel will be widely regarded as principally responsible for one of the canonical cases of genocide.
Fourth, the South African document emphasizes that there is no reason to think this genocide is going to end soon, unless the ICJ successfully intervenes. It twice quotes the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 25 December 2023 to drive that point home: “We are not stopping, we are continuing to fight, and we are deepening the fighting in the coming days, and this will be a long battle and it is not close to being over.” (8, 82) Let us hope South Africa and the IJC bring a halt to the fighting, but in the final analysis the power of international courts to coerce countries like Israel and the United States is extremely limited.
1
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf2
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html5
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza6
Comments
12 responses to “Genocide in Gaza”
Glad to hear that someone is standing up against the whacko Israeli supremacy genocide people. After 70 years of Israeli white supremacy genocide against Semitic people in the Middle East this event is well overdo. Hopefully somebody will stand up against Washington DC and its genocide against the world also. Let’s all hope that Hezbollah and others level Tel Aviv and chase the filth that occupies Palestine back to where they came from.
c
Every single Arab country should have their name on this to add to South Africa’s complaint. If they don’t they have truly lost their last chance to redeem themselves.
Entirely agree.
ARAB …. ITS A FOUR (4) LETTER WORD ; … ALL THE BAD WORDS & VULGARITY ETC; ARE 4 LETTERED.
4 letter word? Yea well so is U-ASS. The Arabs are sell outs and cowards but the USA and israel are giant maniac cold blooded murderers that is the biggest threat to our entire planet and all the people we share it with.
At the very least, I hope that an ICJ determination that Israel is committing genocide will create fissures inside the United States and in the EU that will continue to widen as the Israeli-US war rages on and creates much more serious debate and dissent among the population and the media, rising up into the government and decision makers…about what the Western world is fully supporting.
Those first two important links in the bibliography are not working for me.
Coinicidence?
Anyone else having same issue?
Yes have the same issue…with more than two of the links;(
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/GazaHolocaust-2-600×274.jpg
John Mearsheimer is a USA centrist who does believes in USA hegemony, but wants to go about it in a realistic way. His viewpoint differs from neocons such as Bolton, L.Graham, and Nuland, in that he believes that there are limitations to USA military power, and that Israel is pushing the USA in directions that do not align with the interests of the USA. He has expressed the view that the Israel lobby in the USA is way too powerful. It is a sign of the times that John Mearsheimer has penned this piece that highlights Israeli war crimes, at a time when the entire USA media is trying to cover it up.
The United States is now dominated and controlled by the sadistic and hegemonic dual citizen Zionists.
Not only are these sick arrogant freaks murdering at least 2,000 innocent Palestinians per week, but they have the audacity to suppress Americans’ free-speech rights by browbeating and effectively firing Ivy university presidents; these people are otherwise powerful and untouchable intellectual professionals, but in the face of Zio power they do not stand a chance! All because they had the integrity to decline to denounce the courageous and valiant campus activists as hateful anti-Semitic barbarians for protesting the racist and repugnant artificial state of Israel.
The hysterical pro-Israel zealots also have taken to publicizing the names and addresses of college-aged pro-Palestinian advocates to smear them from future employment in prestigious law firms and Wall Street brokerage houses.
It is evident that the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah are the most noble and brave groups in the world today in their commitments to fighting back against Israel’s war against Palestinian infants and toddlers.
The death toll is currently at 26,000 Palestinians and counting. A genocide in real-time right in front of our own eyes. To refuse to criticize this ongoing revolting premeditated massacre – paid for completely by the U.S. taxpayer – is to relinquish one’s humanity.