Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel

By
John Minto
-
44
790

Two years ago New Zealand joined 22 other countries in supporting the Ukrainian case against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its invasion of Ukraine.

We sent a legal team to the Hague where the ICJ is based and our representatives spoke directly to the court on New Zealand’s behalf. We used international law to argue the Russian invasion was illegal and warranted sanction by the ICJ.

Successive New Zealand governments for as long as I can remember have said we believe in an “international rules-based order” of which the ICJ and the ICC are an important part. This makes sense because we are a small country without the economic or military clout to take unilateral action to protect our interests. Like other small countries we rely on international rules to provide a measure of protection when bigger countries, like Russia in this case, break the rules.

We have used such rules ourselves by making applications to the World Trade Organisation when our trade interests have been threatened. Without such rules the biggest bully will win every time.

Last week South Africa filed papers at the ICJ alleging Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past 12 weeks amount to genocide.

- Sponsor Promotion -

South Africa said it “is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants”.

It described its case saying “acts and omissions by Israel… are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.

Their court papers go on to claim that, “the conduct of Israel — through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention”

This case is important because Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and South Africa are all signatories of the Genocide Convention and are bound to abide by any decision made by the court.

The most important part of South Africa’s case is its application for an interim injunction to stop Israel’s indiscriminate killing immediately. If this interim injunction is successful it could put in place an immediate ceasefire to end the war and Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. It would allow unfettered humanitarian aid to enter Gaza where the need for food, water, fuel, medicine and vaccinations is desperate.

This is the outcome the majority of people in New Zealand, and across the world, want to see. New Zealand should back up the South African case which is most likely to get a first hearing in a week’s time.

Those who have been paying attention will not be surprised at claims of genocide.

Genocide always begins with words and there is a wealth of reporting on the dehumanising language being used by Israel’s political and military leaders to set the scene for what has followed.

For example Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible”, and two days after the attack Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant spelt out genocidal intentions saying: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”

Israelis more generally have taken up this talk across social media with calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed”. More tragic is a social media post showing Israeli children singing “we will annihilate everyone” in Gaza.

Israel’s Defence Minister’s statement matches the UN Convention closely to the point where Israeli scholar of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raz Segal, has described Israel’s rhetoric and actions as “a textbook case of genocide”.

It’s clear Israel’s political and military leaders have a case to answer before the International Court of Justice, just as Russia does for its invasion of Ukraine.

As well as backing South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice we should also call for a swift, well-resourced International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes committed in the October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli response. This investigation should include examining the crimes of genocide and apartheid.

Palestinians deserve our support as much as the people of Ukraine.

44 COMMENTS

  1. Israel is committing the crime of the century, genocide it definitely is. Aided and supported by your rules based order!

    • These activities took place in various countries and on different levels; it is difficult to classify them and almost impossible to find a common denominator for them. They include projects of British and French statesmen to establish a Jewish state; manifestos issued by obscure east European rabbis; the publication of romantic novels by non-Jewish writers; associations to promote settlement in Palestine, and to spread Jewish culture and national consciousness. The term Zionism appeared only in the 1890s,* but the cause, the concept of Zion, has been present throughout Jewish history. A survey of the origins of Zionism must take as its starting point the central place of Zion in the thoughts, the prayers, and the dreams of the Jews in their dispersion. The blessing ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ is part of the Jewish ritual and many generations of practising Jews have turned towards the east when saying the Shemone Essre , the central prayer in the Jewish liturgy.

  2. We joined the case against Russia because we are an ally of the United States and co. We won’t be joining the case against Israel because we are an ally of the United States and co. The Five Eyes nations share most, if not all, of their military intelligence with Israel. Israel and the United States share everything. And that is why there is zero chance of us supporting the case. It’s nothing to to with any sort of rules based international order. And to believe that the same bunch of people who are okaying the killing of thousands civilians in Gaza are the good guys in Ukraine is pretty hard to believe.

  4. Zionism, according to a recent encyclopaedia, is a worldwide political movement launched by Theodor Herzl in 1897. Equally it might be said that Socialism was founded in 1848 by Karl Marx. It is clearly difficult to do justice to the origins of a movement of any consequence in a one-sentence definition. The Jewish national revival which took place in the nineteenth century, culminating in political Zionism, was preceded by a great many activities and publications, by countless projects, declarations and meetings; thousands of Jews had in fact settled in Palestine before Herzl ever thought of a Jewish state.

  5. These activities took place in various countries and on different levels; it is difficult to classify them and almost impossible to find a common denominator for them. They include projects of British and French statesmen to establish a Jewish state; manifestos issued by obscure east European rabbis; the publication of romantic novels by non-Jewish writers; associations to promote settlement in Palestine, and to spread Jewish culture and national consciousness.

  6. “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”

    If this is not an act of genocide, I don’t know what is.

    Deliberately denying water and food to 2.1 million people to die by starvation and thirst -You would be prosecuted and possibly jailed in this country if you did this to “animals” sic. Palestinians are not “animals”. This is clearly a case of deliberate mass murder. And this is not even to mention the murderous bombing campaign resulting in the deaths of over 22 thousand men women and children and caused the destruction of health care and sanitation and shelter that has made more than half of the population of Gaza vulnerable to death by disease, as well as famine and thirst.
    To escape the Court’s ruling, lawyers for Israel may get up in court and argue that, while this may a case of mass murder, but it is not genocide. And they may get away with it.
    Anthony Blinken for the US State Department has said that South Africa’s case has no merit. The President of the ICJ is Judge Donoghue, who has been described as a “US State Department career apparatchik”, which is how she got the job.
    The US and Israel may think that they have got everything all sewn up.
    But the World Court’s refusal to issue an immediate ceasefire order will divide the world into two hostile opposing camps and remove the Post WWII system of the international laws and norms for settling differences between them.
    The breakdown of International Law, the division of the world into two opposing camps, will have unforeseen long term consequences for world peace and security, and how wars will be fought in the 21st Century.

    The World Court’s refusal to issue an immediate ceasefire order in defiance of a majority vote of the United Nations General Assembly, including New Zealand, calling for a ceasefire, will undermine the whole post WWII UN system.

    The World Court’s refusal to issue an immediate ceasefire order, will normalise starvation and thirst against civilian populations as a means of war.

    The World Court’s refusal to issue an immediate ceasefire order, will make the mass slaughter of civilian populations and the total destruction of civilian infrastructure and the means of life for millions of people an officially permissible form of warfare in the 21st Century for now on.

    • Everybody knows the trial is over, everybody knows that the good guys lost.

      Officially the judges of the ICJ are supposed to be impartial and independent, delivering their judgements solely on the evidence and the merits of the case, uninfluenced by partisan interests or political pressure.
      In practice the judges of the ICJ vote along political lines, in line with the political stance of their country of origin, and in line with their country’s international alliances and allies.

      So who are the judges, and how are they likely to vote on South Africa’s application to the World Court for an interim order for a ceasefire in Gaza?

      I have compiled a list of the current Judges on the bench of the World Court, and how, in my opinion they are likely to vote. I have based my assessment on two things – on the fact that ICJ judges almost always vote in line with their countries official (and unofficial) position on international matters, and on how their country of origin voted on the motion for a humanitarian ceasefire in the UN General Assembly. I have placed the countries that abstained in voting for a ceasefire in the against column, for the reason that an abstention on voting for a humanitarian ceasefire dishonestly hid that country’s position.

      Based on these two factors; The following list is my prediction of how the ICJ judges are likely to vote on South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice, to issue an interim measure ordering Israel to halt all combat operations in Gaza to prevent a genocide.

      Judge Joan E. Donoghue
      President
      United States of America
      Likely vote: Against

      Vice-President Kirill Gevorgian
      Russian Federation
      Vice-President
      Likely vote: For

      Judge Peter Tomka
      Slovakia
      Likely vote: Against

      Judge Ronny Abraham
      France
      Likely vote: For

      Judge Mohamed Bennnouna
      Morocco
      Likely vote: For

      Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf
      Somalia
      Likely vote: For

      Judge Xue Hanqin
      China
      Likely vote: For

      Judge Julia Sebutinde
      Uganda
      Likely vote: For

      Judge Dalveer Bhandari
      India
      Likely vote: Against

      Judge Patrick Lipton Robinson
      Jamaica
      Likely vote: Against

      Judge Nawaf Salam
      Lebanon
      Likely vote: For

      Judge Iwasawa Yuji
      Japan
      Likely vote: Against

      Judge Georg Nolte
      Germany
      Likely vote: Against

      Judge Hilary Charlesworth
      Australia
      Likely vote: Against

      Judge Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant
      Brazil
      Likely vote: For

      Under ICJ rules, a country that is party to a case at the World Court, and does not have a judge of its nationality on the bench can nominate an ad hoc judge, which is the case for both Israel and South Africa.

      The Judge ad hoc for Israel – Judge Aharon Barak: Against

      The Judge ad hoc for South Africa – Judge Dikgang Moseneke: For

      As South Africa’s judge and Israel’s judge will each cancel out each other’s vote, the decision will be decided by the original 15 judges.

      With 7 Judges voting ‘Against’ the resolution and 8 judges voting For’ the resolution. South Africa’s application for an immediate ceasefire will be ordered by the court.

      The US and Israel know they only need to sway one, possibly two country’s judges to vote the way they want, to prevent the court making an order for a ceasefire

      It has been revealed that Israel has been mounting an international campaign through its embassies to pressure countries to condemn South Africa’s case at the World Court. The US will be doing the same thing but less openly.

      Which countries will change their voting record?

      The French judge wil be one to look for.

      France is a member of NATO and the Western Alliance. France has colonial interests in the Pacific that they retain with the support of the Western Alliance and the US. France will not want to lose that support.

      The world is being divided into two opposing camps. A World Court judgement that favours Israel will harden the differences, and drive more and more countries into one camp, or the other. 

      The World Court will justify their refusal to deliver an interim ruling against Israel by telling the Palestinians and South Africans that you will be able to have your day in court at the full hearing. The full hearing, which could be stalled for years, will never happen. Rising imperialist tensions and global division will see the whole world engulfed in war by then.

      Future historians will look back and identify this moment as when it began.

      Everybody Knows

      Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
      Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
      Everybody knows the war is over
      Everybody knows the good guys lost
      Everybody knows the fight was fixed
      The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
      That’s how it goes
      Everybody knows

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu8u9ZbCJgQ

      • On reflection, I realise that the US and Israel don’t need to get one or two judges to change their vote from for to against. They just need to get one judge to abstain. Which will lead to a tied vote.
        In the case of a tied vote, the president of the court gets another ‘deciding’ vote.
        Judge Joan E. Donoghue may get to become the only person in history to ever vote for a genocide ‘twice’.

        The deliberations of the judges is expected to take two weeks. To be fly on the wall of those meetings. Sparks will fly. I expect that the judge ad hoc for Israel will be just as dismissive and abusive toward the South African judge ad hoc as the lawyers for Israel were in court. I predict that the ICJ judges’ deliberations will take three weeks not two.

      • Are you talking about Israels Amalek wishes Anne Extremist?.

        There are no (Palestinian) innocents ,,, according to this bunch of immoral IDF murderers/soldiers ,,, WATCH: Israeli Soldiers Chant About Wiping Out Palestinians https://youtu.be/-wY6GKu6jBc

        • Oh dear, are you trying to turn your little tease into a fabrication now reason? Israel has no such Amalek wishes as both you and South Africa well know. Why are Palestinian supporters pretending Deuteronomy 25:17-19 (“Remember what Amalek has done to you”) is 1 Samuel 15:3? There can be no reason, reason other than pure antisemitism. The phrase also appears in a permanent exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as well as at a memorial in the Hague. Are you seriously suggesting Israel and The Netherlands are inciting genocide of the German people?

          • Whats that Anne ???? … It sounds like you are making excuses and denying the blatant shameless statements from your favorite terrorist backing war crime committing rouge apartheid state … https://twitter.com/docjazzmusic/status/1723568797427142861

            And the above video of Israelis stating what Anne Extremist is denying is just a small sample/slice of what Israel officials are stating… honestly stating too.

            Unlike the dishonest war/attroicity propaganda that gaby and Anne push to defend the indefensible ,,,

            ie from almost 4 weeks ago ,,, “Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said.” …. Due to the “total” blockade imposed by Israel on the enclave, and a dearth of anaesthetic, electricity and running water, health workers are forced to perform these surgeries in unhygienic conditions without painkillers”.,,, “”It’s not as if there’s… a natural disaster preventing anaesthesia [from entering] Gaza,” Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) founder Steve Sosebee said …” https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israel-palestine-over-1000-children-have-limbs-amputated-unicef

            “The people of Gaza, who have already suffered enough, now face death from (intentionally caused)starvation and diseases (inflicted by Israel) that could be easily treated with a functioning health system ( which Israel is intentionally destroying) . This must stop. Food and other aid must flow in far greater amounts. WHO reiterates its call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”

            “Israel has denied access to more than 75 percent of planned humanitarian aid and supply missions into Gaza, according to the United Nations.” https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-insists-there-no-hunger-humanitarian-crisis-gaza

            Be in no doubt ,,,Anne IS a Extremist ,,, I hope she stays in Germany.

            Israel Uber Alles is something the Germane state relates to….

Comments are closed.