Israel spent three hours on Friday denying allegations it is committing genocide in Gaza, arguing before the International Court of Justice in The Hague that rising death tolls are a consequence of war and that halting military operations would leave civilians at risk for additional violence.
Friday’s comments were in response to South Africa asking the United Nations’s top court to order a halt to Israeli military operations in the area. While a final decision could take years, South Africa asked the ICJ to issue a preliminary order for Israel to stop the fighting immediately.
South Africa, a strong supporter of Palestinians, filed a petition under the 1948 Genocide Convention. It spent Thursday laying out its case, claiming Israel’s air and ground military operations have killed nearly 24,000 people, a majority of them women and children, since the war broke out in October. Most of the 2.2 million residents in the area have also been displaced, creating a humanitarian crisis, according to international organizations.
South Africa alleged that Israel not only killed Palestinian civilians but that it purposely inflicted physical and mental harm, and created barbaric conditions for the residents of Gaza “to bring about their physical destruction.”
Israel rebutted on Friday, accusing South Africa of perverting the word “genocide” and being the mouthpiece of the terrorist group Hamas.
It also said it was outrageous for South Africa to attempt to liken the Jewish state’s military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack to Nazi Germany’s systematic extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. More than 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
Tal Becker, chief lawyer of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told a packed courtroom that South Africa had failed to acknowledge Hamas started the war, didn’t accurately portray conditions in Gaza, and that Israel had a right to defend itself. He added that the Middle Eastern country is in the middle of fighting a “war it did not start and did not want.”
South Africa, he said, “has regrettably put before the court a profoundly distorted factual and legal picture, [and] the entirety of its case hinges on a deliberately curated, decontextualized, and manipulative description of the reality of current hostilities.”
He further accused South Africa of making “an attempt to weaponize the term genocide against Israel.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called claims of genocide “atrocious and preposterous.”
“Actually, our enemies, the Hamas, in their charter, call for the destruction and annihilation of the state of Israel, the only nation-state of the Jewish people,” he said.
Separately, Germany announced Friday that it would intervene as a third party before the ICJ under an article that allows states to seek clarification on the use of a multilateral convention. The German government said it strongly disagreed with South Africa’s assessment of the situation and warned against “political instrumentalization.”
“In view of German history and the crimes against humanity of the Holocaust, the government is particularly committed to the Convention against genocide,” Steffen Hebestreit, a spokesman for the German government, said in a statement. “This convention is a central instrument of international law to implement the principle of ‘never again.’ We resolutely oppose its political instrumentalization.”
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Hebestreit added that Germany “firmly and expressly rejects the accusation of genocide now made before the International Court of Justice against Israel. This accusation lacks any basis [and] … [the government] intends to intervene as a third party.”
The move allows Germany to present its own case to the court that Israel has not infringed the genocide convention or has committed or intended to commit genocide. Because Germany is not claiming to be legally affected by South Africa’s case against Israel, it doesn’t need to go through the ICJ’s protocols or secure permission from the court to intervene.
