International Court of Justice (ICJ) (see Genocide Prosecutions)
Updated 2024-08-26
2024-03-21 “Humanitarian Violence” in Gaza: Architect Eyal Weizman on Mapping Israel’s “Genocidal Campaign” A new report by the research group Forensic Architecture counters Israel’s argument at the International Court of Justice that it followed humanitarian policies to safeguard civilian life in Gaza. South Africa argued in January before the ICJ that Israel was guilty of genocide during its war on Gaza. The report argues that what Israel says are humanitarian evacuations in Gaza actually amount to the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime. It found that since October 7, Israel has issued imprecise and sometimes contradictory evacuation orders, attacked people even in so-called safe zones and evacuation routes, and failed to provide the necessities of life for those civilians, all while pushing the population further and further south into areas that are then also attacked or evacuated at a later time. “We cannot see it as anything else but part of the genocidal campaign,” says Forensic Architecture director Eyal Weizman, who accuses Israel of using humanitarian principles as yet another weapon against Palestinians in Gaza. He says Israel’s objective is to “exercise pain on the civilian population” in order to deter “ongoing resistance to the Israeli occupation.” https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/21/forensic_architecture_gaza_israel?
2024-03-02 Just Two US Lawmakers Sign International Statement Demanding Arms Embargo on Israel More than 200 lawmakers from 13 countries issued a joint statement Friday expressing opposition to their nations’ weapons exports to Israel and pledging to do everything in their power to halt the flow of arms that are being used to massacre Palestinians in Gaza. Just two U.S. lawmakers—Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—backed the statement.
“We, the undersigned parliamentarians, declare our commitment to end our nations’ arms sales to the state of Israel,” reads the statement, which was coordinated by Progressive International. “Our bombs and bullets must not be used to kill, maim, and dispossess Palestinians. But they are: We know that lethal weapons and their parts, made or shipped through our countries, currently aid the Israeli assault on Palestine that has claimed over 30,000 lives across Gaza and the West Bank.”
The statement’s signatories include legislators from Israel’s top allies and weapons suppliers, including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. The statement includes six signatories from Germany, which is facing an International Court of Justice (ICJ) case alleging complicity in genocide against Palestinians. The lawmakers argued that an arms embargo on Israel is both “a moral necessity” and “a legal requirement,” given the ICJ’s interim ruling in late January. https://www.commondreams.org/news/lawmakers-arms-embargo-israel
2024-02-17 Weaponizing Anti-Semitism Against the World Court Antony Lerman says Israel’s response to the ICJ ruling continues a decades’ old ploy for neutralizing criticism of, and generating sympathy for, the Jewish state.
Thousands of Israelis gathered in Jerusalem on Jan. 28 for a far-right conference. It called for the Jewish resettlement of the Gaza Strip and the transfer of the population living there, described dubiously using the euphemism “a legal way to voluntarily emigrate them.” Their scheme, which members of the far-right Israeli government were floating from the earliest days of the Gaza war, constitutes ethnic cleansing.
This genocidal plan was hailed by Likud’s Tourism Minister Haim Katz as an “opportunity to rebuild and expand the land of Israel.” This signified a comprehensive rejection of the 26 January decision of the U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) that “Israel must take action to prevent genocidal violence by its armed forces” and “prevent and punish” the incitement to genocide. It was also an endorsement of the flood of accusations of anti-Semitic treatment of Israel that the ICJ decision provoked. First out of the blocks were Israeli government representatives. The court displayed “antisemitic bias,” they declared. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/17/weaponizing-anti-semitism-against-the-world-court/
2024-02-16 ICJ Hearings to Examine 57 Years of Israeli Occupation of Palestine More than 50 countries are set to participate in next week’s hearings at the International Court of Justice focusing on Israel’s illegal 57-year occupation of Palestine, a forum that follows the Hague tribunal’s finding last month that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in occupied Gaza.
The ICJ—also known as the World Court—will hold a week of hearings on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, which dates to the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, Syrian Golan Heights, and Egyptian Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 Six-Day War.
“The International Court of Justice is set for the first time to broadly consider the legal consequences of Israel’s nearly six-decades-long occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinian people,” Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin said in a statement. “Governments that are presenting their arguments to the court should seize these landmark hearings to highlight the grave abuses Israeli authorities are committing against Palestinians, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights remain under Israeli military occupation six decades after their conquest. The United Nations—to which the ICJ belongs—and many international NGOs contend that, despite removing its troops and settlers from Gaza two decades ago, Israel continues to occupy Gaza by controlling the besieged enclave’s airspace, territorial waters, and the entry and exit of people and goods.
Since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed or wounded more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing around 90% of the population. Numerous Israeli leaders have called for the renewed physical occupation, Jewish resettlement, and ethnic cleansing of the strip. During the current assault on Gaza, occupation forces have also killed at least 388 Palestinians, including 99 children, in the West Bank, according to U.N. human rights officials. Israeli settlers have for decades been steadily colonizing the occupied territories under the protection of the IDF, while ethnically cleansing Palestinians whose lands and homes they steal. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-occupation, https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10219703397614343&set=pcb.10219703403014478
2024-02-14 AS’AD AbuKHALIL: Arabs Divided on ICJ Ruling The liberal Arab camp thinks the ICJ ruling will lead to a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian question, while the popular camp has lost faith in international organizations, including the ICJ. Israel will forever be stained with the label of genocide and its supporters will always be accused of supporting genocide after the International Court of Justice ruled last month that there was prima facie evidence to put Israel on trial for genocide. Even powerful foreign lobbies will find it difficult to remove the stigma. This is not lost on U.S. citizens who have spent untold millions of dollars and have heard too many lies to continue supporting an image of moral superiority.
There are two camps on ICJ ruling in the Arab world. The liberal intellectuals who are funded by Gulf despots and/or NATO governments/Soros insist that Arabs should never abandon their belief in the “international community” (a code word for the genocide axis of NATO) and in international law and human rights.
The other camp, which speaks more for free Arab public opinion, regard the notion of international law and human rights as tools and even Western government tricks to solidify their domination over people of the South. They want to tranquilize and delude them into thinking justice can be restored through international fora. The fact that a month after the ICJ ruling, Israel continues its genocide in Gaza, and Western governments continue to endorse and sponsor it is testimony to the limitations and even the impotence of international organizations. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/14/asad-abukhhalil-arabs-divided-on-icj-ruling/
2024-02-13 South Africa Calls on ICJ to Stop Israel’s Rafah Assault Israel’s bombardment of Rafah in southern Gaza and its stated plan to expand its attack with a ground assault puts the country in breach of a clear directive from the International Court of Justice, said South African officials on Tuesday, less than three weeks after the court ordered Israel to do everything in its power to prevent genocidal violence in Gaza.
The South African government made an urgent request of the ICJ, or the World Court, calling on it to take further action as more than 100 Palestinian people were killed by Israeli shelling and airstrikes in multiple locations across Rafah overnight Monday. South Africa said in a statement Tuesday that Israel’s stated plan to launch a ground offensive in the city “requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.” https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/13/south-africa-calls-on-icj-to-stop-israels-rafah-assault/
2024-02-02 US Court Rules Israel’s Assault on Gaza is Plausible Case of Genocide A US federal judge has acknowledged the government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, calling on President Joe Biden to reconsider his position, while simultaneously dismissing the case due to lack of jurisdiction.
In an order on Wednesday, US District Judge, Jeffrey S White reportedly highlighted the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) preliminary ruling this month which found that Israel’s conduct in Gaza could plausibly amount to genocide. The judge called on the Biden administration to reflect on that point and to reconsider its stance on the matter, the report added. “This Court implores Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza,” White said. He added, “It is every individual’s obligation to confront the current siege.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of aid groups, Defense for Children International – Palestine and Al-Haq, as well as Dr. Omar Al-Najjar – operating in southern Gaza’s Rafah area – and plaintiffs with families in Gaza who have suffered displacement or deaths of loved ones during Israel’s bombardment of the enclave. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/us-court-rules-israels-assault-on-gaza-is-plausible-case-of-genocide/
2024-02-01 Why did South Africa charge Israel at the ICJ? • organizing unions in the society of sprawl • the widening war in the Middle East KPFA – Behind the News Sean Jacobs explores why South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel in the World Court • Eric Blanc (Substack post here) on organizing in a scattered and atomized society • Hassan El-Tayyab on the widening war in the Middle East https://kpfa.org/episode/behind-the-news-february-1-2024/
2024-01-31 UN Council Debates ICJ Israel Ruling on Genocide The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday debated last Friday’s World Court ruling that Israel must stand trial for genocide after finding plausible evidence against it.
No decision was taken by the Security Council, which could enforce the World Court’s ruling — that Israel must prevent its soldiers from committing acts of genocide — through economic sanctions, and even theoretically authorizing U.N. military action against Israel. But such moves would undoubtedly be vetoed by the United States, which maintains that Israel is not committing genocide but merely defending itself.
“The ICJ has offered a resounding rebuke to those who claimed that the case of genocide against Israel was ‘meritless’ and ‘baseless,’” said Riyad Mansour, ambassador for the Observer State of Palestine, in a clear reference to the United States, whose officials used those very words. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/01/31/watch-un-council-debates-icj-israel-ruling-on-genocide/
2024-01-30 UN Defaults: Israel’s Palestine Genocide and COP28 The UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Netherlands delivered its non-binding verdict on January 26 on South Africa’s multiple charges that Zionist Israel was guilty of genocide. The court’s 17 judges, in near unanimous decisions on a myriad of issues, rejected South Africa’s key demands that Israel immediately declare a ceasefire and stop its genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and that Israel open its border crossings with Egypt to allow lifesaving medical supplies, food and water for Gaza’s Zionist-starved population.
Indeed, the day after the rulings, Zionist officials dismissed the ICJ proceedings with contempt and intensified its genocidal bombings.
The court also ruled that Hamas immediately and unconditionally release all 100 of the remaining Israeli hostages taken on October 7 during Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood attack. There was no mention of the Zionist Entity’s releasing its 8000+ imprisoned, beaten and often tortured Palestinians prisoners that Hamas aimed at exchanging for its captured hostages.
I leave aside a detailed account of South Africa’s 75 pages of genocide charges and the court’s decisions, all of which fall into the category of politics and “diplomacy” played out on the world stage as opposed to binding decisions capable of enforcement by any international body or state. Neither the UN nor its ICJ, sometimes called the World Court, have the authority to enforce its resolutions or findings, unless, that is, they are unanimously approved by the UN Security Council, where any single permanent member has the unqualified right of veto. The US exercised this veto a few months ago in rejecting a UN Security Council “ceasefire” resolution. The Biden administration indicated in no uncertain terms that any World Court decisions condemning Israel and moving to stop its genocide would be similarly vetoed.
The US subsequently voted against a UN General Assembly ceasefire resolution approved by a vote of 153 in favor, 10 against and 23 abstaining. Like all General Assembly resolutions it merely indicated the opinions of the UN’s member states. No more! https://socialistaction.org/2024/01/30/the-united-nations-deception-israels-genocide-of-palestine-and-cop28s-catastrophic-climte-default/
2024-01-29 ICJ Ruling is Not Good Enough, and This is the Way Forward – ILAN PAPPE If committed activists needed an additional reason for why what they are doing is essential and just, then the ICJ’s ruling is a chilling reminder of what is at stake here. The moral and brave approach by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), hoping for a ruling that would bring an end to the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, was not matched by the court on Friday, January 26, 2024.
I am not underestimating the significance of the court’s ruling. True, the court confirmed the right of South Africa to approach the ICJ and substantiated the facts it presented, including the assumption that Israel’s actions could be defined as genocide under the terms of the genocide convention. In the long run, the language and the definitions used by the ICJ in its first ruling will constitute a huge symbolic victory on the way to Palestine’s liberation.
But this is not why South Africa approached the ICJ. South Africa wanted the court to stop the genocide. And therefore, from an operative point of view, the ICJ missed an opportunity to stop the genocide, mainly because it still treated Israel as a democracy and not a rogue state. Palestinians, and whoever supports any struggle against crimes committed by countries of the global north, ceased a long time ago to be impressed by symbolic actions. Actions against rogue states only are meaningful if they have an operative side to them.
The operative actions suggested by the ICJ are basically a demand from Israel to submit, in one month’s time, a report on measures taken to prevent genocide in Gaza. No wonder, the Israeli government has already hinted that such an assignment would not be high on its agenda and, most importantly, would not have any impact on its policies on the ground. Even if the ICJ would have demanded, as it should have, a ceasefire, it would have taken quite a while to implement it, given the Israeli intransigence. But the message to Israel would have been clear – and effective. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/icj-ruling-is-not-good-enough-and-this-is-the-way-forward-ilan-pappe/
2024-01-29 Israel Cannot Hide From the International Court of Justice It is easy to be cynical about the international rule of law. No sooner had the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinian people than the U.S. State Department declared, “We continue to believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded and note the court did not make a finding about genocide or call for a ceasefire in its ruling…” Israeli leaders declared the case to be “outrageous” and “antisemitic.” Yet the risks for Israel of the ICJ ruling, and its follow-up in the next year or two, are profound. If Israel spurns the Genocide Convention, it imperils its place within the community of nations.
Yet the ruling has started the clock on Israel’s future. If Israel continues to act with impunity and finds itself declared as genocidaire in the ICJ’s final ruling, Israel will become a pariah state. Young Americans in particular will pull the plug on U.S. backing for Israel. Israel will stand utterly alone, condemned by the world.
Most of the 193 governments in the United Nations already disdain Israel’s behavior. Most see a country that has occupied the neighboring territories of Palestine for 57 years (since the 1967 war), that has scorned and failed to act on dozens of votes by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, and illegally and blatantly settled more than 700,000 Israelis in the occupied territories. Most UN member states hear clearly the expressions of visceral hatred by many Israeli leaders toward the people of Palestine. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/international-court-of-justice-israel-genocide
2024-01-26 An ICJ Court Ruling Noura Khouri
SUMMARY OF THE ICJ RULING
Court rules:
1. South Africa has standing to bring the application.
2. There is a legal dispute.
3. Some of the actions SA says have occurred could be Genocide.
4. The Palestinians are a discernable group and are therefore a protected group under the Genocide Act.
5. Large numbers of deaths, destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure and huge displacement are evident.
6. The court notes that UN agencies declare unprecedented conditions in Gaza. There is deep trauma and unsafe conditions. They live through the unlivable. The effect on children is especially concerning.
7. Dehumanizing language from Israel is repeated. Various ministers made statements dehumanising Palestinians. The court cited various examples showing that the Israeli action is aimed at Palestine and not only Hamas.
8. Court concludes at least some of the rights identified to defend Palestinians are plausible.
9. The court concludes that at least sone of the rights requested by South Africa are rational.
10. The court considers urgency and concludes that there is a possibility of irreparable harm to the Palestinians should it not order provisional measures at this stage. The healthcare system and breakdown of public order and epidemic is identified with irreversible conditions as declared by the UN.
11. The court notes Israel says the war will continue for several months. Meanwhile Gazans do not have basic conditions for life. Therefore the catastrophic conditions will further deteriorate before the court makes a final order.
12. Israel claims its war is being downgraded. The court finds this is insufficient to ensure Palestinian rights.
13. The court can impose its own provisional measures and need not be identical to those requested.
4. Provisional measures are appropriate and are ordered as follows:
A. Israel must take all acts to prevent all conditions in Article 2 of the Genocide Act, that is to not commit any acts of Genocide.
B. Israel must ensure none of the aforementioned acts occur.
C. Israel must ensure sufficient aid is available.
D. Israel must take urgent measures to ensure conditions of life.
E. Israel must give a report as to what it has done is submitted in one month to the court and South Africa would then be allowed to engage the court as to its contents.
F. The court calls for the release of all hostages.
Court decision 15 to 2. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10163224985878222&set=a.10150859670608222
2024-01-15 Why is Namibia furious at Germany’s ICJ intervention supporting Israel? | Inside Story Namibia has condemned Germany’s backing of Israel against genocide charges at the International Court of Justice. It says, given Germany’s colonial brutalities, it should not support Israel. So, what’s behind this furious diplomatic dispute – and why now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmSJ0Li1jbU
2024-01-15 Israel Goes to Court for the Crime of Genocide The Biden Administration will lie, cheat and go to war to protect its “best friend” the United States and Israel have “own goaled” themselves to become widely perceived as together the two most evil governments on earth. It is a judgement that is hard to disagree with regarding the Jewish state if one examines the abundant evidence that Israel is systematically committing war crimes against the largely unarmed Palestinian civilian population in an effort to bring about ethnic cleansing or even genocide in Gaza and on the West Bank. The process would include removing the Palestinians physically and/or killing them if they resist, which is what is currently taking place. Something like 10,000 dead Palestinian children attest to the brutality and inhumanity of the effort, together with nearly 400 doctors and nurses who were directly targeted plus more than 100 UN employees trying to bring aid to the civilians. What Israel is doing is monstrous, almost unimaginable. A number of senior Israeli officials have confirmed their government’s view, supported by public opinion, that a land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea swept clean of Arabs would be the most desirable outcome of current developments.
The United States is at the same time loathed alongside Israel because it is enabling the slaughter by the Israelis while simultaneously spewing the lies that it is somehow restraining or even making somehow more “humanitarian” Israel’s attack. Nothing could be farther from the truth as the White House recently worked hard to defang a major UN-led diplomatic effort that had global support to bring about a ceasefire that would enable emergency relief supplies to be introduced into the battered enclave. Instead, Israel now continues its daily bombardment of Gaza and controls entering supplies, slowing the process down while watching people die of famine and disease, not to mention from artillery shells and bombs. Oh, and the United States both funds the Israeli war effort and supplies the munitions that make it all possible. That makes Washington an accessory to the war crimes and to what most of the world considers to be a genocide being perpetrated openly and with malice. https://freepress.org/article/israel-goes-court-crime-genocide
2024-01-13 What will be the outcome of the ICJ case against Israel? | Inside Story A two-day public hearing of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice has concluded. South Africa laid out a list of genocidal acts by Israel on the first day of hearing on Thursday – while Israel defended itself on Friday. Now, the court has begun deliberations. It will decide whether South Africa’s case is strong enough to issue a provisional measure to stop the Israeli military’s attacks on Gaza. So, what’s the likely outcome of this case? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzWiGec73Ls
2024-01-11 At first ICJ hearing, South Africa provides evidence of ‘genocide’ South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a lawsuit to oblige “Israel” to immediately stop its military operation in the Gaza Strip, a representative of the South African delegation, lawyer Vaughan Lowe, said on Thursday.
South Africa’s legal team stated, in its opening statement at The Hague, that South Africa has recognized the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people through “Israel’s” colonization since 1948, “which has systematically and forcibly dispossessed, displaced and fragmented the Palestinian people, deliberately denying them the internationally recognised inalienable right to self determination and their internationally recognised rights of return as refugees to their towns and villages in what is now the state of Israel.” https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/at-first-icj-hearing–south-africa-provides–genocide–evide
2024-01-10 Expert Q&A: South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel at the International Court of Justice Diana Buttu – Human rights attorney and political analyst, former advisor to Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian negotiators, and Palestinian citizen of Israel.
What exactly is South Africa alleging? According to South Africa’s petition, Israel is:
Engaged in the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, a large proportion of them women and children —who are estimated to account for around 70% of the more than 21,110 fatalities. According to reports, Israeli soldiers have also summarily executed civilians;
Deliberately causing starvation and dehydration amongst Palestinians in Gaza by cutting of supplies of food, water, and electricity, and the destruction of bakeries, mills, agricultural lands and other methods of food production and sustenance;
Causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza, including through maiming, psychological trauma, and inhuman and degrading treatment;
Forcibly displacing – ethnic cleansing – around 85% of Palestinians in Gaza so far — including children, the elderly, and the sick and wounded — as well as causing the large scale destruction of Palestinian homes, cities, towns, refugee camps, and entire regions in Gaza, precluding the return of a significant proportion of Palestinians to their homes;
Destroying Palestinian life and society in Gaza, through the destruction of Gaza’s universities, schools, cultural centers, courts, public buildings and records, libraries, churches, mosques, roads, infrastructure, utilities and other facilities necessary to the sustained life of Palestinians in Gaza as a group, alongside the killing of entire family groups — erasing entire oral histories in Gaza — and the killing of prominent and distinguished members of society;
Imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza, through the reproductive violence inflicted on Palestinian women, newborn babies, infants, and children;
Failing to provide for or to ensure the provision for the medical needs of Palestinians in Gaza, including those medical needs created by other genocidal acts causing serious bodily harm, including through directly attacking hospitals, ambulances and other healthcare facilities in Gaza, killing doctors, medics and nurses, including the most qualified medics in Gaza, and destroying and disabling Gaza’s medical system; and
Failing to provide and restricting the provision of adequate shelter, clothes, hygiene or sanitation to Palestinians in Gaza, including the 1.9 million internally displaced people, compelled by Israel’s actions to live in dangerous situations of squalor, alongside the routine targeting and destruction of places of shelter and the killing and wounding of those seeking safety, including women, children, the disabled and the elderly. https://imeu.org/article/expert-qa-south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel-at-the-icj
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