SOUTH Africa, a nation that knows what it means to fight for the right of self-determination, on Friday filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide in its 13-week bombardment of Gaza.
The evil of one people committed against another — horrifyingly aided and abetted by many in the West — cannot be reduced to numbers, but here they are anyway.
On this 87th day of the Israeli invasion, nearly 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, of which 8,000 were children and 6,000 women, not to mention the forced displacement of the entire population of Gaza numbering nearly two million.
Yet the Lilliputian leaders perched in the seats of power around the globe continue to trivialise the lives of the Palestinians, to put it in the phraseology of the late great British journalist, Robert Fisk.
There are exceptions, certainly. To these must be added, a few members of parliament in Ireland and Europe. Like South African politicians, they know what it means to fight the fight of self determination.
History will remember them for being on the right side. And gloriously pertinacious South Africa, too, has rightfully stepped in to discharge its duty to humanity. Justice abhors a vacuum.
Article IX of the Genocide Convention, ironically hurried into being by Western powers after the Holocaust, allows a state party to the treaty to bring an action against another state party in the International Court of Justice. Genocide — an attempt to destroy in whole or in part an ethnic or religious group — is hard to prove because it involves not only showing acts and omissions that amount to the crime. but also intent.
However, South Africa shouldn't have any difficulty in proving the genocidal intent of the Israelis. In a case between Croatia and Serbia, the ICJ ruled that depriving a people of food, shelter and medical care is genocide.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers have not only made such intentions clear through media statements, but followed it up with actions. But there have been other statements of genocidal intent since Oct 7. According to Israeli news portals, on Oct 28, as the Israeli armed forces were launching another ground invasion of Gaza, the secular Netanyahu invoked Hebrew religious texts to justify the genocide there.
Recalling an ancient age, he reminded the soldiers thus: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you", Netanyahu's code for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians whom he likened to the bygone Amalek, an ancient rival nation of the Jews. Haaretz.com, the Israeli English news portal, asked on March 26, 2008 — yes, the theory is a twisted history of old — "An Amalek in our times?" What God has written, men mustn't rewrite.
Well done, South Africa. This is the time for the tenacious. Other nations, especially Arab and Muslim countries, must support South Africa's case against Israel.
Seeing that the United Nations Security Council is a stumbling block to peace in the Middle East, South Africa is asking the ICJ to convene urgently to compel Israel to stop its genocidal campaign in Gaza as the court did in the case between The Gambia and Myanmar.
If the ICJ does just that, then it will send a message to the world that there is still some semblance of justice left.
