South Africa's genocide case against Israel sets up a high-stakes legal battle at the UN's top court
South Africa's genocide case against Israel sets up a high-stakes legal battle at the UN's top court
South Africa has launched a case at the United Nations’ top court alleging that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide.
Link to the summary of findings submitted by South Africa: https://apnews.com/article/un-court-south-africa-israel-gaza-genocide-71be2ce7f09bfee05a7cae26689ee262
South Africa’s 84-page filing says Israel’s actions “are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part” of the Palestinians in Gaza.
It asks the ICJ, also known as the world court, for a series of legally binding rulings. It wants the court to declare that Israel “has breached and continues to breach its obligations under the Genocide Convention,” and to order Israel to cease hostilities in Gaza that could amount to breaches of the convention, to offer reparations, and to provide for reconstruction of what it’s destroyed in Gaza.
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It’s one thing to do the trendy Israel bashing with alt-left anti-Israel kids on a forum to shout genocide and be sloppy with the term while they rage nonsensically over propaganda for which they’ve fallen.
It’s an entirely different thing for a failed state like South Africa to try to prove a factual and meaningful case based on actual law and legal definitions. Not a chance in hell this will amount to anything.
They’ll even have to establish that Gaza residents are “Palestinians”. The world had to make a special definition of refugee, just to call everyone in Gaza and the West Bank a refugee. If you used the UNHRC standard (which is applied to EVERYONE else worldwide, then there’d be a few hundred thousand at best, and millions lose their status as refugees.
The whole identification of Palestinians as a nationality could be explored in the courts, if this were taken seriously. Since pre-1908 the Ottoman empire and people in Palestine were more about tribal and family identity. Plus, for genocide, mabey you have to write off the Palestinan Jews then and say they don’t count, b/c really we mean just the Arab Palestinans…. blah blah. I’m not litigating it, I’m pointing out this is stuff easy to ignore in a hate frenzy on Lemmy, but that doesn’t get it ignored in courts.
At an even lower level, there is no Palestine. It’s not a state, in a legal sense, that causes legal problems. I mean, I guess it’s why you have what reads like the start of a bad joke “South Africa brings a genocide case to the ICJ”… with them as proxy for the people who want a state and believe they have standing? Who knows?
I’m curious who would even represent the Palestinians in court at this point? Hamas, their elected terrorist government? Or Abbas who has over 90% that wants him to resign? And then you have the issue that Abbas doesn’t run jack shit in Gaza, Hamas does, and he is barely holding onto his power even in the West Bank, since most Palestinians favor Hamas.
Things like that are going to matter, in a real court, it’s not just a Lemmy Israel bashing circle jerk.
And all of that is before you get into actually debating the genuine issues, which will be things like do the war-crimes of Hamas such as co-location make normally prohibited targets legal? Because a huge part of the whole genocide claim relies on the court agreeing that if you hide in hospitals and schools you shouldn’t be attacked, no matter what actions you took outside of those or coordinate from within them. And since co-location is already a war crime, that will be an interesting thing to watch argued.
And all of that is before you get into actually trying to prove the war crimes. At the ICJ, “I saw this on a white nationalist blog!” won’t cut it, not like here in Lemmy World News.
The whole thing just seems mostly like propaganda stunt designed to get Isreal’s haters excited and circle jerking. Which as a propaganda move—is, I think, rock solid. Almost as good as getting people to watch Hamas’ official television and publications… er… I mean Al Jazeera.
That’s a lot of words to say you blindly support Israel.
I’d love to see Bibi and numerous members of Likud prosecuted for war crimes. Just as I’d love to see Hamas and it’s many war criminals prosecuted for their crimes as well. I think you’re confusing the fact that I believe Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself with blind support. It’s not the same thing.
I do not approve of pre-Oct Israeli war crimes like the endless collective punishment. Even when there were tens of thousands of war crimes… er… rockets being shot at their citizens by the government of Gaza.
But I’m definitely hard pressed to find the answer on what to do among all the anti-israel frenzy on Lemmy. All anyone here has is to say “oh it,s okay, just ignore the oct attack, let Israel take it on the chin, they’re stronger and richer.”
I’d love to see a solution, do you know of one? B/c if Israel just stops like it’s trendy to demand, then Hamas will regroup and go again as they have for decades.
October 7th has been their greatest marketing of all time. They’re at like 75% support for the Oct 7th attacks, have majority support in Gaza and West Bank. They’re so popular with all the bloodshed they’ve caused that Abbas is going to lose his office. There’s no reason for Hamas to do anything other than continue to seek their publicly stated goal of the destruction of Israel, ever.
EDIT: Also yes, the charge of genocide is fucking stupid. It belittles and demeans the term and the lose nature with which it’s thrown about around here is extremely offensive.
B/c if Israel just stops like it’s trendy to demand, then Hamas will regroup and go again
That's an interesting prediction I'd like to see tested, honestly. What if, (hear me out here) the only thing keeping air in Hamas's sails is the perceived need to resist the occupation? Hamas isn't and never has been popular among Palestinians, in much the same way that Likud is really only politically relevant because someone needs to take a firm hand with Hamas.
Also, if Israel doesn't stop, like it hasn't for the last 70 years, then Hamas will regroup and go again, right?
Honestly this has all the same energy of the 'defund the police/thin blue line' rhetoric we've seen sail through our political spaces; if you listen to the law-and-order narrative the logic is that force must be escalated until those thugs learn their lesson, while that seems to drive up protest movements and that in turn gets the thin-blue-line crowd frothing for cops to use real bullets instead of rubber bullets and tear gas.
There was peace between Jews and Palestinians before the state of Israel began its occupation and settlements. The beef here isn't religious or cultural, the issue is the occupation and the dispossession of Palestinians of their family homes. One thing Israel could try (that it hasn't) is not doing that
I'm not ignoring you, and you sound very sincere, so I'll draw up a reply when I get back home.
But spoilers alert: things were definitely not peaceful between the Palestian Jews and Palestinian Arabs pre-Israel or after. There's a long history of violence on both sides, I'll post a bunch when I get back for you to look at, should you wish. And there's no innocent parties here pre or post Israel.
When ISIS attacked iran, a lot of people blamed iran and america, despite that conflict being driven by hundreds of years of sectarian conflict. They justified their reasoning with the most anti semitic shit possible. I think the left is having a very hard time recognizing anti semitism, and it is going to cast doubt on future leftists efforts. Shame:
Agree with you 100%.
It's been a terrible wakeup call as I'm left on most things and have no place in almost any left group at the moment with their rabid mindless hate frenzy. I'm anti-capitalist, atheist, pro bodily autonomy, an ally of lgbtq+....
But in general, all the bulk of these people can do is read whatever Hamas has Al Jazeera publish and knee-jerk, or learn one fact about 100+ years of conflict and think they know the score. Literally 99% of their historical claims are disprovable quickly and easily--super low effort. When it comes to history, they're Dunning-Kruger masters.
I think it's also that the bulk of the nutters are kids 18-24 and this is the first time they've really paid attention to war and how fucking awful it is in every way. These horrors are going on everywhere, and they're just too dumb or ignorant and are way past their ability to comprehend.
There are a lot of wars and war crimes and more going on. But when I look at their post and comment history, this the only thing they cry about, not Haiti, not DRC, not Ukraine, etc. This one is just really shiney for them because Jews, because it's DEFINITELY not based on principals.
Honestly, they look like Hamas MAGA to me these days. Just mindless hate machines.
Hamas maga is the best way to describe it.
Honestly going to get off lemmy soon because the issue is worse here than any other social media. It is kinda insane.
Houthis are being terrorists and people cheer them lmao
Saying there are no Palestinians is up there with Putin saying there are no Ukrainians. This is genocidal hate speech. Fuck you. Fuck you, profoundly.
There was a Palestine. It no longer exists.
There were Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Christians, and Palestinian Arabs. Now, they live in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Chile, Saudi Arabia, and so on. There is no country called Palestine anymore.
Facts offending you are funny, though, as is your profanity laden tantrum.
If you want a bigger breakdown, here is a list of where the Palestinian Arabs went. I assume you only care about the Palestinian Arabs?
Just because there were all sorts of people living in historic Palestine that used the word "Palestinian" to mean a geographic origin does not mean that the people that are known today as Palestinians do not exist as a people with the right to its own self determination and nationhood. Saying that kind of thing because Palestinian Jews existed (who today in their vast majority clearly identify as blue-passport Israeli, and no longer as Palestinian) is at best as ludicrous as the stupid claim that "Arabs cannot possibly be anti-Semitic as they are themselves Semites". At worst the denial of the existence of Palestinians as a people is Putin style genocidal language.
I don't know of any Jewish people genuinely identifying themselves with that people. When Golda Meir was saying she is a Palestinian she was not identifying the Arabs, Muslims and Christians as her compatriots, she was doing it to deny them peoplehood. And again, no, the existence of the Mizrahim, the Arab Jews does not imply that the term Arab does not today have a specific meaning in the Israeli-Palestinian context. When Israeli fascists chant "death to Arabs" the don't mean the Mizrahim...
On the other hand I know plenty Muslims, Christians and atheists who do identify as Palestinian. The Israeli state does the same thing giving these people green passports and prohibiting their descendants from entering.
I'm Greek. My country made a huge stupid stink about the Macedonians. The fact that historic Macedon was Greek does not mean that Macedonians as a people don't exist. The fact that Macedonia the region contains Macedonian Greeks, Macedonian Albanians, Macedonian Bulgarians does not mean that the Macedonian people don't exist. I'm an anti-nationalist from the Balkans, buddy, not some naive amerikanaki, ready to swallow national ideologies and mythologies with wide eyes.
It’s one thing to do […] Israel bashing […] on a forum […]
It’s an entirely different thing […] to try to prove a factual and meaningful case based on actual law and legal definitions.
And that's exactly why I think what SA does is an important thing to do. Besides, what does the condition of SA's state have to do with the legitimacy of this?
Edit: it's SA, not SAR
It doesn't do that. What you see is a giant dopamine hit to your confirmation bias. And the motivation of a bad actor attempting to abuse the courbts for political reasons is important.
Like I said, you're the target audience, it's just to rial up all the alt-left and get em circlejerking the upvotes on Lemmy and radicalized further the gullible.
you are a genocide denier, you cannot be reasoned with. as for anyone else that might even slightly agree with this person i recommend you to watch this video Gaza: A Clear Case of Genocide which is a legal analysis based on the internationally recognized definition of genocide and case law.
this videos answers whether or not actions of Hamas are relevant (it's not), do palestinians in gaza constitute whole or a part of a group (they do), whether or not israeli leaders have genocidal intent (which can be established based on repeated and systematic conduct and war crimes as well as countless statements and revealed plans), and if their acts are covered under the genocide convention (they are).
if you want to "get into actually debating the genuine issue" here you are. the reason i say you cannot be reasoned with is that your response is simply the stupidest thing i have read in a while. when someone cannot even concede that palestinians in gaza are in fact part of a group, they are simply not arguing with good faith, or even bad faith, they are not even arguing just putting their head in the sand and shitting as loudly as possible on the other end in hopes of silencing others.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Gaza: A Clear Case of Genocide
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