South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel

Summary: A detailed analysis of the background to South Africa’s case against Israel. As a former apartheid state, South Africa has a deep understanding of the state of Israel’s colonialism in historic Palestine. They have accused Israel of being an apartheid state and committing genocide, and they have presented their case to the United Nations.

On December 29, 2023, South Africa presented their case against Israel to the International Court of Justice. They remain firm in their belief that Israel is committing genocide of the Palestinians of the Gaza strip, one of two occupied zones of the Palestinian Territories within the state of Israel. In addition to the genocidal assault which has been raging for more than a year, there has been a 16-year blockade of Gaza, preventing anything and anyone from coming in or out without Israel’s permission; a 75-year apartheid regime; and a 56-year occupation of Gaza.

The court proceedings were to determine the validity to the claim against Israel and to review relevant evidence. South Africa has stated that Israel’s actions constitute a genocide “because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.” The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide uses identical language to define a genocide. Israel has used the Genocide Convention like a checklist; indiscriminate killing, forced relocation, abducting children, attacking hospitals and schools, preventing aid from getting in, forced starvation, and more.

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice held two public hearings to hear South Africa’s case against Israel, and Israel’s rebuttal. The ICJ concluded that Israel may be committing genocide and ordered them to take precautions to prevent civilian deaths.

Israel called the charges “baseless” and “blood libel,” which is an antisemitic superstition that Jews sacrifice Christian babies and use their blood. They said that South Africa is operating as the “legal arm” of Hamas by bringing this case against them. Israel maintains that they are acting in self-defense.

Photo by Merch HÜSEY, via Unsplash

International NGOs which advocate for human rights like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claimed that Israel was not complying with the ICJ’s ruling one month later.

The ICJ issued additional emergency measures which ordered Israel to do everything in its power to prevent Gazans from starving, which includes allowing vital humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. They also ordered Israel to stop bombarding Rafah, which Israel ignored, and to open more land crossings for aid to enter.

Researchers spent the last nine months evidencing Israel’s destruction of Gaza to prove without a doubt that Israel has the ultimate goal of genocide. Recently, South Africa submitted a near 5,000-page document to the ICJ, but the document will not be available to the public until the proceedings advance.

This came after the occupational forces ordered Palestinians to evacuate. Israel is executing their “Generals’ Plan,” which is a strategy to force Palestinians to flee their homes, to name all remaining civilians as militants, and to cut off humanitarian relief in order to force everyone out if they wanted to live. This is ethnic cleansing. Northern Gaza has been besieged since early October, and humanitarian aid has been cut off, putting at least 400,000 people at risk of starvation.

Reporters and civilians in Gaza have been showing the world the horrors they face daily, the evidence is overwhelming. Because of the journalists on the ground, Israel voted in May to ban Al Jazeera, one of the few news agencies in Gaza, from operating.

The Israeli Knesset also banned UNRWA, the United Nation’s relief agency specifically for the Palestinian refugees created by the creation of the state of Israel and their illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. They first labeled UNRWA a terrorist organization and accused them of aiding and employing Hamas militants, and then banned them from operating, denying millions of people desperately needed aid.

Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, stated that “Israel’s continued shredding of international law has imperiled the institutions of global governance that were established to hold all states accountable.” Israel has consistently violated or disregarded over 60 UN resolutions, more than any other country in history. They have also had more UN resolutions passed against them.

South Africa also calls Israel an apartheid state, a system of institutionalized racism and segregation, and Israel also firmly denies that. Evidence of Israel’s apartheid include (but is not limited to) the imposed blockade on Gaza and border wall keeping them locked in; forcing Palestinians who work in Israel to wear an identification tag; denying human rights and the right to marry outside their ethnic group; forbidding Palestinians from flying their flag, sterilizing immigrants; forbidding Palestinians from walking or driving on certain roads; and setting up hundreds of checkpoints for Palestinians as they move through Gaza and the West Bank.

South Africa has some authority to call out apartheid regimes, since they know firsthand what it looks like—they were an apartheid state from the late 1940s to the 1990s. Famous figures like Nelson Mandela fought for equality in South Africa. As an interesting sidebar, the UK has recently denied Mandela’s grandson a visa because of his support for Palestine.

Photo of Nelson Mandela by South Africa The Good News, 2008, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It is not just Israelis who deny Israel’s crimes against humanity, but Zionists all over the world deny the genocide and continually fear-monger that it is the Jewish Israelis who are the victim in this purported war.

Brooke Goldstein, a staunch Zionist, human rights lawyer, and founder of the Lawfare Project, has repeatedly denied that the word “Palestine” even exists, therefore Palestinians do not exist. She called Gaza and the West Bank the “so-called Palestinian territories” and promotes her belief that Palestinians have imposed an apartheid regime on the Israelis. In her eyes, Israel does not do anything wrong, and everybody is equal under Israeli law—which is objectively not true. Goldstein is one of thousands of people who continually victimize Israel and Jewish people, while denying that apartheid exists. She is a human rights lawyer but does not believe that Palestinians deserve the same rights.

Zionists like Goldstein often point to Palestinians’ violent resistance and terrorist acts against civilians as evidence that Israel is the victim and has done no wrong, but they purposefully ignore the history. The UN has recognized Palestine’s right to resist, including violent and armed resistance, with Resolution 37/43 in 1982.

In the 1940s the UN recognized that a state has the right to resist foreign domination and colonial powers, and this right was exercised and validated in South Africa in their fight against apartheid. The UN has explicitly confirmed that they have the right to self-determination.

Israel and their supporters calls the Gazans “terrorists,” including the babies, which is why they believe they are righteous in killing indiscriminately. This is not to say that the Hamas militant group has not committed acts that constitute terrorism, but Hamas and Hezbollah only exist because of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and Lebanon. They are freedom fighters to many.