South Africa's bid to hold Israel accountable for war crimes sparks hope

South Africa has offered a world anguished by the war in Gaza a ray of hope.

This week, the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hold hearings in a case that accuses Israel of genocide in its war on Gaza. Referred by South Africa, the case aims to hold Israel accountable for the first time, and to temporarily suspend its military campaign in the process.

American and European leaders supporting Israel’s devastation of Gaza should hang their heads in shame, as their complicity has provoked a much-deserved global outcry.

Ongoing Palestinian resistance to occupation by Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 resulted in 1,200 Israeli fatalities and the taking of more than 140 hostages.

Legendary for its resistance to settler colonialism, Gaza as the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote:

It will continue to explode.

It is neither death, nor suicide.

It is Gaza’s way of declaring that it deserves to live.

Since October, genocidal Israeli vengeance has resulted in a death toll of more than 22,000 killed by indiscriminate aerial bombing and ground incursions into Gaza, with 8,000 children among them.

The maiming and injury of uncounted thousands, as well as the destruction of large swathes of residential areas, historical sites, mosques, and churches and the degrading of vital infrastructure have now continued for nearly 100 days.

Israel’s conduct in Gaza has reminded the world community of its promise that it will “never again” witness genocide. Yet war crimes with impunity and genocidal intent are committed in full view of the global media with Western complicity in Gaza.

South Africa’s petition for justice and accountability in Gaza lifts despair over this tragedy as a concrete act designed to bring about an end to war crimes. Pretoria filed an urgent application at the UN court, the ICJ in the Hague, Netherlands on Dec. 29, 2023.

South Africa stated that Israel is in “breach of its obligations in terms of the Genocide Convention” and should immediately cease all acts and measures perpetuating such genocidal activities.

International human rights lawyer Francis Boyle, who won two requests at the ICJ on behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia regarding the Genocide Convention, believes the case against Israel is a convincing one.

University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer described South Africa’s case as a “truly important document.” Mearsheimer is now convinced that Israel intends “to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic …group,” a description that fits clearly under the definition of genocide in the Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory.

Both Boyle and Mearsheimer believe South Africa’s application has huge implications for the United States, especially President Joe Biden and his administration as “complicitous in Israel’s genocide,” a crime which is also punishable under the Genocide Convention which the US also ratified.

Pretoria has shown visionary leadership in demonstrating its commitment to human rights and global justice, especially as one of the leading countries in the Global South and a member of the BRICS intergovernmental organisation which originally comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and which now includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

South Africa’s petition shows that courageous action by nations can result in a modicum of accountability in the current US-dominated global order.

By exercising its clout on behalf of disenfranchised Palestinian populations under Israeli colonial-settler rule, Pretoria serves as a moral beacon.

It is more disappointing that some leading Arab-majority countries in the Middle East have taken less concrete steps despite their potential power to end the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Thus far Malaysia, Türkiye, Jordan, Bolivia and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have voiced support for South Africa’s case at the ICJ. Public hearings are scheduled to be heard on Jan. 11 and 12 at the Peace Palace in the Hague, the seat of the court where South Africa will highlight the Israeli government’s war crimes.

Predictably, US national security spokesman John Kirby dismissed South Africa’s submission to the ICJ as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

The United States has been one of Israel’s most fervent backers in the war on civilians in Gaza. The US supplied Israel with ample stocks of military hardware, ballistic missiles and bombs. Its dismissive response to call for a ceasefire might be short-lived if the ICJ finds genocide was committed and charges its backers with complicity.

For the first time Israel’s public relations exercise will be exposed as a fig leaf when it repeatedly announces that it does not target civilians. Statistics and the devastation of Gaza belie Israel’s self-serving rhetoric aimed at giving it legal cover and the actual ruinous consequences of its genocide on human lives.

Israel’s political leaders Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other cabinet ministers publicly announced their military incursions will be of Biblical proportions. Netanyahu invoked the Book of Samuel where the Biblical deity instructs King Saul to kill every person in Amalek and to “…totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels, and donkeys.”

Other cabinet ministers have floated the idea of using a tactical nuclear bomb on Gaza. The Israeli cabinet is also actively discussing the deportation of Palestinians. The goal of the military incursion is to create a humanitarian catastrophe of famine, starvation and the spread of infectious diseases aimed at forcing civilians to flee the land strip. Polls show that 47 percent of Israeli Jews support the punishment inflicted on Gaza.

South Africa’s case at the ICJ describes in detail Israel’s intent to commit genocide: its deliberate attacks on civilians and vital infrastructure to eliminate a group of people. The devastating recorded death toll clearly matches the effects of the Israeli government leaders’ criminal intent.

The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the UN and was established in June 1945 to settle legal disputes between states. South Africa has announced its team of lawyers who will make its case at the ICJ consisting of Adila Hassim, John Dugard, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, and Max du Plessis, all highly experienced experts on constitutional and international law.

In 1994, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela - the first president of a democratic South Africa - the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation forces ended white apartheid colonial settler rule.

The ANC’s ties with anti-colonial movements around the world makes it a natural advocate to take up the cause of Palestinians living under colonial settler occupation in the West Bank and Gaza who experience similar if not worse conditions under apartheid South Africa.

Over the period of more than a century, nearly a million Palestinians have been systematically driven out by Zionist ethnic cleansing activities starting with the infamous Balfour Declaration by Great Britain in 1917.

Specifically in 1949, the Nakba occurred, when the Israeli state expelled 720,000 Palestinians, nearly 80 percent of the Arab population of the territory who were “forced from their homes and lost their land and property,” writes Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi.

During its long years as a resistance movement in exile, the ANC too had strong ties with Yasser Arafat, the leader of Fatah, a resistance group formed in 1959.

Arafat later became the leader of the collective resistance known as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Mandela recalled in his biography A Long Walk to Freedom, of his travels to Morocco, and especially his meeting with members of the Algerian anti-France resistance movement.

Mandela was inspired by the anti-colonial resistance of the Algerians at a time when the white apartheid regime declared him to be an outlaw. Over the years, the ANC’s connections with the PLO increased when its cadres were trained in Algeria alongside Palestinian resistance fighters. In 1994, Yasser Arafat was feted in Pretoria when he attended Mandela’s inauguration ceremony as president alongside Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader of Cuba.

Charging Israel of war crimes in Gaza was a decision directly authorised by current South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, a sitting cabinet minister told me on condition of anonymity.

This decision enjoys widespread public support but was criticised by South Africa’s chief rabbi. There is a strong chance that the ICJ could decree Israel’s conduct as criminal and hold its leaders accountable.

In the closing pages of his biography Mandela wrote these moving words that are instructive for Israelis and Palestinians who seek peace.

“Even in the grimmest times in prison…I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."

Today Mandela’s political descendants are drawing the world’s attention to the humanity of Palestinians and imploring Israelis to keep the flame of goodness alight in very grim times.