South Africa Invokes Genocide Convention against Israel

I should apologize to Substack subscribers for my not writing as much as I’d have wished the last few weeks. This is partly because I’ve been suffering with a terrible cough that I’m now told is officially bronchitis. And much of my efforts lately have been behind the scenes, trying to get a country to invoke the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice, which South Africa thankfully just did. Regular readers will recall that I have written several pieces on this, I started the #InvokeGenocideConvention hashtag and raised it in my overview piece on Oct. 8. I actually had high hopes that South Africa would do this last month, Patrick Bond noted that South Africa has a powerful pro-Israel lobby. 

It was funny to me that this happened when it did. I kind of unplugged from news yesterday for the first time in a long time and just listened to some Thomas Merton talks, telling me to, among other things, leave matters in God’s hands.

South Africa Invokes Genocide Convention Against Israel -- Interviews Available

South Africa today filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), concerning alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”) in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. 

From the Application: "This section provides an overview of the acts in which Israel has engaged that are genocidal in character, having regard to their nature, scope and context. These acts are ongoing, and ongoing in a conflict context, where Israel is deliberately imposing telecommunications blackouts on Gaza and restricting access by fact-finding bodies and the international media. At the same time Palestinian journalists are being killed at a rate significantly higher than has occurred in any conflict in the past 100 years. In the two months since 7 October 2023, the number of journalists killed already exceeded that of the entirety of World War II. Further detail will be provided regarding these acts over the course of these proceedings. However, such information as is available establishes that Israel: (1) is engaged in killing Palestinians in Gaza -- including Palestinian children -- in large numbers; (2) is causing serious bodily and mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza, including Palestinian children; and is inflicting on them conditions of life intended to bring about their destruction as a group. Those conditions include: (3) expulsions from homes and mass displacement, alongside the large-scale destruction of homes and residential areas; (4) deprivation of access to adequate food and water; (4) deprivation of access to adequate medical care; (5) deprivation of access to adequate shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation; and (6) the destruction of the life of the Palestinian people in Gaza."

JOHN QUIGLEY, quigley.2@osu.edu

    Professor emeritus of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley's books include The Statehood of Palestine: International Law in the Middle East Conflict (Cambridge University Press) and The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II. He was featured on the recent news release "Beyond U.S. Isolation at UN, What's Not Being Done." He noted that other countries can intervene in the case, as some 30 countries did regarding the Ukraine case against Russia at the ICJ or as several recently did with the Myanmar case. He notes that the South African action falls short of calling for a halt to all military action by Israel in Gaza, only addressing actions that are genocidal in nature.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu 

    Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law.  Boyle's books include The Bosnian People Charge Genocide (1996) Palestine, Palestinians and International Law (2009) and World Politics, Human Rights and International Law (2021). He was featured on the news release "On Israel: Lawyer Who Applied Genocide Convention for Bosnia Recommends it Now for Palestinians." He said today: “This genocide lawsuit is a severe body blow to Israel from which it shall never recover.”