before international justice, Israel denounces a “demonstration of hypocrisy”

An unprecedented legal battle has been taking place since Thursday January 11 in The Hague, in the Netherlands. South Africa accuses Israel of committing genocidal acts against the Palestinians and demands that international justice impose an immediate end to the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Israel, speaking before judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday, described the case as absurd and atrocious.

The Israelis perceive this affair very poorly. South Africa has been described as “legal arm” of Hamas. The pleadings of the South African lawyers on Thursday morning were described as “Greatest display of hypocrisy in history” and the names of birds flew from the pen of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, speaking on X (formerly Twitter).

A website dedicated to Hamas atrocities

The term “genocide,” coined just after World War II to describe the Holocaust of European Jews, resonates particularly in Israel. In the newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Thursday morning (link in English), columnist Nadav Eyal speaks for example of a double irony in this affair. “First of allhe writes, because Israel is indeed the country in which people suffered from the worst genocide in history, but also because Hamas, on the morning of October 7, launched a sort of pilot genocide on our borders, massacring more than a thousand civilians before being arrested”.

Moreover, the government put online a website in English on Wednesday evening dedicated to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. History to make it clear who, according to Israel, can rightly be accused of attempted genocide recently. As for the International Court of Justice, it must hear the Israeli arguments on Friday. A small army of jurists and lawyers, led by former President of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak, is responsible for defending the Jewish state.