The International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take action against genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is obliged to take all measures to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip, said the President of the International Court of Justice Joan Donoghue, announcing an interim decision on South Africa's claim.
“Israel must […] take all measures in relation to the residents of the Gaza Strip to prevent the commission of all actions in accordance with the second article of the Genocide Convention,” the judge said.
In particular, the Jewish state must not allow the killing of enclave residents, the infliction of serious bodily or mental harm, or the deliberate creation of “living conditions calculated to bring about total or partial physical destruction.”
Among such actions, the judge especially noted measures to prevent childbirth.
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The ICJ: A meaningless decision by a meaningless court
In one of the episodes of the British sitcom series "Peep Show", Mark, one of the main characters, tells his friend "promise me you will not try to sleep with my sister". In response, fully aware of his intentions, his friend says "I promise I will try not to sleep with her". The next morning, after sleeping with Mark's sister, he then says "I promised to try not to sleep with her, turns out it was literally impossible". The subtle, yet important differences in meaning meant he, technically speaking, did as he promised.
I see plenty of people online celebrating the ICJ's decision in the South Africa vs. Israel (
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192) case. Anyone with any degree of experience with legal proceedings will tell you just how meaningless the provision is.
The court considers that with regard to the present situation, Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Geneva Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article 2 of the Convention.
Just like Mark's friend took all measures to prevent sleeping with his sister, so too Israel can (and will) "take all measures within its power" to prevent the committing of genocide, I have no doubt about it. South Africa also asked the ICJ to force Israel to provide a detailed report a month from now about the measures they applied. This too, I'm sure, Israel can do. Language is incredibly important in law. I wonder how the ICJ then plans to prove Israel didn't take such measures? Even if Israel decides to accept the ruling (which they won't and will probably call it anti-Semitic), they can say whatever they want and it won't make any difference. They will simply come back to the ICJ a month from now and say they complied, doing "everything within their power" to prevent genocide - and they will be right, speaking in legal terms. Finding any amount of evidence to the contrary would take a thousand Jew lawyers a thousand Jew years to Jew-out. Feel free to watch the ICJ ruling in full here and listen carefully to the wording of provisions announced (
).
Now let's go a step further and assume the ICJ actually wanted to be a real court and decide that Israel must "immediately halt all operations against civilians and without delay cease any activities that put non-combatants in danger, including, but not exclusive to, attacks of any kind of civilian infrastructure in the sense set forth by the ICJ and the Geneva Convention" (or something along those lines). What stops Israel from simply refusing to comply? Israel, or any other country, can at any point claim the ICJ has no jurisdiction over them. Law compliance is only ever as strong as the ability of a court to enforce it. Therefore, even if Israel was clearly and without doubt ordered to stop doing whatever it is South Africa wanted them to stop doing, Israel can use that decision to eat their hummus off and nothing will change, because neither the ICJ, nor South Africa has any means to enforce the decision.
While the ICJ has theoretical jurisdiction and serves as an advisory body under the U.N., in practice its jurisdiction doesn't leave the cafeteria. And yes, you can say that the U.N. members must comply because they are in the U.N., but reality is very different. These decisions and provisions are symbolic at best.
I will say it again, wording is very important when dealing with court cases and lawyers (especially lawyers). It is particularly important for the prosecution. If South Africa, for example, was to come back a month from now and say Israel didn't comply with the court's decision, Israel can come back with "we did, the court ruled we must do everything within our power, we did, hence complying with the court" and they would be right. Israel isn't exactly knows for its good nature either.
So yes, congratulations, Israel will now do everything within its power to avoid committing genocide, it's just they'll find it impossible to do in the end.
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