A plague in The Hague

I’m not a lawyer, but I am an expert in antisemitism, and it is crystal clear to me that what is due to take place at the Hague this week will be nothing short of a festival of antisemitic hate. It is a stunt. It is a ploy to make good on decades’ worth of antisemitic propaganda, and the stage has been set for a long time. South Africa is bringing a case against Israel to the ICJ on Thursday and Friday. That’s right - the great human rights champions of the world – South Africa. Who is on their legal team? Oscar Pistorius? Will Roger Waters be performing during the break? How about Kanye? South Africa may have run out of running water and be in the midst of an ongoing energy crisis, but they have time to defend a jihadist murderous death cult. Cool.

Not only is South Africa undermining reality; they’re undermining their own history. Shame on the “human rights” communities who purport that Israel is committing genocide. They’re illegitimate liars. They should have some courage and go see for themselves. I’ve just been in the hellscape on the border of Israel and Gaza, and no fake humanitarian will see what they want so desperately to find there. Israel is fighting the greatest threat to human rights everywhere. This is a war against terror. And wilful ignorance to that fact is the sport of antisemites. Genocide is determined by intent, and there is no greater intent to commit genocide with no greater self-published proof in this century so far than the example of Hamas on October 7.

Here are the countries that have, so far, joined South Africa in its quest for justice against the Jewish nation:
Bangladesh
Bolivia
Iran
Jordan
Malaysia
Maldives
Morocco
Namibia
Nicaragua
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Turkey
Venezuela

Wow! All the goodies! Who’s next? North Korea?!

I’ve seen some so-called human rights lawyers posting about this, with great fervor, gushing to continue putting the Jew of the nations on trial. Subtext: Gotcha! Finally! Got the Zionist pigs! That’s what this is about: antisemitism. These aren’t well-intentioned lawyers. They’re pirates yo-ho-ing legal jargon to stick it to Jews, because - guess what - Jew hatred is institutionalized in the loftiest, stuck-up, most elitist chambers of law. I’d know. I was once a young mini pupil during my undergraduate years and came face-to-face with these waspish Jew haters ad nauseum. They make me feel physically ill, careening around as humanitarians, when they’re in fact on a grift for Qatari big bucks. “International law” has now become a front for pathologically criminalizing the entire state of Israel, not just its leadership. It’s become a front for pathologically criminalizing Jews.

Welcome to the Dreyfus affair: the social media version. It’s pure mockery of the international legal system and abuse of power. Hamas showed genocidal intent on October 7 when they targeted over 1200 innocent civilians, torturing, maiming, murdering, raping and kidnapping them. Not Israel. But Israel is called to defend itself from allegations of war crimes by a country with a deplorable ongoing track record of crimes against humanity. And who’s flying in to participate but none other than the one antisemite who never misses an opportunity: Jeremy Corbyn. What a clown show. As Senator John Fetterman said earlier today: “South Africa, maybe sit this one out."

This case brought by South Africa against Israel at the ICJ eerily brings to mind the Durban Conference of 2001, considered the most antisemitic meeting since the Wanssee Conference in 1942. Durban sowed the seeds for the BDS (Boycott Divest and Sanctions) movement (inspired by the boycott movement during South Africa’s Apartheid) and re-popularized "Zionism is racism", only three days before 9/11. And now, 23 years later, after two decades of brainwashing the world with an obsession that wrongfully centers Israel in the global fight against racism and delegitimizes Israel with the great lie that it is an Apartheid state, South Africa is weaponizing this antisemitic rhetoric to cosy up to Hamas and avoid dealing with its own problems. The goal is to put international pressure on Israel to stop Israel's justified war against the same type of genocidal Islamist terrorism that brought America - and the West - to its knees on 9/11. It's been a long game, but it's the same despicable poison. And it must be fought and exposed.

As Shany Mor writes today:

“The claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza, however improbable, are once again couched in scholarly language and legal principles that are invented for Israel and Israel alone. Were any of them applied to any other theater of conflict, there is scarcely a military action in the world that couldn’t be classified as genocide. In this, they are following a well-worn tradition, one that thinks itself invisible, but is actually transparent.”

International human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler writes:

"By launching a baseless proceeding against Israel for the crimes of genocide and incitement to genocide, [South Africa] provides protective cover to Hamas and its related Iranian terrorist proxies, who themselves are the ones guilty of those crimes."

There are still over 130 hostages in Gaza. Each one a war crime. Hamas doesn’t care if they live. They don’t care about their own civilians. They have sworn to commit repeated genocides upon Jews and the state of Israel. And here we are. The International Court of Justice puts Israel on trial. It’s DARVO at its absolute finest. Deny Attack Reverse Victim and Offender.

So Israel must sit in the dock as the accused. South Africa are hardly global human rights paragons. Don’t get me started on Iran, or their enablers Turkey. I’m sure that UNWRA, the ICRC, Amnesty International, HRW and other organizations will be providing the “evidence”. It has just been uncovered, by the way, that 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza celebrated the Hamas massacre of October 7, and praised the murderers and rapists as “heroes”. These are corrupt organizations, to put it lightly. The international community endlessly demands that Israel ceases fire, and yet for more than two decades, they said not a single word any time that Israel was attacked by its neighbors.

Does Israel even stand a chance? Probably not. How can it? The United Nations may as well be renamed the United Nations Against Israel. What occurs this week is a preliminary hearing in which South Africa only needs to prove that there is a "plausibility" to the allegations of genocide.

International attorney Ari Ingel explains:

“South Africa is also requesting for the court to order provisional measures against Israel based on its charges and asking for the court to order Israel to stop its war immediately and to allow aid to be allowed to flow into Gaza without any restrictions. Even if Israel were to comply with the injunction, Hamas, which doesn't bind itself to the laws of war since it is a non-state actor and not a signatory to the ICJ, would not be compelled to stop its actual genocidal war against Israel and the Jewish people. Given the makeup of the court, they are likely to reach this threshold, if nothing else, to embarrass Israel and to allow the anti-Israel movement to claim Israel is indeed possibly committing genocide, even though the charge is ridiculous. The current court includes judges from America, Belgium, India, Germany, Japan, Australia, and France, all of whom may vote against this motion, but don't hold your breath on France, Australia, India, and Belgium right now. The rest of the court includes many countries that don't have independent courts. Their votes will just be political in nature, including Somalia, Slovakia, Morocco, Brazil, Uganda, Jamaica, Russia, and Lebanon. Israel and South Africa have also been allowed to sit on the court, bringing the number of justices to 18. Based on what I outlined above, getting ten judges to rule against Israel is pretty easy…

Whether or not the preliminary ruling changes the fighting on the ground doesn't matter since this is not the goal of the charge, but instead just to create another data point that anti-Israel groups can point to in order to demonize Israel and back up their charge that Israel is committing apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. Remember, South Africa, along with anti-Israel NGOs and Iran, launched the BDS movement against Israel in 2001, charging it with committing genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in Durban that year. Propaganda is a discursive process, and the goal is just to keep Israel on trial, forced to defend itself from the most horrific charges that can be leveled at any country. The outcome doesn't matter; keeping Israel on the docket in the defendant's chair, defending charge after charge, no matter how outrageous, is all that matters. The final ruling will likely take years, and while the court's decisions are typically binding, it has few means of enforcing them.”

South Africa's application is 84 pages in length and doesn’t once mention the crimes of Hamas. Not the murders of October 7, nor the rapes and the torturing. Nor the misuse of civilian buildings such as UNRWA schools, hospitals and mosques as military bunkers. Nothing. Why would it, eh? Who needs the facts? Propaganda and lies will do.

This is a little piece of something from Vivian Silver’s house in Kibbutz Be’eri. I found it in the rubble when I was standing in the aftermath of the destruction of this peacenik village. It was bright. Nothing was bright there. Vivian was a peace activist. She was bright. She believed in coexistence. She was murdered by Hamas. Her house was burned down. I don’t know what sick fantasies people have that they want to take Israel to court for genocide when Israel has experienced a genocide that the world is fast erasing, but not in my name. Not in Vivian’s name. We won’t forget October 7. We won’t forget the hostages still in Gaza. Every single one a war crime.

I leave you once more with the brilliant Einat Wilf: