Israeli genocide ruling will be hated because it's fair
No one is likely to be pleased by the International Court of Justice's provisional ruling on South Africa's genocide charges against Israel. Much of the world will be furious that the 17 judges didn't order Israel to halt the war in Gaza. Israelis and many others will be outraged that they failed to outright dismiss charges of genocide against the people who suffered the Holocaust.
I can't comment on whether what the ICJ decided was good law, but it was a good outcome.
The first thing to be clear on is that the court, as it said again and again, was not ruling on whether Israel has committed genocide. Thursday's decision dealt only with whether it was plausible that some of the criteria that comprise genocide under the 1948 convention — in particular the intent to destroy a people — might be present. This was a very, very low bar to meet.
The second important factor is that South Africa asked the court to take a range of measures to ensure the worst doesn't happen between now and when the merits of the case eventually are decided, which could be years away. The convention was conceived to prevent genocide, not to comment on it after the fact, so having such a safeguard makes sense. Here again, the court only had to decide whether the risk of further mass human tragedy might plausibly exist. With tens of thousands already dead or injured in Gaza, to the best of our knowledge, and an estimated 1.7 million people (out of about 2 million) displaced from their homes and undersupplied with shelter, food, power and water, it's hard to see how they could decide otherwise.
The ICJ is part of the United Nations and it's notable that the court put the current fighting firmly into the context of the slaughter of Israelis that Hamas carried out on Oct. 7. UN resolutions condemning Israel's actions in Gaza have failed even to name Hamas. The court also called on the designated terrorist organization to release the remaining 100-plus hostages that it holds — unconditionally. Hamas is unlikely to comply just because the ICJ said so, but it was the right thing for the court to say.
This was, realistically, the best outcome that Israel could have expected. Each part of the ruling was endorsed by either 15 or 16 of the 17 judges, with even the Israeli judge voting against his country in two instances. It was always unlikely that with such a low legal bar and such intense global attention, the ICJ would decide there was no case to be heard.
That might have been a harder call had Israel's president, defense minister, prime minister and other cabinet members not said things in public that sounded a lot like they wanted to inflict collective punishment on the population of Gaza. Israel's government showed the court some heavily redacted orders from the war cabinet to show that despite this talk, the cabinet had demanded that more food and more aid and fuel be sent to Gaza's population, and that civilians be spared. The court, however, only had to rule on whether there was a plausible case to investigate, and the nation's leaders unwisely gave the court cause.
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