Spurious but Serious: the Genocide Charge Against Israel

Yet the war can end tomorrow

Wrapping up this week of living litigiously: Could the country representing the survivors of the greatest genocide in modern history be guilty of the same crime just 80 years after the Holocaust? That is what South Africa is claiming, and the International Court of Justice is convening right now consider it.

In offering a primer on the charged situation at the Hague, I’ll start with the ending: The genocide charge is spurious despite the huge death toll in Gaza, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is both political and toothless; yet the proceedings could be impactful because of the toxic election year in the US.

Sound confusing? Read on.

What on earth is the ICJ?

The average reader might assume that this is the same court that hauled in Serbian miscreants Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic—but that’s the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Is it the court that issued a genocide arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and more recently has a warrant out for Vladimir Putin? Nope—that’s the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICJ, like the others, is housed in The Hague, but unlike them it’s toothless and highly political. The 15 judges don’t need to be actual judges and are appointed along a regional formula guaranteeing global balance of interests and perspectives.

To understand just how toothless the ICJ is, consider the case of Azerbaijan, which 13 months ago started blockading ethnic Armenians in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh. The ICJ last February ordered the blockade lifted immediately. The order was ignored, the blockade was tightened in June, Azerbaijan attacked the starving population in September and all 120,000 people fled. Azerbaijan paid no price.

The only way a country can be punished for ignoring the ICJ is if the UN Security Council takes action, but the Security Council is itself political and anything interesting is likely to be vetoed by one of the five permanent members. Especially if the country in question has oil and natural gas at a time of global disruption in those markets.

What can the court do?