40 No. 70 JUSTICE On 29 December 2023, South Africa applied to the International Court of Justice requesting the Court to institute proceedings, including an urgent provisional measures procedure, alleging that Israel violated its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”) in its conduct towards Palestinians in Gaza. This baseless accusation of “Genocide” levelled at Israel by South Africa is a blatant attempt to subvert international law. The driving force behind the Genocide Convention was a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, whose work to codify the crime of genocide was motivated by his personal experience of an actual genocide - the efforts of the Nazis and their collaborators to exterminate the Jewish people. The term he then coined – “Genocide”, was intended to portray the most heinous of atrocities against humanity, the intentional attempt to annihilate a people. The attempt to harness the Genocide Convention to target the very people whose murder led to the Convention reflects a growing phenomenon of undermining the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own through accusations comparing Israel with the Nazi regime. In practice, it is intended to deny Israel the right to defend itself against those seeking its destruction. One would expect that the complete and utter falsity of the genocide accusation and the abuse of international law which it entails, would be obvious to all. It is therefore with a sense of deep disappointment that we feel obliged, as the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, founded some 55 years ago by, among others, French Nobel Prize laureate René Cassin, an initiator and co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to publicly respond to a libel so patently untrue that a response should be unnecessary. We will do so by stating the obvious: There is no genocide or attempted genocide in Gaza. Israel is engaged in a military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist organization, which launched a widespread attack inside Israel on October 7th, 2023, taking control of over twenty towns and villages while murdering and wounding thousands. Hamas has, for decades, pursued a relentless campaign of terrorism against Israeli civilians aimed at achieving its declared aim of the destruction of the State of Israel. Statement by the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (IJL) in response to South Africa’s ICJ Application Accusing Israel of Genocide If Everything is Genocide, Nothing is Genocide 8 January 2024
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