It is no real coincidence that one of the brightest counsels on the legal team arguing South Africa's case against Israel for genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is an Irish lawyer. Wearing a 17th-century white wig over her long hair, Blinne Ni Ghralaigh gave a fearsomely clinical presentation on Thursday, January 11, in The Hague, Netherlands, of what she described as "the first live-streamed genocide" of the Palestinians in Gaza. The young lawyer, argue some of her admirers, benefits from a double qualification: A recognized expert in the defense of human rights in international law, she comes from a country that is a former colony.
This double qualification, and the fact that it is mentioned at all, illustrate the very particular dimension of the case brought against Israel before the United Nations' highest court. Focusing on the massive scale and human toll of Israel's military response to the massacres committed by Hamas on October 7, the South African appeal goes beyond mere legal proceedings. It is the complaint of the Global South against Western criteria of moral superiority. It calls into question an international order established by the defendant's most powerful ally, the United States. It is also a challenge to a collective memory dominated by the Shoah, which is openly opposed to that of colonization.
Israel accused of genocide before the ICJ is "an upside-down world," said an indignant Benyamin Netanyahu, prime minister of a country born of the greatest genocide of the 20th century, when six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazi regime. He couldn't be more right. The world is turning upside down, and what is happening these days before the 17 judges of the ICJ in The Hague is symbolic of this shift.
'Seventy-five years of apartheid'
Whatever the Court's final verdict on the genocidal nature of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, whatever its decision on Pretoria's request to suspend military operations, the mere fact that, in the current context, the case against Israel has been brought by a country, itself a symbol of colonial repression and racial segregation, is historic.
"Palestinians have endured 75 years of apartheid, 56 years of occupation, and 13 years of blockade," South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told the court. The figure of Nelson Mandela, an icon of resistance to apartheid and moral clarity, inevitably looms large over these hearings. To defend itself, Israel has chosen another symbol, a survivor of the Holocaust, 87-year-old judge Aharon Barak.
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