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We are told that the case in which Israel is accused of genocide in Gaza, which has opened in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, could take years to reach a verdict.

So, let us save all of those 17 judges sitting in the ICJ and everybody else a lot of time and millions of euros. Israel is not guilty of committing genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza in its war of self-defence against the Islamic terrorists of Hamas.

In truth, Israel is guilty of being the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East, and the only Jewish state on Earth. Defending those qualities has now caused Israel to be branded as uniquely criminal, not only by South Africa (which brought the ICJ case), but also across much of the world, including by many in Europe and the US.

To the shame of Europe, in the ancient Dutch city of The Hague, the United Nations highest court is now staging one of the most grotesque spectacles of political theatre seen in modern times.

The formal title is Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel). A more fitting title might be Gaza Through the Looking Glass because the case before the ICJ has stood reality on its head and turned the truth inside out, in the fantastical manner of Lewis Carrolls Alice stories.

Israel stands accused of the crime of genocide, essentially because it is waging war on the Jew-hating, genocidal murderers of Hamas.

The case offers a thin legal faade for a political vendetta against Israel. Under the UN Genocide Convention, for a state to be found guilty of genocide there must be a proven intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. South Africas lawyers argued in court that Israels campaign in Gaza was intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, religious and ethnical group.

In reality, there has been no intent on Israels part to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza. Quite the opposite; the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have done more than any other army in wartime to try to limit civilian casualties, including targeting attacks on Hamas bases and warning people to evacuate.

Of course, war is a brutal business and there have still been thousands of civilian casualties. Not least because Hamas uses the civilian population of Gaza as human shields, and builds military bases in highly-populated areas, hospitals, and schools. But lets be clear: the only part of the Palestinian group that the IDF has shown proven intent to destroy is that part involved in Hamas Islamist jihad to destroy Israel and kill Jews. To accuse Israel of genocidal intent is effectively to say that war is genocideif you are on what the woke deem the wrong side of history.

In this conflict only Hamas has demonstrated its proven intent to commit genocide. The war began with the pogrom Hamas terrorists launched against Israel on October 7th that left more than 1,200 deadthe bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Nazi Holocaustwith some 240 taken hostage. Hamas didnt only butcher, brutalise, and rape Jewsit boasted about its antisemitic pogrom, in Gaza and across social media, in a way that even the Nazis never did.

Hamas is proudly guilty of genocidal intent, of killing Jews for being Jewishcondemned out of its own mouth. Yet that truth has been turned upside-down, so that the Israelis fighting to eliminate genocidal Islamists themselves stand accused of genocide. And many in the West seem to accept that inversion of reality.

Some might have expected the central role of South Africa to at least raise questions about this case. The post-apartheid Republic of South Africa is widely regarded as a failed state, wracked by violent crime, oppression, corruption, and poverty. Even the UN and other Israelophobic global agencies are forced to rank South Africa well below Israel in their league tables regarding democratic rights and civil liberties.

Most of the majority black population appears no better off under the autocratic ANC regime than under the racist apartheid state, while the few remaining white farmers are subject to a campaign of violence that last year prompted South Africa-born Elon Musk to express fears of a genocide of white people in his homeland.

Yet now, by fronting the genocide case at the ICJ, South Africa hopes to posture on the moral high ground of global politics, looking down in judgement on the apartheid state of Israel (you see what they did there?). It has been joined by many of the worst repressive regimes in the world, all queuing to back anti-Israel resolutions passed at the UN that do not mention the Hamas massacres. Once again, the one Jewish state on earth is held to different standards than the rest. Why ever could that be?

Surely more doubts about this attempted show trial should have been raised by the fact that Hamas itself enthusiastically supports South Africa bringing the case to court. In an official statement, Hamas looked forward to the judges of the ICJ delivering a decision that does justice to victims and which demands that Israel stop the aggression. One might almost imagine that Hamas were innocent victims of injustice, perhaps on a par with the persecuted UK sub-postmasters, rather than an Islamist death cult that has sworn to repeat its antisemitic aggression of October 7th again and again and again.

Yet despite all of that, many in Europe and the West have joined Hamas in demanding that the ICJ find Israel guilty of genocide. The crazed Islamoleft scream that Israel is, in the words of a leading UK leftist, a society possessed with murderous mania. And such manic Israel-bashing is no longer confined to the radical fringes.

Belgiums deputy prime minister, Petra de Sutter, quickly broke ranks with the likes of Germany and the UK to demand that Europe must join South Africas case against the threat of genocide in Gaza. Many other EU member states, from Spain to Ireland, have accused Israel of slaughtering civilians and demanded an immediate ceasefirewhich, as Democracy Watch has argued all along, amounts to demanding that Israel surrender.

A glance through the 80-odd pages of South Africas application to the ICJ confirms that this is a political witch-hunt dressed up as a legal indictment; an attempted show trial disguised as an appeal for justice.

Their documented case to prove Israels genocidal intent rests largely on rhetoric rather than evidence. They cite the bellicose rhetoric of selected Israeli figuressuch as the defence minister who, in the aftermath of the barbaric Hamas massacres of October 7th, said Israel was at war with human animals. And they counterpose this to the shrill rhetoric of UN and other aid agenciessome of which, as reported by The European Conservative, are heavily involved with the Hamas authoritiessimply declaring that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza.

One particularly surreal section that leapt out of the court application was the allegation that Israel is guilty of genocide because it is Imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births through something called reproductive violence. It cites the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls asserting that, the reproductive violence inflicted by Israel on Palestinian women, newborn babies, infants, and children could be qualified as acts of genocide.

No doubt women and childrenand perhaps especially pregnant womenare suffering the consequences of the war in Gaza. But the claim that Israel must thus be guilty of reproductive violence is bizarre. Yet it is in tune with much of the media coverage of the war, which highlights claims that Gaza has become a graveyard for children and death zone for babies.

In 40 years of following war reporting around the world, I have never before seen such an emphasis on the suffering of children and images of dead babies. (Though far less attention is paid to the Jewish children killed and kidnapped on October 7th.) It looks like a campaign to demonise the Israeli state as uniquely cruel. And doesnt it conjure up a modern version of the ancient blood libel about Jews supposedly slaughtering Christian children? Perhaps we should be grateful that nobody has (yet) gone full blood libel and alleged that the Israelis are using Palestinians babies blood to bake their bread

Let us step back from the clouds of legalese, and remember what is at stake here. Israelis are engaged in an existential war against enemies who want to wipe their state off the map and drive the Jews into the Mediterraneanthe real meaning of that from the river to the sea slogan so beloved of the Western Left. Israels war against the genocidal Islamists of Hamas is also the frontline of a wider conflict which we have defined from the start as one between civilisation and barbarism.

Yet even to say that today is to risk being accused of endorsing genocide. If you think I exaggerate, look at the legal document South Africas lawyers have set before the International Court of Justice. There you will find, presented as incontrovertible proof of Israels genocidal intent, a December quote from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he dared to suggest that This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, its a battle of civilisation against barbarism.

Several years ago, in a left-wing demonstration in Europe, I recall a banner declaring that Civilisation Is Genocide. That self-loathing sentiment now seems to have colonised the institutions of the West, everywhere from the UN and the ICJ to the universities and the mainstream media.

As a result Israel, a democratic state founded in response to the Holocaust, the worst genocide in human history, which is now fighting for its civilised life against genocidal antisemites, finds itself cast in the role of global villain. At a time when Islamism threatens world peace, we are invited instead to focus on the alleged crimes of the democratic Jewish state in the frontline of fighting against it.

If there is a crime on display in The Hague, it looks like global conspiracy to commit perjury against the Israel people.

Whatever the ICJ rules, the Israeli government has vowed to pursue its war against Hamas. But the attempt to brand Israel as guilty of genocide is an important part of the wider campaign to isolate the only democracy in the Middle East and legitimise global intervention against it. So let all who believe in true justice and democracy continue to make our case clear. We are guilty of standing with Israel against Islamism; of standing with the Jewish people against antisemitism, old and new; and, yes, we plead guilty to standing for civilisation against barbarism.

Excerpt from:
DEMOCRACY WATCH Israel Is Only 'Guilty' of Fighting Against Genocide - The European Conservative