Apartheid Israel is officially on trial for genocide

26 January 2024

The SA BDS Coalition welcomes the ICJ order at the Hague today. This historic judgement demonstrates the validity of the meticulously compiled case by the South African legal team and what most people around the world can clearly see - the genocide unfolding on our screens over the last 112 days.

The SA BDS Coalition is proud that the South African government hauled apartheid Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ is now compelled to investigate and hold Israel accountable for its genocide on the people of Gaza under the Genocide Convention.

The ICJ today made history. It confirmed the plausibility of South Africa's charge under the Genocide Convention that “Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.” It ordered Israel to prevent any genocidal act, to stop its military from committing such acts, and to ensure the provision of the entry of food, water, medicine and other humanitarian needs into the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip.
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While the Court fell short of explicitly ordering an immediate and permanent ceasefire to stop the genocide, in the words of Minister Pandor at the Hague: “How do you provide aid and water without a ceasefire? If you read the order, by implication a ceasefire must happen.”
States must now be pressured more than ever to fulfill their legal obligations to impose a ceasefire on Israel.

Today is the 112th day since the Apartheid state of Israel began its latest outrage of ethnically cleansing Palestinians in Gaza. More than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, 75% of whom are women and children, and more than 8,000 others lie buried under the rubble. More than 64,000 people have been injured; schools, mosques, churches and hospitals, medical personnel, journalists and academics are being targeted. It is a massive humanitarian catastrophe, with starvation and the spread of diseases, while Apartheid Israel’s murderous massacres, bombardments, and wanton destruction continue. More than 2 million people have been displaced.

“Our call for a ‘ceasefire now’ must ring out louder than ever before! It is up to us - people of conscience across the world - to rise up in unprecedented numbers and demand the immediate end to genocide,” said Terri Maggott, a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign member after watching the judgement.

Now is the time to wield the weapon of BDS in support of the Palestinian people for whom simply to exist is to resist.

The South African application recognised the context of the current genocide, stating that an “ongoing Nakba through Israel’s colonization since 1948” has been perpetrated on Palestinians.

Now is the time to disrupt business as usual with the genocidal state of Israel and those countries and companies that are complicit. Israel must be seen in all its nakedness as a terrorist and barbaric state that must be reduced to a pariah in the world, just as its late unlamented former friend, apartheid South Africa.

We demand that our government implement policies for a full trade embargo, sports, cultural and academic boycotts, and sanctions. Apartheid Israel must also be kicked out of the Olympics, FIFA and all international sporting bodies.

It is long overdue that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) pursues cases of South Africans joining the Israeli Occupation Forces, particularly as South Africa has an obligation as a state party to the Genocide Convention to “prevent” and to “punish” this most egregious crime against humanity, and our own law, the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act makes joining the IOF illegal.

We urge the International Criminal Court (ICC) to act with the urgency required to prosecute individuals responsible for genocide, including Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of the murderous Israeli war cabinet. ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan must be forced to resign and be charged with complicity for his abject failure to act against the genocidal Israeli government.

All states, corporations and institutions, including media institutions that are complicit in Israel’s 75-year-old settler-colonialism, apartheid and military occupation must end this complicity at once and be held accountable for aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. States that have knowingly supplied arms, materials and other support to Israel for use in its atrocities must be held to account. They are complicit in genocide.

International law alone cannot bring us justice. Only our relentless mobilisation to build people power can ultimately end international state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s 75-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid and thus support Palestinian liberation.

We defeated the apartheid regime in South Africa and we will stand in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, side by side, until they defeat the genocidal apartheid Israeli regime.

Issued by SABDS Coalition, 26 January 2024