Israel has hit back at South Africa after the BRICS member state filed a case of genocide against the Jewish government at the International Criminal Court.
In its application filed on 29 December, South Africa accused Israel of engaging in genocidal acts with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, considering them as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnic group.
‘Devil’s advocate’
‘The state of Israel emphatically condemns South Africa’s decision to play advocate for the devil and make itself criminal complicit with the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre,” said Israeli Government Spokesman in the October 7 War, Eylon Levy.
Levy has flipped the script, saying the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, committed genocide during the October 7 attacks.
“It was an act of genocide perpetrated with Nazi-like cruelty and Nazi-like efficiency in the service of a Nazi-like ideology.”
“Hamas openly makes clear its genocidal intent. On October 24, Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Lebanese television, We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again.”
Israel also accused South Africa of aligning itself with a ‘rapist’ regime and supporting the group’s “machinery of genocide.”
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International Court of Justice (ICJ)
Israel is expected to appear before the International Court of Justice in Hague later this month, where it will contest South Africa’s genocide accusations.
South Africa’s legal team for the court action include heavy hitters such as:
- Tembeka Ngcukaitob SC – Justice
- Adila Hassim SC – Presidency
- Max du Plessis SC – Dirco
- Tshidiso Ramogale – Justice
- Lerato Zikalala – Justice
- Sarah Pudifin-Jones – Presidency
So far, Turkiye and Malaysia have backed South Africa’s case against Israel.
Hamas members visit South Africa
Last November, Hamas politburo member Bassem Naim; representative in Iran Khaled Qaddoumi, and international relations director for East, Central and Southern Africa Emad Saber visited South Africa to participate in the Fifth Global Convention of Solidarity with Palestine.
While no officials from South Africa’s International Relations Department or Presidency met with Hamas, its leaders were present at a wreath-laying ceremony commemorating the 10th death anniversary of Nelson Mandela.
The struggle icon was a fervent champion of Palestine, making a Palestinian state one of his leading international causes when he became South Africa’s first black president.
In the same month, South Africa’s Parliament voted to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel until it agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza. The country’s governing party, the African National Congress, also backed calls to close down the Israel embassy in the country’s capital, Pretoria.
“We cannot sit back and watch the genocidal actions of the Israeli regime,” said ANC spokeswoman Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsir at the time.
“The African National Congress will agree to a parliamentary motion which calls upon the government to close the Israel embassy in South Africa and suspend all diplomatic relations with Israel.”
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) condemned Hamas’ visit to the country, saying the group was “dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel and which portrays Jews as being an intrinsically evil people who must be hunted down and killed wherever they might be. It says so in its Charter, and its heinous attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October bears this out”.
Additional reporting by AFP.
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