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Former ICJ President Says World Court Did Not Rule Genocide Claim Against Israel Is ‘Plausible’
A pro-Hamas demonstration outside the Israeli consulate in Cape Town, South Africa. Photo: Reuters/Nic Bothma
The former president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) clarified on Thursday that the court did not rule it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Joan Donoghue, who was president of the ICJ when the preliminary ruling was made, was asked on the BBC if the key point in the January ruling was that it was plausible Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians.
“It did not decide, and this is something where I’m correcting something that’s often said in the media,” she responded. “It did not decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
Rather, she explained, the court ruled on two things pertaining to the question of genocide. First, “the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide,” and second, that “South Africa had a right to present that in the court.”
In other words, they were answering procedural questions rather than substantive ones.
Joan O’Donoghue, President of Int’l Court of Justice when it made its Provisional Measures Order in SA’s case v. Israel alleging genocide, has confirmed it did not decide that SA’s claim of genocide was plausible: pic.twitter.com/MCNDw0yloS
— UK Lawyers For Israel (@UKLFI) April 25, 2024
Donoghue’s correction may have been necessary because, after the preliminary ruling, many observers began claiming the ICJ found Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide. An NPR article in late January, for example, was titled “A top UN court says Gaza genocide is ‘plausible’ but does not order cease-fire.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN’a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, claimed the ICJ “just recognized that the horror in Gaza plausibly constitutes genocide.”
The statement from Donoghue appeared to stand in stark contrast to what was claimed.
Still, others have said her new statement did not actually debunk that interpretation. Kenneth Roth, former executive director at Human Rights Watch, wrote on X/Twitter that Donoghue said “everyone has a right to be protected from genocide” and that “the court found it plausible that Palestinians’ right was in jeopardy.” Therefore, he argued, “that means it’s plausible that Israel is committing genocide.”
However, Donoghue’s statement was relatively clear. She added at the end: “The shorthand that often appears — that there’s a plausible case of genocide — isn’t what the court decided.”
Seemingly responding to that claim, Roth argued that, either way, “Donoghue isn’t on the court anymore, so her revisionist reinterpretation of the Gaza judgment doesn’t matter.”
Prior to the preliminary decision being handed down, 210 members of the US House of Representatives signed a letter arguing, “South Africa’s accusation of genocide against Israel exposes how far Israel’s enemies will go in their attempts to demonize the Jewish state.”
“While barely acknowledging the Hamas terrorists who gleefully massacred, mutilated, raped, and kidnapped innocent civilians on Oct. 7, South Africa makes grossly unfounded and defamatory charges against Israel on the world stage, abusing the judicial process in order to delegitimize the democratic State of Israel,” the letter argued.
Many Jews, including those in South Africa, welcomed the ICJ ruling because it did not impose a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza — which would have been an unprecedented step — and, more importantly, called for the release of the hundreds of hostages taken by the Hamas terrorist organization during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“The court’s call for the hostages to be freed is a fundamental requirement for the end of the conflict,” the South African Jewish Board of Deputies said at the time. “It is regrettable that the South African government did not put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages from the outset, which would have averted such terrible loss of life.”
In December, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.
The post Former ICJ President Says World Court Did Not Rule Genocide Claim Against Israel Is ‘Plausible’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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