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Israel faces charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Here’s why, and how Israel will respond.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Perhaps the most famous court case in Israel history was the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust. Next week, more than 60 years later, lawyers for the Israeli government will again grapple with an allegation of genocide — but this time as defendants and not as prosecutors.
That grim history helps explain why Israel has chosen to engage with the International Court of Justice, which will weigh a claim by South Africa that Israel is committing genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Israel is furious at the accusation, which it called a perversion of the genocide charge.
The ICJ will base its judgment on the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, which Israel joined almost as soon as the state was established because the convention was written in the wake of the Holocaust, in hopes of preventing another genocide.
“Israel decided to send a legal team because this is an outrageous application by South Africa and we will defend ourselves against those lies,” Lior Hayat, the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview.
Here’s what’s behind the accusation, how Israel is defending it and what to anticipate.
Who is adjudicating the accusation, and when?
The International Court of Justice, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, adjudicates claims against states. In the past it has considered disputes on everything from maritime border disputes to the United States’ funding of the Contras rebel groups in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The court, first convened in 1946, is the culmination of a series of international conferences that aimed to adjudicate disputes between nations as a means of preventing war.
The court has previously considered cases involving Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, the moving of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and an incident in 1955 in which an El Al flight was shot down over Bulgarian airspace.
The International Criminal Court in the same city adjudicates criminal allegations against individuals, such as generals or notorious despots including Libya’s Muammar Ghaddafi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The case was initiated late last month by South Africa, and the first hearings are next week, Jan. 11 and 12.
Why is Israel participating?
Israel has a tradition of not engaging with war crimes accusations against its officials, in part because it is not party to the 2002 compact that created the International Criminal Court. In light of the United Nations’ repeated votes and other measures placing blame on Israel, Israel sees the U.N. system as irredeemably biased, and feels that the charges are likely to be loaded.
But Israeli officials say the charge of genocide is too much for a state born in the ashes of the Holocaust to ignore.
“The State of Israel will appear before the International Court of Justice at The Hague to dispel South Africa’s absurd blood libel,” Eylon Levy, a government spokesman, said on Jan. 2.
Rumors have circulated that Alan Dershowitz, the emeritus Harvard Law professor and Israel advocate, will be part of Israel’s legal team, though he has not confirmed his participation. Dershowitz has been on the legal teams of other famous defendants, including O.J. Simpson and, more recently, President Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial. He did not reply to a request for comment.
Beyond seeking to stake a moral defense against a crime it has prosecuted against Nazi war criminals, there are practical reasons for Israel to participate. The ICJ’s process may take years, but if after next week’s hearing it finds enough evidence to go forward, it may call on the parties in the Gaza war to cease hostilities.
Such a court order would establish a legal basis for countries to boycott and isolate Israel and to restrict the movement of its officials if Israel does not comply.
Two years ago, Ukraine sought and received a similar order from the court in its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion. But while both cases involve genocide, the Russia and Israel trials differ: Ukraine is not accusing Russia of genocide. Rather, it went to the ICJ to contest Russia’s accusation that Ukraine is committing genocide — which Putin has cited as a pretext for the war.
Russia, which is massive and has built an insular economy, ignored the order. But Israel, a small country allied with the West, can’t afford to make the same choice, said Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an influential Washington think tank with close ties to Israel’s government.
“If Israel is ordered to do what Russia [was] ordered to do, which would be to immediately suspend its military operations, it would certainly be bad for Israel from a PR perspective,” said Kittrie, who is a law professor at Arizona State University. “You don’t want to be violating international law. You don’t want to be fighting when you’ve been told to stop.”
The Biden administration has indicated that it will not honor any injunctions targeting Israel as a result of the genocide charges. “We find this submission meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.
Pro-Palestinian protestors supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel in Cape Town, South Africa, Sept. 21, 2015. Michelly Rall/Getty Images)
Why is South Africa making the charge?
South Africa’s government sees itself as a bulwark against what it casts as western imperialism. It also wants to push back against perceptions in the West that, since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, it has devolved into corruption, authoritarianism and alliances with repressive regimes.
In 2017, it ignored an ICC warrant for the arrest of then-Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir on genocide charges, allowing him to enter the country.
In addition to the genocide accusation, it has embraced charges that Israel is guilty of apartheid, the crime of institutionalized racial discrimination that was South Africa’s hallmark under white minority rule for decades. Its leaders have never forgiven Israel for cozying up to the apartheid regime. Its parliament in November, in a non-binding vote, said the government should expel Israeli diplomats.
“South Africa has been engaged on the Palestinian issue since really the end of apartheid and the founding of the state,” Michael Walsh, a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley, told Vox. “It’s been a prominent issue in South African politics and among South African leaders.”
What is the basis for the genocide accusation?
Pro-Palestinian activists and anti-Zionist figures have been accusing Israel of genocide since the earliest days of the war — an allegation Israeli and other scholars across the political spectrum have strenuously denied both in this conflict and previous rounds of fighting. (A recent letter by a group of Israeli public figures — unconnected with the ICJ case — did accuse some Israeli officials of incitement to genocide, though not of the crime of genocide itself.)
South Africa’s charging document in the ICJ case, which outlines what it calls acts of genocide and also intent, relies on many of the same arguments pro-Palestinian activists have made in recent months.
The acts are drawn from news accounts of the carnage, which according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has topped 22,000 Palestinian casualties, including thousands of children. That number doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Also included are warnings by international bodies that the population of the enclave is on the verge of mass starvation and disease. “The acts in which Israel has engaged … are genocidal in character, having regard to their nature, scope and context,” the charging document says.
In seeking to establish intent, South Africa quotes statements by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that South Africa claims are genocidal in scope.
That is an “extraordinarily challenging” standard to meet, according to an analysis by Alaa Hachem and Oona Hathaway at Just Security, an online security think tank run out of the New York University School of Law. “It requires proof of a specific intent to destroy a group in whole or in part.”
The South African charging document quotes a speech Netanyahu delivered to the Knesset, describing the war as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle,” which South Africa called a “a dehumanizing theme to which he returned on various occasions.”
That quote and some of the others in the document, the FDD’s Kittrie noted, refer not to the Palestinians as a whole but to Hamas. Kittrie said that Israeli leaders on other occasions have made clear that their war is with the terrorist group that launched the conflict with massacres that took the lives of some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, on Oct. 7.
“Our war against Hamas, the Hamas terrorist organization, is a war — it’s not a war against the people of Gaza,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said last month at a press conference with Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary.
Smoke is seen over Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip from the Israeli side of the border, Oct. 27, 2023. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
Other more damning quotes cited in the document come from figures on the far right. It quotes for instance Amichai Eliahu, the minister of heritage who is a member of the Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, party, who has said, “There is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and has called to nuke the territory.
Those figures are not making decisions in the war, Kittrie said. “The South Africans point to a few statements by members of the Knesset,” he said. “They take some statements out of context.”
That may be the case, said Yaniv Roznai, a law professor at Reichman University in Israel, but it is incumbent on Netanyahu and others to get their allies to avoid indulging fantasies of ethnic cleansing at an extraordinarily risky time.
“Instead of understanding that words have meanings, and that we are in wartime and to watch their mouths and not say really stupid things,” Netanyahu and others are “trying to explain them,” Roznai said in a podcast for UnXeptable, a group that opposes the massive judicial reforms Netanyahu sought before the war.
What will Israel’s case be?
Kittrie said Israel will be able to show it has instituted mitigation measures in its military campaign.
“Israel’s extensive advance warning and other measures to mitigate harm to Gaza civilians make clear that Israel’s goal is not to commit genocide but, far from it, to instead minimize Palestinian civilian casualties while lawfully exercising Israel’s rights to rescue its hostages, apprehend the Oct. 7 perpetrators, and ensure that Israel’s population is secure from further attacks,” he said.
Israeli spokespeople have also suggested that Israel will seek to turn the tables, and level charges of genocide against Hamas.
“The Hamas terrorist organization — which is committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and sought to commit genocide on 7 October — is responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by using them as human shields and stealing humanitarian aid from them,” the Foreign Ministry’s Hayat said in a statement.
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US Says That Israel Accepts Gaza Ceasefire Plan; Hamas Cool to It
A picture released by the Israeli Army says to show Israeli soldiers conducting operations in a location given as Tel Al-Sultan area, Rafah Governorate, Gaza, in this handout image released April 2, 2025. Photo: Israeli Army/Handout via REUTERS
Israel has agreed to a US ceasefire proposal for Gaza, the White House said on Thursday, and Hamas said it was reviewing the plan although its terms did not meet the Palestinian terrorist group’s demands.
As a US-backed system for distributing food aid in the war-torn enclave expanded, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the families of hostages held in Gaza that Israel had accepted a deal presented by US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Netanyahu’s office did not confirm the reports, but White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters in Washington that Israel had signed off on the proposal.
She did not detail its contents. But the New York Times quoted an Israeli official familiar with the proposal as saying the initial phase would include a 60-day ceasefire and humanitarian aid flowing through UN-run operations.
Hamas said it was studying the proposal, and senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters the group was still discussing it.
But Abu Zuhri said its terms echoed Israel‘s position and do not contain commitments to end the war, withdraw Israeli troops, or admit aid as Hamas has demanded.
Deep differences between Hamas and Israel have stymied previous attempts to restore a ceasefire that broke down in March after only two months.
Israel has insisted that Hamas disarm completely and be dismantled as a military and governing force and that all 58 hostages still held in Gaza must be returned before it will agree to end the war.
Hamas has rejected the demand to give up its weapons and says Israel must pull its troops out of Gaza and commit to ending the war.
Witkoff told reporters on Wednesday that Washington was close to “sending out a new term sheet” about a ceasefire to the two sides in the conflict that has raged since October 2023.
“I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution, temporary ceasefire and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution, of that conflict,” Witkoff said then.
Israel has come under increasing international pressure, with many European countries that have normally been reluctant to criticize it openly demanding an end to the war and a major relief effort.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the devastating Hamas attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage into Gaza.
The post US Says That Israel Accepts Gaza Ceasefire Plan; Hamas Cool to It first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘A Slap in the Face’: Chicago Venue Cancels Plans to Screen Documentary About Antisemitism for Second Time
Israeli-American rapper Kosha Dillz performs his new song “Bring the family home,” his response to Hamas’s attacks, in front of a Jewish bakery in lower Manhattan, US, Oct. 11, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Aleksandra Michalska
A Chicago theater that canceled the screening of a documentary about campus antisemitism and then agreed to reschedule a showing has now made the final decision not to screen the film at its venue after facing harassment, it announced on Tuesday.
The Facets Film Forum, which operates the Facets arts theater in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, claimed in a statement that Israeli-American Jewish filmmaker and rapper Kosha Dillz and the Chicago Jewish Alliance (CJA) – which helped organize the original screening that was canceled — have allegedly engaged in harassment against the venue, making it “impossible” for the Facets to move forward with a showing of “Bring the Family Home.” The documentary covers the rise of antisemitism on US college campuses after the Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This is the first film directed by Kosha Dillz, whose real name is Rami Even-Esh, and it focuses largely on anti-Israel encampments and sentiments at DePaul University and Northwestern University. Facets is located down the street from DePaul.
A rough cut of “Bring the Family Home” was set to premiere at Facets on May 13, but mere hours before the screening, the venue canceled the event, citing safety and security concerns for its patrons and staff. After facing an abundance of criticism from Kosha Dillz, CJA, and their supporters, Facets agreed to work with the filmmaker to reschedule the screening for later this summer.
“Facets Film Forum respects the First Amendment, its protections of free speech and the right to express views through film,” Facets said in a statement on May 16. “We regret any unintended offense our decision to cancel a privately organized, public film screening caused the filmmaker, those seeking to attend the event, and members of our community who have experienced or witnessed oppression or discrimination in any form.”
However, this week the theater has backtracked on its decision to reschedule the screening, before it even announced a new date for the event.
“Rather than acknowledging the legitimacy of our concerns and decisions, CJA and the filmmaker, and individuals that appear to be their supporters, have engaged in harassing Facets,” the venue claimed. It alleged that supporters of the film were “vilifying” Facets in an email campaign targeting donors, arts groups, and others, and even shared “vicious” posts on social media “attacking Facets.” The posts allegedly included offers for a “bounty to anyone willing to burn down Facets’ building,” which Facets reported to authorities. The venue also claimed that supporters of “Bring the Family Home” recording a conversation with a Facets staff members without consent and then posted it online, sharing personal contact details.
CJA launched an email campaign earlier this month that urged its supporters to reach out to Facets about the cancellation on May 13. CJA claimed the venue called off the event “because of discomfort with Jewish visibility” and called the move “shameful” and “a disgrace.” Facets said on Tuesday that more than 2,500 emails were sent.
“Given these acts, we are ceasing any further discussions with CJA and Mr. Dillz. Facets will not tolerate harassment of its staff from any organization,” the theater said in the statement this week. “Facets will continue to remain committed to our mission and the safety of our staff and guests.”
Facets said that for five decades, it has “provided a safe space for the community to experience a vast variety of film perspectives.” The venue noted that it hosted an event as part of the Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema’s 20th Anniversary Celebration in March. Earlier this month, the theater also screened “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary that heavily criticizes Israel’s demolition of a village in the West Bank. “Bring the Family Home” was originally meant to be mentioned on the marquee outside of Facets along with “No Other Land,” said Kosha Dillz.
In its statement, Facets also listed three Jewish or Israel-themed movies that it has screened in the past, including “Come Closer,” “In Between,” and “Zone of Interest.” None of those films depict pro-Israel sentiments or a condemnation of antisemitism like “Bring the Family Home.”
Kosha Dillz told The Algemeiner on Thursday he cannot believe that he has been canceled twice by the same venue, which has not screened his film even once. “I was quite shocked,” he said. “It’s exhausting to deal with this for the second time. How can they cancel a film twice that hasn’t been shown once. To me, that’s just representative of what the Jewish community has to deal with.”
He also denied taking part in the alleged harassment that Facets claimed it faced, including the email campaign and calls online to burn down the venue.
“The 2,500 emails — those are people that aren’t related to me. I don’t know them. Obviously, they know me,” he noted. “They made it seem as if I was the one who rallied people to email them and take away their funding. That’s obviously not true.”
Even now, after Facets made the final decision not to screen “Bring the Family Home,” Kosha Dillz does not support efforts to attack the venue for the move.
“I don’t think bullying people who have gotten bullied makes sense. I don’t think that’s a win-win situation,” he explained. “I don’t believe in people ganging up on them. I just think they were bullied by other bullies.”
Kosha Dillz had multiple Zoom meetings and sent several emails back and forth with leaders at Facet to reschedule a screening of “Bring the Family Home,” hoping to find a new date for the event. Following the decision by Facets this week to call off all efforts for a screening, Kosha Dillz told The Algemeiner that he is upset but will now focus his time and energy on finding a new venue to screen the documentary.
“It’s called selective Jewishness,” he said of the move by Facets. “They are picking which voices they get to hear and they’re letting other people define it for them. I was the one who offered for them to make it good [after the initial cancellation] and they took me up on it and then, you know … it’s kind of a slap in the face. But the first time, shame on them. The second time, shame on me.”
On Wednesday, CJA released a statement on social media in response to Facets decision this week and also the allegations against the Jewish group.
“We objected, respectfully and publicly, to the theater’s sudden about-face. We sent emails. We asked questions. We defended a Jewish voice that refused to conform to the approved script. For that, they accused us of harassment,” CJA said. “If Facets believes in free speech, it must apply to Jews who are visible, assertive, and yes, Zionist. Anything less is not inclusion. It’s performance. We remain proud partners of ‘Bring the Family Home’ and of every Jewish artist who refuses to stay quiet just to stay included.”
CJA also accused Facets of “cultural exclusion” and “soft censorship,” making “endless excuses” and “shifting standards for what qualifies as ‘appropriate’ Jewish expression.”
CJA said “Bring the Family Home” will be shown in Chicago on June 22, but a venue has yet to be secured.
The post ‘A Slap in the Face’: Chicago Venue Cancels Plans to Screen Documentary About Antisemitism for Second Time first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Part of Our Commitment to the Palestinian People’: Anti-Israel Group Vandalizes Jewish-Owned Business in London
Vandals targeted a Jewish-owned real estate business in London on May 28-29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
A Jewish-owned real estate business in London was vandalized by a radical anti-Israel group overnight on Wednesday into Thursday in an attack that local Jewish leaders called a “traumatic antisemitic targeting.”
Video shows two masked people dressed in all black smashing the windows of the business — which is located in Stamford Hill, a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood — and spraying it with red paint. Pictures in the aftermath of the vandalism show shattered glass and red paint all over the office, and other reports say computers and furniture were also wrecked.
Last night in London’s Stamford Hill: A Jewish business completely destroyed by vandals who spray-painted “Drop Elbit”—targeting a company with NO ties to Israel whatsoever. Jewish businesses. Jewish people. Targeted for being Jewish. pic.twitter.com/JruV4Si4J9
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) May 29, 2025
“This should be treated as [an] antisemitic incident without any doubt,” Rabbi Herschel Gluck, president of Jewish security service Shomrim’s branch in Stamford Hill, told the Jewish Chronicle. “[The owners] are visibly Jewish; the people who run the business and this business itself have nothing to do with Israel.”
According to the Chronicle, the authorities were “called as soon as the damage was discovered on Thursday morning and the Metropolitan Police were notified shortly afterwards.”
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that the investigation is ongoing and that no arrests have been made so far. “This incident is being treated as racially aggravated criminal damage,” the statement continued.
“We understand the concern this may cause members of the Jewish community,” the police noted. “Officers are working with community leaders and patrols have increased across the local area.”
Palestine Action, the group behind the vandalism, took responsibility for it on social media.
BREAKING: Palestine Action target the London-based landlords of Kent’s Elbit weapons factory, Instro Precision.
Instro Precision continues to export targeting gear to Israel, making both the Israeli weapons maker and its landlord, perpetrators of genocide. pic.twitter.com/TDN2yrEump
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) May 29, 2025
“Palestine Action target[s] the London-based landlords of Kent’s Elbit weapons factory, Instro Precision,” the group posted on X. “Instro Precision continues to export targeting gear to Israel, making both the Israeli weapons maker and its landlord, perpetrators of genocide.”
Along with vandalism of the business itself, “Drop Elbit” was also spray-painted on the pavement outside it, referring to Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense firm that is an industry leader.
A spokesperson for the group said the attack was a “part of our commitment to the Palestinian people” because “we will not allow companies on our doorstep to profit from mass murder.” The real estate group, it claimed, is “the [landlord] of a Kent-based Israeli weapons factory which is exporting targeting gear for the Israeli military.”
However, according to Gluck, the attack “is pure antisemitism” because “the people have no connection to Israel at all. They [the vandals] are accusing this company of having a connection to an Israeli arms manufacturer, which is not true.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) responded to the vandalism on X, asking, “Why is Palestine Action still not banned?”
“Palestine Action is a criminal enterprise operating freely in the UK and terrorizing the Jewish community,” it wrote. “It must be banned and its organizers and activists prosecuted.”
This latest vandalism is part of a general spike in antisemitism in the UK.
The UK experienced its second-worst year for antisemitism in 2024, despite recording an 18 percent drop in antisemitic incidents from the previous year’s all-time high, according to a report released in February.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, released data showing it recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, a drop of 18 percent from the 4,296 in 2023. These numbers compare to 1,662 antisemitic incidents in 2022, 2,261 in 2021, and 1,684 in 2020.
Last year’s total “is a reflection of the sustained levels of antisemitism that have been recorded across the UK since the Hamas terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023,” CST said of its findings. “CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report 2023 charted the immediacy and scope of the rise in anti-Jewish hate following that attack, before Israel had set in motion any extensive military response in Gaza.”
The post ‘Part of Our Commitment to the Palestinian People’: Anti-Israel Group Vandalizes Jewish-Owned Business in London first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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