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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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Iran Criticizes Arab-Islamic Summit Statement, Flags Objections After Doha Meeting
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.
According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”
On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”
In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”
Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.
In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.
Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.
The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”
As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”
During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
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“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.