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Israeli President Blasts ‘Blood Libel’ at Hague, Says Court ‘Twisted’ Words to Contend Genocidal Intent
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog delivers a speech during a tribute ceremony at the Halle aux Grains in Toulouse, southern France, on March 20, 2022. Photo: Ludovic Marin/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli President Isaac Herzog blasted the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its handling of the genocide allegations against Israel on Monday, describing it as a “blood libel” and accusing it of “twisting” his words to make the claim that Israel sees all Gazans as legitimate military targets.
“There is something shocking about seeing how the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon permeates even the most important institutions,” Herzog said during an event for fallen IDF soldiers at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem.
Herzog accused the court of misrepresenting his statements following the October 7 Hamas massacre, suggesting that he viewed all Gazan civilians as legitimate military targets.
“I was disgusted by the way they twisted my words, using very, very partial and fragmented quotes, with the intention of supporting an unfounded legal contention,” he said.
He went on to emphasize that Israel abides by international law and is committed to the protection of civilians in Gaza.
The Court on Friday ruled that Israel could “plausibly” be committing acts of genocide but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire in a 15-2 decision.
Herzog’s comments from an October 12 briefing were included in South Africa’s submission along with a litany of remarks by Israelis that Pretoria said showed “genocidal intent”, including by notable Israelis outside the halls of power, including celebrities.
“They were not simply quoting people from the chain of command who are obviously relevant, they were quoting people from anywhere they could find, including TV personalities, singers, and goodness knows what,” Israeli diplomat and international lawyer Daniel Taub told journalists in a phone call on Sunday.
Herzog’s alleged inflammatory remarks were presented by the ICJ as a single statement when in fact it was several sentences cobbled together and taken out of context.
“It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat,” Herzog said five days after the attack.
Asked to clarify by a reporter whether that meant that they were, “by implication, legitimate targets,” the Israeli president said, “No, I didn’t say that.”
“We are operating militarily according to the rules of international rules. Period. Unequivocally,” he said.
On Sunday, he said: “I was here – in this very hall – a few days after the terrible massacre, when I was asked by the world’s media about the situation in Gaza, I replied that the widespread civilian support in Gaza for the crimes and atrocities of October 7 could not be ignored, and that Hamas operates from the heart of the civilian population everywhere, from children’s bedrooms in homes, from schools, from mosques, and hospitals.
“But I added and emphasized, that for the State of Israel – and of course for me personally – innocent civilians are not considered targets in any way whatsoever.
“There are also innocent Palestinians in Gaza. I am deeply sorry for the tragedy they are going through. From the first day of the war right until today, I call and am working for humanitarian aid for them, and only for them. This is part of our values as a country,” he added.
“But the reality cannot be ignored, a reality which we all saw with our own eyes as published by Hamas on that cursed day: and that was the involvement of many residents of Gaza in the slaughter, in the looting, and in the riots of October 7. How the crowds in Gaza cheered at the sight of Israelis being slaughtered and their bodies mutilated. At the sight of hostages – God knows what they did to them – wounded and bleeding being dragged through the streets. In view of such terrible crimes, it is appropriate that the honorable court investigates them in depth, and not casually in passing,” Herzog said.
He added that Hamas was also “responsible for the suffering of their own people.”
The fact that the ICJ hearing to judge whether the “democratic, moral and responsible State of Israel, which rose from the ashes of the Holocaust,” took place on the eve of the International Holocaust Memorial Day, “undermined the very values on which this court was established,” he said.
Israel has been requested to submit a report to the Hague in one month’s time regarding the steps it is taking to protect civilian lives in Gaza. “In practice that shouldn’t be difficult because there’s nothing in the order that Israel isn’t committed to anyway. But [there are] political implications of continuing to cooperate with the court,” Taub said.
Taub went on to say that the ICJ case was not only putting Israel on trial, but western democracies at large.
“The question is does international law give law-abiding countries tools with which they can lawfully confront terrorist groups that are adopting these kinds of cynical tactics?”
If the court would have found Israel guilty of genocide and ordered it to call a ceasefire, then democracies around the world would have had “enormous frustrations”, Taub said, in upholding international law themselves. They would see the ruling as a “suicide pact” particularly in light of the fact that Israel’s military goes to greater lengths than some of them in avoiding civilian deaths, he said.
South Africa’s 84-page submission contained footnotes from an “incestuous circle of UN bodies that are all quoting each other,” he said, with “facts and figures that have very little independent verification.”
Journalist Yair Rosenberg has pointed to several statements allegedly made by senior Israeli officials that purportedly point to genocidal intent as either grossly misrepresented or not said at all. One is a quote attributed to Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, which reads: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” As Rosenberg notes in The Atlantic, the quote, in its truncated version, was cited by The New York Times, (twice) NPR, the BBC, The Washington Post, and in The Guardian. Gallant actually said: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.”
“This mistaken rendering of Gallant’s words was publicly invoked last week by South Africa’s legal team in the International Court of Justice as evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent; it served as one of their only citations sourced to someone in Israel’s war cabinet,” Rosenberg wrote in The Atlantic.
Rosenberg also said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s quote from the Bible about Amalek, which was used by the Court and several media outlets to point to the targeting of civilians as policy, was actually misunderstood. Whereas Netanyahu was quoting Deuteronomy, the South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi argued in the Hague that he was quoting from the book of Samuel, written hundreds of years later and containing a directive to kill all Amalekites including “women, children and infants, cattle and sheep.”
“These omissions and misinterpretations are not merely cosmetic: They misled readers, judges, and politicians. None of them should have happened,” Rosenberg writes.
No one should be “cavalierly accusing people or countries of committing genocide based on thirdhand mistranslations or truncated quotations,” he concluded.
The post Israeli President Blasts ‘Blood Libel’ at Hague, Says Court ‘Twisted’ Words to Contend Genocidal Intent first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Bryan Singer Secretly Filmed Period Drama With Jon Voight Critical of Israel for Lebanon War: Report
Jon Voight at the opening night of the 2023 Beverly Hills Film Festival held at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood, California, on April 19, 2023. Photo: FS//AdMedia/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Jewish-American filmmaker Bryan Singer has returned to the director’s chair after a long hiatus with a film starring Oscar winner Jon Voight that is set in the Middle East and critical of Israel, Variety revealed on Wednesday.
Singer secretly filmed the period drama and one source who saw the final cut, but is not involved with the production, thinks the feature is “going to be a huge hotbed of controversy” because of its attention on the Middle East. “It makes Israel look really bad and could be polarizing,” the insider told Variety.
The source said the film is set in late 1970s or early 1980s. On June 6, 1982, Israel launched the First Lebanon War against Palestinian terrorists based in southern Lebanon following the attempted assassination of Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Shlomo Argov by a terrorist cell.
The “Superman Returns” director shot the new film in Greece in 2023, and it focuses on the relationship between a father and son, Variety added. Israeli filmmaker Yariv Horovoitz is also reportedly collaborating on the project. There are no details about a release date.
Voight is a longtime supporter of Israel and said in 2018 that he feels an obligation to combat antisemitism. Last year, he was critical of his daughter, actress and filmmaker Angelina Jolie, when she slammed Israel’s defensive military campaign against Hamas in Gaza following the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Singer – who was raised Jewish in suburban New Jersey – has not directed in mainstream Hollywood since he was infamously fired by 20th Century Fox from “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 2017 and replaced during shooting, after several absences during the film’s production. He was signed on to direct a remake of the action film “Red Sonja,” but was reportedly fired from the project amid allegations in 2019 of sexual misconduct involving minors, which he denied.
The director’s past credits include four films in the “X-Men” franchise, “Valkyrie,” and the Oscar-winning film “The Usual Suspects.”
Singer faced sexual misconduct allegations starting in 1997, when two teenage boys claimed the director ordered them to strip naked for a scene in his film “Apt Pupil.” The filmmaker has never faced criminal charges for the sexual misconduct allegations made against him in 1997 or in later years.
Singer has been living in Israel for several years and Variety reported in 2023 that he was looking to make a comeback into the mainstream Hollywood film industry with features set in and around Israel.
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Italian Law Professor Faces Backlash Over Viral Antisemitic Social Media Posts
An Italian law professor is facing mounting backlash after past antisemitic social media posts went viral, sparking outrage among the local Jewish community and public officials.
Professor Luca Nivarra, who teaches in the Faculty of Law at the University of Palermo in Sicily, has come under scrutiny after several of his social media posts went viral, spreading antisemitic and hateful content.
“I don’t want to meddle in matters that don’t concern me directly, but, having very few tools at our disposal to oppose the Palestinian Holocaust, a signal, however modest, could be to unfriend your Jewish ‘friends’ on Facebook, even the ‘good’ ones, who declare themselves disgusted by what the Israeli government and the IDF are doing,” Nivarra wrote in one of his posts.
“They lie, and with their lies, they help cover up the horror: it’s a small, tiny thing, but let’s start making them feel alone, face to face with the monstrosity to which they are complicit,” he continued.
On Tuesday, the university issued a public statement distancing itself from Nivarra’s antisemitic remarks. Despite mounting public outrage, Nivarra has not faced any disciplinary action yet.
Massimo Midiri, Dean of the University of Palermo, condemned such hateful rhetoric, calling it “a personal and culturally dangerous initiative, far removed from our academic principles.”
“Nivarra’s statements risk fueling the very dynamics he claims to oppose. Complex issues like the Middle East conflict require dialogue and critical engagement, not exclusion or ideological censorship,” Midiri said in a statement.
Italy’s Minister of University and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, also denounced Nivarra’s remarks, saying they “not only offend the Jewish people but also all who uphold the values of respect and civil coexistence.”
“Conflicts are overcome through dialogue, not isolation and it is only through this path that an authentic journey toward peace can be built, an objective to which Italy and the international community continue to dedicate their efforts,” the Italian diplomat wrote in a post on X.
This is not the first time Nivarra has made public antisemitic statements and spread anti-Jewish hateful rhetoric. In his previous Facebook posts, he also wrote that “there are no good Israelis” and that “Israeli society is morally rotten.”
Nivarra also compared the Israeli Defense Forces’ defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to the actions of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann during the Holocaust.
“The only difference between Adolf Eichmann and the IDF is that Eichmann defended himself by saying he was following orders, while Israeli soldiers happily do what they do,” he wrote in another social media post.
Since his posts went viral, Nivarra has faced mounting criticism on social media, but he has denied any accusations of antisemitism.
“You can call me an anti-Semite when I am not one at all. There is an insurmountable distance between me and the perpetrators of these horrors,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
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‘Six Million Not Enough’: Minneapolis School Shooter Scrawled Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Messages on Guns
Law enforcement officers set up barriers after a shooting at Annunciation Church, which is also home to an elementary school, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ben Brewer
The lone suspect in Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, Minnesota, scrawled antisemitic and anti-Israel messages across his weapons and allegedly shared his desire to kill “filthy Zionist Jews” in a notebook before unleashing a barrage of gunfire on students and parishioners.
Law enforcement officials identified the shooter as Robin Westman, 23, who died by suicide at the scene. According to police, Westman opened fire during morning Mass in the school’s adjoining church, killing two children (aged 8 and 10) and injuring 17 others.
Witnesses said the church erupted in chaos as stained-glass windows shattered and gunfire ripped through pews filled with children. Teachers and staff rushed to shield students, with some ushering them outside the building.
The shooting is being investigated as both a domestic terrorism case and a hate crime against Catholics, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
However, the assailant also appeared to endorse antisemitic conspiracies and express a desire to kill Jews and Israelis.
Researchers at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported they found videos believed to be from Westman showing firearms and ammunition magazines marked with the antisemitic messages. Investigators are also reviewing the now-deleted YouTube channel allegedly linked to Westman that featured disturbing videos uploaded before the attack.
“Israel must fall and “Burn Israel” were among the writings on the weapons, as seen in the video. In addition, the messages on the guns included “6 million wasn’t enough” — an apparent reference to the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust, and “Burn HIAS” — an apparent reference to a Jewish organization which helps settle refugees.
Westman also allegedly wrote “kill Donald Trump” on a gun magazine as well as anti-black and anti-Latino racist messaging.
The videos also included images of a notebook with writing in the Cyrillic alphabet.
“If I will carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” the notebook said, according to a translation by the New York Post. Westman also allegedly wrote slogans such as “Free Palestine.”
Images of the content has been widely circulated on social media.
Robin Westman, the suspected shooter in today’s mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, appears to have had a YouTube Channel named “Robin W” which has since been deleted, that contained several video consisting of guns, a manifesto… pic.twitter.com/B3JJUOIGJp
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) August 27, 2025
Shocking antisemitic messages spotted on the Minneapolis shooter’s gun including:
– “Israel must fall,”
– “Burn Israel”
– “6 million wasn’t enough.”
– “ Burn HIAS (originally a Jewish resettlement org for refugees)Via our colleague @RealSaavedra pic.twitter.com/NFUnkRNlDs
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) August 27, 2025
An analysis of the shooter’s apparent manifesto by the ADL found no singular political motive. The assailant “scrawled numerous references and symbols on their weapons linked to a broad range of mass attackers, mimicking the 2019 Christchurch, 2022 Buffalo, and 2025 Antioch shooters, among others, who marked their weapons before launching their attacks,” the ADL wrote.
“The references found on the attacker’s weapons do not suggest a deep knowledge of white supremacy. Instead, the references point to a broader fixation on mass violence,” the group concluded.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who is Jewish, spoke with raw emotion after visiting the scene. “There are no words that can capture the horror and the evil of this unspeakable act,” he said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the students “were met with evil and horror and death.”
“We often come to these and say these unspeakable tragedies or there’s no words for this. There shouldn’t be words for these types of incidents because they should not happen and there’s no words that are going to ease the pain of the families today,” Walz added.
The suspect was reportedly a transgender woman who changed her name from Robert to Robin in 2020. Westman’s mother worked as a secretary at Annunciation until 2021, according to news reports, and authorities are still examining whether that connection influenced the target.
The tragedy adds to a growing list of school and faith-based shootings in the United States this year. Experts warn that antisemitic conspiracy theories, spread widely online, can inspire such violent attacks.
The tragedy came a week after the ADL released a new report highlighting how extremist online spaces are fueling not only school shootings but also a broader rise in antisemitism across the US. According to the report, many websites containing violent and gruesome material have pulled young people into white supremacist propaganda and conspiracy theories, inspiring them to commit deadly attacks.