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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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European Jewish Leaders Demand EU Action After Belgian Police Raid Mohels’ Homes, Raising Religious Freedom Concerns
Police pictured at an Anderlecht supporters village at the Atomium, before the final of the ‘Croky Cup’ Belgian soccer cup, between Club Brugge and RSC Anderlecht, May 4, 2025. Photo: BELGA/HATIM KAGHAT via Reuters Connect
Dozens of European Jewish leaders are calling on the European Union to take action against Belgium over recent police raids on the homes of several trained circumcisers known as mohels — a move that has drawn sharp criticism and intensified fears over growing restrictions on religious practices.
On Wednesday, 60 rabbis and Jewish community leaders, led by the European Jewish Association (EJA), urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to call on the Belgian government to address the mounting concerns of Jewish communities regarding the recent raids.
In a formal letter, they argued that the Belgian police’s actions “represent a breach of an EU fundamental right, that of freedom of religion” and warned that this “echoes one of the darkest chapters in European history.”
“This alarming action directly targets Brit Milah — a sacred commandment that has been safely practiced by the Jewish people for thousands of years across the world,” the EJA wrote in a post on X.
“Out of deep concern for the preservation of religious rights and the protection of Jewish communities in Europe, the European Jewish Association has launched an urgent and coordinated campaign to defend Brit Milah,” the statement read.
On May 14, Antwerp police raided the homes of three mohels, confiscated religious instruments, and demanded a registry of circumcised infants. This alarming action directly targets Brit Milah — a sacred commandment that has been safely practiced by the Jewish people for thousands… pic.twitter.com/N2WqVG3ysd
— EJA – EIPA (@EJAssociation) July 16, 2025
In May, Belgian authorities raided the homes of several mohels in Antwerp, a northern Belgian city, seizing their circumcision tools after a local anti-Zionist Jewish rabbi filed a complaint.
A mohel is a trained practitioner who performs the ritual circumcision in Jewish tradition known as a bris.
Among the homes raided by the Belgian police was that of Rabbi Aharon Eckstein, a highly experienced mohel and a prominent leader within the Antwerp Jewish community.
According to a police report, the searches were ordered by a judge following a complaint filed in 2023 by Rabbi Moshe Aryeh Friedman — an anti-Zionist activist previously accused of Holocaust denial — against Eckstein and other mohels within the Jewish community.
In his complaint, Friedman accused six mohels of endangering infants by performing the metzitzah b’peh ritual, in which the mohel uses his mouth to suction blood from the circumcision area.
However, Eckstein and other rabbis, along with parents of children circumcised by them, have denied such accusations, insisting that they do not perform this practice.
In Antwerp, Friedman is known for publicly criticizing several customs that are important to ultra-Orthodox Jews, who represent the majority of the city’s 18,000 Jewish residents.
“Circumcision is much more than a key tenet of Judaism,” the letter read. “It is what defines the Jewish male, a religious commandment.”
“It represents a core pillar of our faith and a practice carried out over millennia without incidents by meticulous and highly-trained mohalim,” it continued.
Along with their formal letter, the EJA included an open letter from 19 doctors across Europe affirming that “the benefits of male circumcision greatly outweigh the potential negatives, over the lifetime of a male.”
“In our shared experience, those performing the circumcision — known as Mohalim within the Jewish communities — have studied extensively, are proficient in anatomy and hold the required medical experience,” the letter said.
“They are, with their inter-generational experience transmitted for millenia, more than capable of carrying out the procedure,” it added.
Despite several attempts to ban the practice across Europe, ritual circumcision remains legal in all European countries, though many, including Belgium, limit the practice to licensed surgeons and often perform it in a synagogue.
The post European Jewish Leaders Demand EU Action After Belgian Police Raid Mohels’ Homes, Raising Religious Freedom Concerns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Half Human’: Antisemitism Rampant in Ontario Public Schools, New Canadian Report Says
Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, primarily university students, rally at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square on Oct. 28, 2023. Photo by Sayed Najafizada/NurPhoto
Antisemitism has been rampant in public schools of the Canadian province of Ontario since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, according to a new report published by the country’s federal government.
Nazi salutes in the hallways, assaults, pronouncements of solidarity with the aims of Hitler’s Final Solution coupled with expressions of regret that he did not live to “finish the job,” and teachers converting their classrooms into outposts for the distribution of anti-Zionist propaganda compose the background of the lives of Jewish students in the province, the report says. One teacher, it added, even called a student “half human” after learning that she has one Jewish parent.
Written by University of Toronto sociology professor emeritus Robert Brym, the report is based on data drawn from interviews conducted with 599 Jewish parents as well as nearly 800 reports of incidents of antisemitic hatred which took place in Ontario public schools, roughly three-fourths of which occurred in the Toronto District School Board, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, and York Region District School Board systems.
Toronto specifically was the site of 61 percent of the incidents, part of a broader trend in which Ontario’s largest city, home to half of Canada’s 400,000 Jews, has seen a surge in antisemitism following the Oct. 7 atrocities. Last year, 40 percent of all hate crimes reported to law enforcement involved antisemitic bigotry, according to police data.
“The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli retaliation in Gaza provoked a three-month outburst of hostility against Jewish K-12 students such as never before seen in Ontario schools,” Brym wrote. “One is immediately struck by the high percentage of responses that have nothing to do with Israel or the Israel-Hamas war. More than 40 percent of responses involve Holocaust denial, assertions of excessive Jewish wealth or power, or blanket condemnation of Jews — the kind of accusations and denunciations that began to be expunged from the Canadian vocabulary and mindset in the 1960s and were, one would have thought, nearly totally forgotten by the second decade of the 21st century.”
Some 30,000 Jewish school-age children live in Ontario, according to the report, which was commissioned by the Office of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, Deborah Lyons, in order to provide a picture of the situation in Ontario schools.
Brym noted that many Jewish students abstain from reporting antisemitic discrimination due to fear of “being ostracized, re-victimized, or physically harmed.” In lieu of pursuing a course of action which guards their civil rights, they resort to effacing “visible symbols of their Jewishness,” which, he explained, “suppresses the visibility of the problem and contributed to the undercounting of incidents.” He recommended that school boards correct the hostile environments on their grounds by applying the widely adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and recognizing the Zionist component of Jewish identity, which is often the target of antisemitic bullies.
“This report exposes an appalling reality that far too many Jewish students face antisemitism and harassment on a regular basis, and worse yet, many schools are failing to take the necessary steps to protect them,” Michael Levitt, chief executive officer and president of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human rights nonprofit which raises awareness of discrimination and racial intimidation, said in a statement responding to the Canadian government’s findings. “These latest revelations are a searing indictment of what we’ve been hearing anecdotally for some time now.”
He added, “While the Ontario government and some school boards are making an effort to bring antisemitism training and Holocaust education to staff and students, our education must do more to root out antisemitism and hold perpetrators accountable. There must be a genuine commitment by schools and school boards to ensure every student, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, feels welcome and safe.”
Antisemitism infects all levels of Canadian society, as The Algemeiner has previously reported, from the streets to the halls of government. Following the Oct. 7 attack, the Toronto Police Service (TPS) issued data showing that Jews had been the victims of 57 percent of all hate crimes, with 56 of the 98 hate crimes that occurred in the city from Oct. 7 to Dec. 17 being documented as antisemitic. Compared to the same period in 2022, the number of hate crimes targeting the Jewish community during that period more than tripled.
During all of 2023, Jews were the victims of 78 percent of religious-based hate crimes in Toronto, according to police-reported data. Overall in Canada, Jewish Canadians were the most frequently targeted group for hate crimes, with a 71 percent increase from the prior year.
In 2024, according to the latest TPS data, Jews were the victims of over 80 percent of religious-based hate crimes in Toronto.
“These numbers reflect a disturbing reality: antisemitism in our city is growing more aggressive, more visible, and more tolerated,” Michelle Stock, vice president of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said in May, commenting on the statistics. “Jewish Canadians — like all Canadians — deserve to feel safe. It’s time for governments to match words with actions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel to Raise Defense Spending to Meet Security Challenges
Israeli tanks are positioned near the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel will raise defense spending by 42 billion shekels ($12.5 billion) in 2025 and 2026, the finance and defense ministries said on Thursday, citing the country’s security challenges.
The budget agreement will allow the Defense Ministry to “advance urgent and essential procurement deals critical to national security,” the ministries said in a statement.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the new defense budget “fully covers the intense fighting in Gaza, alongside comprehensive security preparations for all threats — from the south, the north, and more distant arenas.”
Israel‘s military costs have surged since it launched its military offensive on Gaza following the deadly attacks by Hamas terrorists on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Since then, Israel has also fought Hezbollah in Lebanon and waged a 12-day air war with Iran, and carried out airstrikes in Syria this week after vowing to destroy government forces attacking Druze in southern Syria and demanding they withdraw.
Over the past 21 months, Israel‘s missile defense systems have been working almost daily to intercept missiles fired by Hezbollah, Iran, and Houthis in Yemen.
Current annual defense spending is 110 billion shekels – about 9 percent of gross domestic product – out of a total 2025 budget of 756 billion shekels.
The extra budgetary funding “will allow the Defense Ministry to immediately sign procurement deals for the weapons and ammunition required to replenish depleted stocks and support the IDF’s ongoing operations,” said Amir Baram, director general of the Defense Ministry.
It would also enable the defense establishment to initiate development programs to strengthen the Israel Defense Forces’ qualitative edge for future systems, he said.
MULTIPLE SCENARIOS
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the funds would allow Israel to prepare for multiple scenarios since “enemies are openly declaring their intent to destroy us … For this we require complete military, technological, and operational superiority.”
Separately, the Defense Ministry said it had signed a deal with state-run Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to accelerate serial production of Arrow interceptors.
The Arrow, developed and manufactured in cooperation with the US Missile Defense Agency, is a missile defense system designed to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles.
The Arrow had a high interception rate during the conflicts with Hamas and Iran. As part of the deal, IAI will supply the military with a significant additional amount of Arrow interceptors.
“The numerous interceptions it carried out saved many lives and significantly reduced economic damage,” Baram said.
On Wednesday, the ministry signed a $20 million deal with Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) to supply advanced machine guns aimed at significantly enhancing the IDF ground forces’ firepower capabilities.
($1 = 3.3553 shekels)
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