South Africa’s allegations are ‘a libel,’ Israel says
Israel’s legal team has called South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ “a libel.”
Giving evidence to the court, its lawyer Tal Becker invoked the history of the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews and other groups during World War II that inspired the conception of the Genocide Convention in 1948.
“The Genocide Convention was a solemn promise made to the Jewish people, and to all peoples, of ‘never again,’” Becker said, adding that South Africa was asking “the court to betray that promise.” He warned that “if term genocide can be so diminished” in this way, “it suggests the convention has become an aggressor’s charter.”
South Africa’s allegations, Becker added, “should be dismissed for what they are: A libel designed to deny Israel the right to defend itself, according to the law, from the unprecedented terrorist onslaught it continues to face.”
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