The press release by Ronald Lamola (Politicsweb 13 November 2024) condemning disinformation about South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel is a dismal descent into what eerily looks like old Soviet Agitprop. A political strategy in which the techniques of agitation and propaganda are used to influence and mobilize public opinion.
Tired political slogans and principles of international law are recklessly bandied about: The United Nations (UN) Charter, inalienable rights, apartheid, unlawful occupation, colonialism, solidarity. These terms are misused and distorted. They hearken to the Soviet inspired discredited and revoked UN resolution equating Zionism with racism.
South Africa claims the moral high ground in upholding the Genocide Convention and fulfilling its duty under international law to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. It falsely portrays South Africa as the good global citizen committed to prevent the mass killing and alleviate suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza. Apart from the very contentious question whether Israel is actually committing any brutal war atrocities at all, let alone genocide, the posture of DIRCO is hypocrisy and self righteous piety of the worst sort. DIRCO has flagrantly violated international humanitarian law in the recent past.
The Supreme Court of Appeal in a decision dated 16 March 2016 found that the South African authorities including the Minister of DIRCO at the time, acted unlawfully and contrary to the Rome Statute by failing to arrest and surrender Omar al Bashir under a warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
At that time Al Bashir was the President of Sudan and had charges against him for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under the Rome statute. These charges related to atrocities committed by his supporters and the Janjaweed militia in Sudan . In 2015 Al Bashir attended a conference of the African Union in South Africa and the South African authorities knowing full well of his ICC international arrest warrant allowed him to slip out of the country unhindered. In a scathing judgment the court found the conduct of the authorities disgraceful.
Thus South Africa not only certainly violated the Rome Statute, but undermined the Genocide Convention. The equitable doctrine of clean hands provides that in certain legal cases a person may not seek certain legal remedies from a court if that party has violated the very same obligation. Perhaps the ICJ should take heed of this sound principle. South Africa does not approach the ICJ with clean hands.
The Palestinian right to self determination has a much overlooked corollary: Palestine should respect the rights of Israel to self determination and its sovereignty as a state. The UN Charter Chapter 1 article 7 states “The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenane of international peace and security.”
Yet in South Africa and in the West the call for “Palestine from the river to the sea” is publicly made. This unequivocally demands that the territory forming the present State of Israel should be part of Palestine. This is nothing new. As early as 1947 British Secretary of State Ernest Bevin said ” For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs the essential point of principal is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.”
South Africa as a member state of the UN does not censure Palestinian violations of Israeli territoriality and sovereignty by rocket and missile attacks as well as acts of terrorism on Israeli civilians within its borders . Hamas does not recognise Israel as a Jewish State and its Charter is committed to the destruction of Israel and replacement by an Islamic state. This is in gross violation of international law.
Nor does Hamas respect the Geneva Convention on war and the treatment of civilians. Palestinian civilians are trapped by fighters in war zones as a matter of military practice which is a war crime. The taking of hostages is an ongoing and continuous war crime and gross violation of human rights. The Hamas atrocity of 7 October 2023 which triggered the war was not claimed to be in pursuance of Palestinian self determination or resisting illegal occupation. A video of Hamas official Ghazi Hamad on 1 November 2023 depicts him stating: “we must teach Israel a lesson and we will do that again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be second, a third, a fourth.”
In a video interview of Douglas Murray, a British journalist and outspoken critic of Islamist terrorism, a South African interviewer raised the question of illegal occupation of Gaza. He challenged this notion in that before the war there was not a single Israeli in Gaza. The territory was handed over to the Palestinians in 2005 . She said she had been to Gaza and that it was completely sealed off by Israel.
Murray who also had been to Gaza eventually succeeded in confronting her with the reality that Egypt also has a border with Gaza and much stronger fencing than Israel’s border. Gazans are not permitted to pass through the Egypt crossing but many Gazans worked in Israel before the war and also were able to cross to receive medical treatment. These inconvenient facts do not fit in with the narrative of victimhood and oppression of the Gazans but gullible Westerners and DIRCO do not let the facts spoil some tasty agitprop. Israel being the evil White colonialists (despite about half of the Jewish population of Israel being of Middle Eastern ethnicity) and the Palestinians being the peaceful oppressed indigenous people.
According to Mr Lamola there is a “larger campaign to shield Israel from accountability, to dehumanise Palestinians and to undermine a just case firmly rooted in international law” . If ever there was a classic reversal of morality and law this is surely a high water mark. Israel is not at war with Palestine but with Hamas. It is undeniable that Hamas totally disregards international law, is not a party to any international humanitarian law treaties, is not a member state of the UN, and is not subject to jurisdiction of the ICJ at all. It enjoys complete impunity.
The Palestinians have conducted brutal acts of terror for decades. These revolting acts are only capable of being committed by persons lacking any humanity: The Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes, hundreds of suicide bombings of Israeli civilians including the Passover bombing at the Park Hotel, Netanya of which some of the victims were Holocaust survivors.
Hamas committed the most debased acts of barbarism on 7 October 2023 by burning, mutilating, raping and murdering civilians including nationals of other countries who were neither Israeli nor Jewish. These acts of degradation all committed by Palestinians. The so-called Gaza wave was perpetrated with glee and pride.
The Palestinian public in Gaza cheered at the sight of the hostages being paraded through the streets of Gaza. Only the most extreme dehumanised, morally degraded and depraved persons behave in this manner. Even fellow Palestinians are dehumanised by their own people. Palestinian dissidents and homosexuals face violent oppression and danger from Hamas. Homosexuals, human rights journalists and dissident voices face repression, violence and even death. The unlamented leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yaywa Sinwar was locally known as the butcher of Khan Younis. He strangled to death suspected collaborators with his bare hands. He was convicted and sentenced in Israel to imprisonment not for killing Israelis, but his own people.
There is no campaign of disinformation about South Africa’s case before the ICJ. Conspiracy theories cannot hide the unvarnished truth about this perversion of international law and justice. Incitement of hatred against Israel is the ignoble goal of this thinly veiled agitprop.
No Mr Lamola the people of South Africa are not fooled that easily by you.
