Deconstructing South Africa’s use of lawfare in its case against Israel
Since the creation of Israel in 1948, International Law and its institutions have been used to delegitimise Israel and intimidate its citizens. The recent discovery of the United Nation’s Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) influential role in denying Israel’s right to exist, inciting antisemitic hatred, and its glorification of terrorism, illustrates this.
It is common knowledge that anti-Zionism is not merely criticism of Israeli policy but is an attack on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. In its quest to justify its anti-Israel rhetoric, anti-Zionists seek to deceivingly portray Israel as an apartheid state, engaging in colonialist oppressive policies and genocide, while ignoring the legal treaties, accords or partition plans underpinning Israel’s legitimacy.
A pervasive strategy to delegitimise Israel is the use of lawfare, whereby law or legal systems are exploited for a strategic rather than legitimate purpose. South Africa’s exploitation of International Law in the International Court of Justice to buttress its campaign to delegitimise Israel, is a prime example of lawfare.
Through the vehicle of the ICJ, South Africa has propelled itself onto the International legal stage by being the only country prepared to publicly accuse Israel of genocide at the ICJ, where it presented a scurrilous narrative of Israel’s purported illegitimacy, going back to its beginning in 1948. It did so under the cloak of protecting the rights of Palestinians against genocide. Not even Israel’s own enemy neighbours were prepared to engage in this futile deception.
What was remarkable was that the South African legal team sought an order that Israel unilaterally suspend its military operations in Gaza, which would result in Israel being rendered defenceless against an all-out military attack by the genocidal terrorist organisation Hamas. The South African legal team clearly understood this to be an intended consequence of the order sought. Fortunately, the ICJ did not sanction such a blatant and evil inversion of reality.