Israel is the victim of genocide even as it battles false claims of genocide leveled against it by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.
“Today, again, we saw an upside-down world, in which the State of Israel is accused of genocide at a time when it is fighting genocide,” Netanyahu said in a video message from Jerusalem.
He spoke as Israel prepared to present a defense against South Africa’s allegations that the Palestinian fatalities in the Gaza war were part of a plan by Israel to eliminate the Palestinian people.
Israel is expected to explain how its military campaign was an act of self-defense to vanquish an enemy that sought to destroy its country and its people.
South Africa was able to bring the claim against Israel because the two states were signatories to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.
“South Africa’s hypocrisy screams to the high Heavens,” Netanyahu stated.
“Where was South Africa when millions of people were being murdered and uprooted from their homes in Syria and Yemen, by whom? By Hamas’s partners. The world is upside down. Where were you?” he said.
"We are fighting terrorists"
“We are fighting terrorists, and we are fighting lies,” Netanyahu said.
He referenced the October 7 massacre that sparked the Hamas war, in which Hamas-led terrorists killed over 1,200 people and seized some 250 as hostages. Some 110 of those captives have been freed and another 136 remain in Gaza.
Those who were killed on October 7 were in many cases, tortured, raped, dismembered, and/or burned alive. Israel has said it was the worst single-day attack on Jews since the World War II Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed.
“Israel is fighting against murderous terrorists who committed horrific crimes against humanity: They slaughtered, they raped, they burned, they dismembered, they beheaded – children, women, the elderly, young men and young women,” Netanyahu said.
“A terrorist organization carried out the worst crime against the Jewish People since the Holocaust, and now someone comes to defend it in the name of the Holocaust? What brazen gall. The world is upside down,” he said.
The Foreign Ministry, which has a team at the Hague, posted on X a political cartoon that showed four bloodied female hostages with their hands tied behind their backs, sitting on the ground in front of the judges, who say to them, “What do you have to say in your defense.”
In Ramallah, Palestinians held a rally in support of South Africa’s case in front of a statue of former South African president Nelson Mandela.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh addressed the rally, stating, that South Africa’s “indictment against Israel was signed by South African President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa with the ink of Nelson Mandela’s legacy, Desmond Tutu, and Steve Biko. Colonialism, settlement, and the apartheid system that lasted from 1640 to 1994 in South Africa were defeated,” according to the Palestine News Agency, WAFA.
“Here we are facing genocide, destruction of homes, uprooting of trees, settler terrorism, a racist apartheid system, claims of racial superiority, forced displacement attempts, land annexation, and military occupation. Despite all this, we will triumph and achieve our right to self-determination,” Shtayyeh said.