The Five Most Powerful Moments in The Hague’s Israel Genocide Case

The United Nations’ top court on Thursday held the first public hearings in a case accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

South Africa brought the case, charging Israel with violating the U.N.’s 1948 Genocide Convention, which was established in the wake of the Holocaust. South Africa is asking the International Court of Justice to order an immediate end to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has thus far killed more than 23,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly the entire population.

During Thursday’s hearing, a team of South African ambassadors and lawyers began presenting the case against Israel. Here are some of the most powerful things they said:

1. “The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.”

Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, representing South Africa, delivered these powerful remarks:

The international community continues to fail the Palestinian people, despite the overt dehumanizing genocidal rhetoric by Israeli governmental and military officials matched by the Israeli’s army’s actions on the ground. Despite the horror of the genocide against the Palestinian people, being livestreamed from Gaza to our mobile phones, computers, and television screens, the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.

2. “The terrible new acronym born out of Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian population in Gaza.”

“On the basis of the current figures, on average, 247 Palestinians are being killed and are at risk of being killed each day, many of them literally blown to pieces,” Ní Ghrálaigh warned.

“They include 48 mothers each day, two every hour. And over 117 children each day. Leading UNICEF to call Israel’s actions a war on children. Entire multigenerational families will be obliterated and yet more children will become WCNSF—wounded child, no surviving family—the terrible new acronym born out of Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian population in Gaza.”

3. “Ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people through Israel’s colonization since 1948.”

Vusi Mandonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, opened the genocide case by referencing Israel’s system of colonization, apartheid, and occupation. He also referenced the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” which is used to describe the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland upon Israel’s creation in 1948.

His remarks gave greater context to the war we are witnessing today:

South Africa has recognized the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people through Israel’s colonization since 1948, which has systematically and forcibly dispossessed, displaced and fragmented the Palestinian people, deliberately denying them the internationally recognized inalienable right to self determination and their internationally recognized rights of return as refugees to their towns and villages in what is now the state of Israel.

We are also particularly mindful of Israel’s institutionalized regime of discriminatory laws, policies, and practices designed and maintained to establish domination, subjecting the Palestinian people to apartheid on both sides of the Green Line.

Decades-long impunity for widespread and systematic human rights violations has emboldened Israel in its recurrence and intensification of international crimes in Palestine.

At the outset, South Africa acknowledges that the genocidal acts and omissions by the state of Israel inevitably form part of a continuum of illegal acts perpetrated against the Palestinian people since 1948.

The application places Israel’s genocidal acts and omissions within the broader context of Israel’s 25-year apartheid, 56-year occupation, and 16-year siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.

4. “This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies.”

Adila Hassim, another lawyer presenting South Africa’s case, described Israel’s “unparalleled and unprecedented killing.”

In schools, in hospitals, in mosques, in churches, and as they tried to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, killed in the places to which they have fled, and even killed while they attempted to flee along Israeli declared safe routes.

The level of killing is so extensive that those whose bodies are found are buried in mass graves, often unidentified.

In the first three weeks alone, following 7 October, Israel deployed 6,000 bombs per week. At least 200 times it has deployed 2000 pound bombs in southern areas of Palestine designated as safe. These bombs have also decimated the north, including refugee camps. Two thousand pound bombs are some of the biggest and most destructive bombs available. They are dropped by lethal fighter jets that are used to strike targets on the ground by one of the world’s most resourced armies.

Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians. With the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take.

More than 1,800 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members and hundreds of multigenerational families have been wiped out with no remaining survivors. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins, often all killed together.

This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies.

5. “Genocides are never declared in advance, but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts.”

Hassim went on to outline the crimes Israel has committed over the last 97 days:

All of these acts individually and collectively form a calculated pattern of conduct by Israel indicating a genocidal intent. This intent is evident from Israel’s conduct in:

Targeting Palestinians living in Gaza using weaponry that causes large scale, homicidal destruction, as well as targeted sniping of civilians.

Designating safe zones for Palestinians to seek refuge and then bombing these.

Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of basic needs—food, water, health care, fuel, sanitation, and communications.

Destroying social infrastructure, homes, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, and killing, seriously injuring, and leaving large numbers of children orphaned.

Genocides are never declared in advance but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly, a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts.

Donald Trump says it’s OK that he got paid by foreign governments while he was president because he was “doing services” for them.

Trump participated in a Fox News town hall Wednesday night instead of the Republican primary debate. At one point, he was asked about a recent congressional report that found he made almost $8 million from nearly two dozen foreign governments during his first two years in office.

Trump dismissed the amount as “a small amount of money.”

“You know, it sounds like a lot of money. That’s small,” he said.

He then said that it was fine he had received so much money because it was payment for accommodation at his various clubs and hotels.

“I was doing services for them,” Trump explained. “People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels.”

“I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing.”

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a report last week that found Trump’s businesses had received at least $7.8 million from at least 20 different countries. The report acknowledged that its findings were likely incomplete, as it covers just half of Trump’s presidency and transactions at just four of his more than 500 businesses.

The money came from some of the “world’s most unsavory regimes,” according to the report, and Trump never asked for congressional approval to keep the funds, as mandated by the Constitution.

The countries included China—which gave Trump $5.5 million, the largest sum listed in the report—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Hungary.

The report came as Republicans are trying to impeach Joe Biden for allegedly benefiting from his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings. But the GOP has yet to produce any actual evidence of wrongdoing by the president.

A Florida school district has banned multiple versions of the dictionary for including sexual content. Yes, you read that right.

The Escambia County School District, located in Florida’s Panhandle, has allegedly removed five dictionaries, eight encyclopedias, The Guinness Book of World Records, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not from its library shelves after a December investigation found those books could violate House Bill 1069.

Those reference books are among 1,600 titles that the December investigation found inappropriate for county school library shelves. Other banned books include Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, some Sherlock Holmes books, and the autobiographies of Beyoncé, Oprah, and Lady Gaga.

“We can’t believe we have to say this but students have a right to read the dictionary in school,” the ACLU said in a TikTok posted Wednesday.

With the latest purge, Escambia County has now pulled more than 2,800 books from its library shelves because they might violate state law on teaching students about sex and sexuality. The other banned books cover subjects including race, racism, and LGBTQ identity. The nonprofit organization PEN America, along with county students and parents, has sued the school district for banning books.

Florida Republican lawmakers dramatically expanded Governor Ron DeSantis’s hallmark “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in May 2023. The legislation bans teaching material on sexual orientation and gender identity through eighth grade. The law also makes it easier for people to file complaints to ban books.

Since the law went into effect, Florida schools have undergone massive purges of books from both classroom and school libraries. Other titles yanked from shelves include “The Hill We Climb,” the poem read at Joe Biden’s inauguration, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the graphic novel Little Rock Nine, and the movie Ruby Bridges.

The final day of Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial kicked off Thursday with a bomb threat at the presiding judge’s house.

Nassau County police as well as a bomb squad rushed to Judge Arthur Engoron’s house on Long Island after someone threatened to blow up the dwelling Thursday morning, The Daily Beast first reported. The threat is believed to be an attempt to delay closing arguments in Trump’s trial. It is unclear whether proceedings will be affected.

The bomb threat came just hours after Trump posted a long rant on TruthSocial complaining about Engoron. Trump accused Engoron of colluding with New York Attorney General Letitia James to “‘SCREW ME,’ EVEN THOUGH I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG.”

“THIS IS A RIGGED AND UNFAIR TRIAL—NO JURY, NO VICTIMS, A GREAT FINANCIAL STATEMENT—JUST BEFORE THE IMPORTANT IOWA PRIMARY—ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” Trump wrote.

Trump wanted to present his own closing arguments, which Engoron said he could do so long as the former president abided by a strict set of rules about what he could actually discuss. This included sticking to the matter at hand instead of giving “a campaign speech” and not attacking James or the court staff. When Trump’s lawyers refused to agree, Engoron barred Trump from speaking, a move that Trump called “MEAN & NASTY” on TruthSocial.

James has accused Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization, and other company executives of fraudulently inflating the value of various real estate assets to get more favorable terms on bank loans. Engoron determined in September that Trump committed fraud and ordered that all Trump’s New York business certificates be canceled, making it nearly impossible to do business in the state and effectively killing the Trump Organization.

The current trial is primarily just to determine how much Trump owes in damages. And there isn’t a jury because his own legal team failed to ask for one.

Trump has repeatedly taken aim at Engoron and his law clerk Allison Greenfield throughout the trial, accusing them both of improper actions and bias. Engoron has saddled Trump with multiple gag orders, but the judge and Greenfield have still received multiple death threats from Trump supporters.

This is at least the third time that Trump supporters have tried to perpetrate an attack on one of the former president’s perceived enemies. In the past few weeks, both Judge Tanya Chutkan and special counsel Jack Smith have been the victims of “swatting” attacks. Swatting is when someone falsely reports an incident with the intent of initiating a potentially dangerous police response.

Smith has indicted Trump for mishandling classified documents and for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Chutkan is presiding over the election interference case. Trump has complained bitterly about both people on social media.

Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that he would not stop Israel from forcibly removing Palestinians from Gaza if he is elected president.

The Republican primary debate featured just DeSantis and Nikki Haley, and saw a shocking return to actual policy discussion. At one point, moderator Jake Tapper asked DeSantis if he supported the mass removal of Palestinians.

“I am not going to tell [Israel] to do that,” DeSantis said. “But if they make the calculation that to avert a second Holocaust, they need to do that,” then he wouldn’t stop them.

The word for the mass expulsion of an ethnic group is ethnic cleansing.

DeSantis also said he did not believe in a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Gaza, instead accusing “Palestinian Arabs” of refusing to recognize the existence of Israel. The Palestinian Authority does, in fact, recognize Israel.

Israel, however, only seems open to a two-state solution if the second state is on an entirely different continent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has reportedly been secretly speaking with the Democratic Republic of Congo about resettling thousands of Palestinians in the African nation.

Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly floated the idea of forcibly removing Palestinians, but the idea has been vehemently rejected by the international community.

Israeli officials, however, have made it increasingly clear in recent days that their plan is to completely eliminate Palestine. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said last week that a way to solve the war was to “encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees.”

Separately, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told reporters that the war was an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.”