Israel and Its Advocates' Severance from Reality Knows No Bounds

Flinging fabrications for fun

Jan 12, 2024

Published: 2024-01-13

Updated 2024-01-13: Sorry. An attempt to edit in a link to the previous article on the RSA’s case while using a mobile phone on a bus this morningleft the article in a disasterously confusing state. Lesson learned. Dont ride buses or use mobile phones. ;)

Introduction

I confess to not having served my entire penance. After only a few minutes I could sense where the arse-up verbiage polluting the reverence of the World Court would go.

As opposed to yesterday’s article which was written with only the audio experience of the court proceedings and deliberately no review of other reports, today's is partially based on the court proceedings and relies on the excellent work of another who did the penance.

Joe Lauria is the Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News and a veteran UN reporter who even has the X/Twitter handle of @unjoe. He suffered for us and has produced yet another carefully written, accurate report in which he quotes Israel's advocates, and the corresponding statements by RSA's where appropriate, to provide a full context of Israel's defence. Thank you, Mr Lauria.

ABC News also published a report on Israel's address. The complete failure to hide their contempt for the presentation shows that while this was a waste of the court's time, Israel successfully used the court's prestige to brilliantly advertise their idiocy.

[Added later] Julia Conley’s multiply published article provided a collection of expert testimony documenting the agreement that Israel’s arguments were a “massive dissconnect” with reality and the RSA’s case.

YesXorNo's two dimes

To present its defence to the International Court of Justice the state of Israel was represented by co-agents Messrs. Tal Becker and British barrister Malcolm Shaw.

Mr. Becker began the defence by citing the Jewish version of the Nakba, the holocaust. He declared that:

Israel was among the first states to ratify the [CPPCG] convention without reservation and to incorporate its provisions in its domestic legislation.

One could recall that US and Israeli human rights organisations have cited Israel's 'grounding law' legislation, from a couple of years ago, to label the state as an apartheid state. So, this apartheid legislation sits alongside whichever legislation Becker is attempting to reference.

Following a brief lesson in the etymology of the term genocide, Becker turned to the matter before the court with:

The applicant has now sought to invoke this term in the context of Israel's conduct in a war it did not start and did not want, a war in which Israel is defending itself against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organisations whose brutality knows no bounds.
The civilian suffering in this war, like in all wars, is tragic. It is heart breaking. The harsh realities of the current hostilities are made especially agonizing for civilians given Hamas' reprehensible strategy of seeking to maximize civilian harm to both Israelis and Palestinians even as Israel seeks to minimize it.

All of the above quotations are contained in the opening two and half minutes of Israel's defence. Examining them will yield entirely unsurprising results.

Firstly, Israel is still trading in victimhood even as it is murdering children. Israel's advocates cannot countenance that the 75 year oppression of the peoples of Palestine might have anything to do with the war “it did not want and did not start”.

In the next two paragraphs it becomes demonstrably obvious that neither Israel nor its advocates share reality with the rest of humanity.

The first paragraph contains the gall of “whose brutality knows no bounds”. The attack which Hamas launched against Israel on a single day has been described by military experts including Scott Ritter as devastating, well coordinated and precise. They achieved their military objectives which were to inflict a military defeat on Israel's occupying national military forces and to capture hostages and return them to Gaza. They did not over extend. They did not engage in “random” anything. They followed their military plan to achieve an astounding success.

During the unexpected chaos created by the sophisticated attack and the complete disorganization of the IDF, several unplanned contemporaneous things occurred which were wholly beyond the control of Hamas' armed wing. Islamic Jihad used the opportunity to execute revenge attacks. The IDF delivered attacks on targets without knowing who those targets were. In both of the latter, civilians on both sides were killed.

Brutality is a part of war. Hamas were brutal with Israel's soldier. That brutality was bounded. The bounds were the objectives of military defeat and hostage capture. It was the IDF and Islamic Jihad's actions which were unbounded in their brutality.

All of this happened in one day. The case being put before the court is based on the three months afterward in which are displayed all of the elements of genocide which the RSA clearly presented to the court the day before. The 'brutality' on display is consistent by the state of Israel's leadership and armed forces.

Becker repeats the same mischaracterization of reality in the second paragraph with "given Hamas' reprehensible strategy of seeking to maximize civilian harm to both Israelis and Palestinians'". This is not 'given', Becker. It is entirely the other way around. Co-agent Becker then indicates that he has not heard what the court heard the day before, even though he was in the room, by continuing 'even as Israel seeks to minimize it'.

No, Mr. Becker. Israel has for 3 months been killing people every single day and 70% of them are non-combatants, all of them are refugees living in an open-air concentration camp for which Israel built the walls and atop which placed AI controlled gun turrets.

It is the unbounded brutality of Israel which brings it before the court under the charge of genocide.

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Sources

Israel Dismisses Genocidal Intent as ‘Random Assertions’, Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 2024-01-12

Israel rejects claims of genocide levelled in United Nation's top court, no author, ABC News, 2024-01-12

Genocide Experts Discount Israeli Legal Arguments, Julia Conley, Consortium News (originally Common Dreams), 2024-01-12

Israel presents its case at the ICJ, SABC, 2024-01-12