The proceedings are meaningful for the United States, too. The Biden administration has been the indispensable sponsor of this war — arming, funding and diplomatically shielding Israel despite increasingly dire reports of Palestinian death and displacement. If the violence in Gaza is found to be genocide, the United States could be charged with complicity in genocide, a crime in its own right. Given the sheer power of the United States and its track record of international impunity, the odds of any significant consequences may be small — but, nevertheless, Americans should understand that the case is substantial and serious and that their own government is implicated.
Israel and its U.S. backers will, of course, frame this differently. They will point out, correctly, that Israel suffered an intolerable blow on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants cut a path of atrocities through southern Israel, slaughtering hundreds of civilians and dragging hundreds more back into Gaza as hostages.
Israeli and American officials have repeatedly invoked self-defense to explain the violence in Gaza; self-defense is also expected to shape Israel’s arguments in The Hague.
But self-defense cannot excuse or justify acts of genocide, and Israel’s assault on Gaza is a wildly disproportionate response to the crimes of Oct. 7. Israel did not promise, nor did it execute, a sharply targeted retaliation against Hamas (whose leaders run their political operations out of Qatar) or a strategic hunt for the hostages.
Israel has rescued only a single hostage — and Israeli soldiers shot dead three Israeli hostages who were waving a white flag and begging for rescue, later explaining they mistook them for Palestinians. Almost all of the 110 Israeli hostages who’ve made it home were released by truce, negotiation and prisoner exchange.
Within hours of the Hamas attack, Israel imposed a brutal blockade on the Gaza Strip, cutting off electricity, water, fuel and food to a trapped population of roughly 2.2 million, about half of whom are children. The blockade itself amounted to the war crime of collective punishment, but that was only the curtain raiser. Within hours, the bombs began to fall — and have continued to this day.
In an Israeli television clip cited by South Africa in its application, Col. Yogev Bar-Sheshet spoke from Gaza: “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth,” he said. “No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”
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