Logic and prejudice: from BC to BBC

The international media is once again abuzz with reports of Israeli atrocities.  Allegedly, after helping establish an aid organisation called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and heavily promoting it as an alternative to UN and other outfits, the Israelis proceeded to kill innocent civilians trying to reach that GHF aid.  And – also allegedly of course – this wasn’t even a one-time mistake, but occurred 3 days in a row.  Such allegations, if true, raise the suspicion that a crime was committed.

Which is interesting, because one of the first questions that a crime investigator asks is: ‘What is the motive?’  Understanding the crime motive is relevant in itself, but can also bring us closer to identifying the criminal, via the next query: ‘Who might have a reason to commit the crime?’  This logic is so blindingly obvious that people already understood it more than 2,000 years ago: the famous Roman lawyer and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero coined the phrase "Cui bono?” (to whom is it a benefit?)

Weird, therefore, that the question of motive has never come up, despite the very extensive coverage of the events by every international media outlet.  What was obvious to Cicero in the 1^st century BC never occurred in 2025 to the BBC!

One thing is clear: this omission can’t be attributed to lack of attention.  The Corporation has followed the events live, publishing and broadcasting tens of thousands of words on this topic.  The handful of ‘sources’ have been quoted ad nauseam, their stories reiterated countless times – sometimes in copy/paste fashion – in dozens of articles and news items.  At least a score of BBC journalists have been mobilised to cover the events.  Those included International Editor Jeremy Bowen, whose remit apparently is to ‘analyse’ issues in depth, to provide ‘insights’ and make ‘professional judgements rooted in evidence’.  They comprised also BBC Verify – the Corporation’s new investigative department, whose role is to weed out disinformation and propaganda from genuine news.

And something else should be clear, too: it’s not that the ‘crime motive’ is obvious here.  After all, the Israelis spent lots of time and effort setting up this alternative humanitarian relief mechanism, one that took Hamas out of the equation – both as beneficiary and as ‘custodian’ or ‘protector’ of the aid.  The New York Times called the project “an Israeli brainchild.”

There must have been extensive discussions between the political and military echelons within Israel; and then with the US Administration, to flesh out the concept and ensure the latter’s support; then funding had to be raised – much of it supplied by Israel, if we are to believe Yair Lapid, the country’s head of the opposition; staff had to be recruited, contractors employed, food purchased, packaged and transported.

As the BBC itself reported, the IDF – already stretched by 18 months of war – took time and dedicated resources to plan and prepare the logistics: 4 distribution hubs, complete with warehouses, accommodation quarters, access routes and fenced perimeters.

All that must have cost a fair amount of money, let alone time, effort, political capital and attention from decision-makers.

Having made that large investment, why would the Israelis then shoot into crowds of Gazans attempting to do exactly what they (the Israelis) so wanted them to do: get aid from GHF, rather than from UNRWA, World Food Programme or UNICEF?

Israelis may be many things, but idiots they’re not.  These are the same people who killed a Hamas leader in arguably the most secure location in Tehran; the same people who maimed their enemies by supplying them with ‘special’ communication devices.  Are we now to believe that they cut their noses to spite their faces – not once, not twice, but three times, on three consecutive days?

On the other hand… ‘Cui bono?’  Obviously, the main beneficiary is Hamas.  If, while lying low in their tunnels, Hamas’s surviving leaders can tune into the BBC, they must surely rub their hands in delight.  After all, sabotaging the GHF is vital if Hamas is to retain its sway over Gaza’s hapless population.  The hand that feeds you is the hand that leads you – and everybody in Gaza knows that no unarmed, ‘neutral’ aid organisation can supply one can of beans without Hamas’s ‘protection’ and assent.  Which is why, as the BBC itself reported (on 27 May, i.e. days before the ‘suspected crime’):

“Hamas has publicly warned Palestinians not to co-operate with GHF's system.”

The BBC has also reported (though occasionally, rather than ‘live’) what Hamas does to Palestinians who “co-operate” (or ‘collaborate’) with ‘the Occupation’:

“Two Palestinian men accused of collaborating with Israel have been executed in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run interior ministry says . . . Three others were also executed – on charges of murder . . . Four were hanged and one was executed by firing squad because he was a policeman…”

‘Cui bono?’  Well, Cicero would say ‘Hamati bono!’ (it benefits Hamas!)  So how come nobody seems to have investigated the possibility of Hamas acting on its ‘warning’?  How come Jeremy Bowen hasn’t ‘analysed’ that possibility?  Or even raised the issue as a – however remote – possibility?

It’s not like what actually happened and who did what is obvious – much as BBC’s output might lead many to believe so.  Sure, we have testimonies from ‘medical personnel’.  But, even if we choose to believe them – and there are reasons not to – they only tell us that dozens of Gazans have been killed and injured, mostly by bullets.  They shed no light on who fired those bullets.  They also reveal nothing about who those Gazans are.  Mostly young men, it seems – which is why few photos showing those victims have been published; and why the ‘medical personnel’ have made few references to their gender and age: corpses of young men have lower emotional value.

In any case, gender and age prove nothing in this instance: yes, Hamas terrorists are more likely to belong to the ‘young men’ category; but so are family members sent to pick up food on behalf of their families.

In summary – to circle back to the ‘crime’ analogy – we may have a body.  But no evidence to identify the victim, let alone the perpetrator.

One of the surprising features of this ‘news’ is the dearth of eyewitness testimonies, as well as of direct, relevant video evidence from the field.

Or, rather, it should be surprising.  If you think Europeans are addicted to their mobile phones – try the Middle East!  Most young people in Gaza (and the description ‘young people’ encompasses the vast majority of Gazans) have never used a landline phone; they probably never owned a ‘conventional’ camera.  But using mobile phones – to communicate, take pictures and shoot videos – is second nature.  Everything is being filmed – from Hamas’s 7 October ‘exploits’ to aspects of everyday life.  And, if anything, this cultural propensity has only intensified during the war, with photos and videos acquiring added importance as ‘evidence’ or propaganda tools.

Yet, strangely, nobody – none of those hundreds of Gazans purportedly attacked en-route to the GHF distribution hub – thought of filming the Israeli soldiers (or indeed Israeli tanks!) allegedly shooting into the crowd.  After spending a goodly amount of our licence fee investigating, BBC Verify was forced to admit that they ‘verified’… absolutely zilch:

“Very little footage has emerged purporting to show the moment of the shooting. But one clip posted online showed people running with gunfire audible. BBC Verify geolocated the footage to a road near SDS 1 and established it was newly published on Tuesday although we cannot say for certain it relates to Tuesday's incident.”

As for eyewitness accounts, they are also unusually scarce and sketchy:

“Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old who has been displaced from Rafah, told the Associated Press (AP) news agency that the shooting began shortly before 04:00 local time. Rasha al-Nahal, another witness, told AP ‘there was gunfire from all directions’.”

Neither eyewitness quoted appears to have seen who was shooting.  Either that, or they’d rather not say.

But some ‘sources’ offered much more ‘vibrant’ accounts:

“Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence agency, told the BBC that the incident again occurred a few hundred metres away from the Al-Alam roundabout. He said most of those killed or injured ‘were hit by gunfire from tanks, helicopters and quadcopter drones’.”

“Palestinian Civil Defence” sounds like something Mother Theresa might’ve approved of; most people won’t know that it’s just an agency of the Hamas ‘government’ and that Mr. Basal is a medium-rank Hamas official.  The BBC knows it, of course, but… hey-ho, it’s a ‘source’, ‘innit?  Hamas “told the BBC;” and the BBC (including BBC Verify) dutifully published.  With attribution, of course!  However misleading it may be.

It seems also that in BBC parlance, “[v]erify” does not include asking Hamas impolite questions like ‘Where is your evidence?’

And nobody at the BBC (or at many other media outlets) thought of asking themselves ‘Why would the Israelis concentrate tanks, helicopters and quadcopter drones to… shoot themselves in the foot?’

What BBC Verify failed to… ‘verify’ is even more enlightening: these days, every corner of the globe is being scrutinised by – among other things – high-resolution cameras mounted on satellites.  Everybody spies on everybody, but some of these satellite feeds are available to buy from private companies like SkyWatch.  And, while not tracking every bullet being fired, these are unlikely to miss the telltale signs left by concentrations of “tanks, helicopters and quadcopter drones” repeatedly firing on masses of people.

The BBC is well-aware of these satellite capabilities – having reported on them and even used them previously in Gaza.

So has BBC Verify examined such footage and ‘forgot’ to tell us that they found nothing?  Have they quietly concluded – in ‘light’ of the ‘testimonies’ – that the chances of finding anything were too low to warrant spending our money?  Or have they assessed that not finding anything would be the wrong evidence to find?

The truth is that... we don't know (and we may never know) with absolute certitude, the truth about what happened close to GHF’s aid distribution hub on 1, 2 and 3 June 2025.  It’s very possible that Gazans have been killed there – but it is also possible that they were killed elsewhere.  They (or some of them) may have been Hamas terrorists deliberately sent to pick a fight and generate PR ‘tailwind’; but it is also possible that they/some of them were innocent people trying to get food for their families.  As for the shooters, they could well have been Hamas, for whom GHF represents an existential threat; but it is also possible that the shooters were IDF soldiers, for reasons that we don’t understand.  A more complex scenario is also possible – for instance one in which Hamas perpetrated the shooting on Sunday, while the IDF fired shots on Monday.  Everything is possible.

And that’s exactly the point: we do not know exactly what happened; not right now, not for sure.  We are – or should be – in the realm of probabilities.  And in the field of contested narratives.  Who are you going to believe: the official agencies of a democratic state (with a strong political opposition, a free press, independent courts, etc.)? or those of a fanatical Islamist, antisemitic organisation – one with a proven track record of violently crushing dissent?

And even if one objects to the descriptions above, logic should still scream ‘Cui bono?’

Yet this is not how many in the international media (and also many politicians, here in the UK and elsewhere in the West) saw things.  And the real question is: why?

Why is it that, when it comes to the Jewish state – and only when it comes to the Jewish state – so many people are willing to suspend logic, critical thinking and healthy scepticism?  Why do they find it so easy to believe that Israelis are willing to murder innocents not just with no pity or remorse, but also without sense or reason?  Why do they automatically choose the least-probable explanation, as long as it’s most damning for Israel?

Why the singling out, the ganging up, the obsession with?  And why does this ‘modern’ attitude towards the Jewish state mimic so closely the ‘traditional’ view of everything-else-Jewish throughout the centuries?

To many international journalists, it was obvious that Israelis were to blame – who else could it be?  And none asked ‘why would Israelis do something like this?’  Because in the eyes of these journalists, Israelis are quintessential Jews; and Jews don’t need a motive to do evil.

So what are you saying – I hear you asking: are all these journalists are a bunch of antisemites?  Do you really believe that?

Sorry, folks, but that’s the wrong question.  This isn’t about ‘being an antisemite’.  Antisemitism is rarely an identity; it’s usually a prejudice.  One that has its roots in early antiquity and still bore atrocious fruits as recently as mid-20^th century.  One that has demonstrably been deeply entrenched and widely spread (to the point of constituting the prevalent view), for hundreds and hundreds of years.  And one that is still harboured by a large proportion of the population in many areas of the world – even here in the UK.

No, the Shoah was not an exception, but an exacerbation: the most powerfully acute flare up among centuries of chronic genocide.

If the current ‘anti-Israelism’ feels so similar to ‘classic’ antisemitism – it’s because it is.

This tweet was 'liked' 88,000 times. No other comment needed.

So it’s not ‘they’re all a bunch of antisemites’ that’s the ridiculous proposition; no, what’s ludicrous is claiming that a social phenomenon that’s been so pervasive and ubiquitous for 2000 years suddenly fizzled out or somehow became marginal in the space of just 8 short decades.  Now, do you really believe that??

 

 

From Syria with Hate

About two weeks ago, seemingly out of the blue, an army of Sunni Islamists and fellow travellers spilled out of Syria’s Idlib region.  Their offensive met with little resistance – the ‘official’ Syrian Army (whose soldiers are majority Sunni, too) simply disintegrated.  The regime of Bashar Al-Assad fell like a house of cards, with a speed nobody (including yours truly) foresaw.

If anything, this shows how poor our understanding of the Middle East is: even people from the region, who are carefully following events, struggle to predict them; let alone the hapless West.

But we can at least analyse things post-factum, trying to make some sense of what transpired.

Reactions from the West

First, let’s dispose of the bombastic, ridiculous statements released by ignorant and stupid Western ‘leaders’.  French President Emmanuel Macron is a typical specimen from that sorry pack.  Mr. Macron was among the first Western politicians to weigh in on Syria, already on 8 December:

“The barbaric state has fallen. At last.

I pay tribute to the Syrian people, to their courage, to their patience. In this moment of uncertainty, I send them my wishes for peace, freedom, and unity.

France will remain committed to the security of all in the Middle East.”

Someone needs to break it to Mr. Macron: France has long ceased to be a great power; she no longer rules colonies in the Middle East.  Even while it was a great power, it proved quite unable to defend herself, let alone others.  So that bombastic commitment “to the security of all” sounds decidedly hollow.  Even assuming that Macron – who is despised by a majority in his own decaying country – could speak in her name.

Not the sharpest tool in the shed...

It’s worth paying attention, however, to another part of Mr. Macron’s post – the one praising “the Syrian people”.  Firstly, because it’s a deceitful attempt to portray a change of regime based on military might as some sort of popular uprising.  Secondly, because it’s unclear which part of “the Syrian people” is Mr. Macron talking about.  Is it the Kurds in the North-East?  The Druze in the South?  The Alawis in the North-West?  The long-suffering Christians, who actually supported “[t]he barbaric state” of the Assads – as they saw tyranny as preferable to extinction?  Or was Macron referring to the Sunni majority, which spawned a variety of jihadi groups – including the one that just rose to power in Damascus?  If they were able to voice their opinions in safety (for them and their family), some parts of “the Syrian people” would express immense joy and jubilation at the fall of the Assad regime; others, however, would show concern and even fear.

But I may be slightly unfair here by singling out Macron.  He is just the most ridiculous of the lot – but others (including US President Biden and UK Prime Minister Starmer) made similar and equally hollow, meaningless, even deceitful comments.

 

The Syrian people

20-odd years ago, the West’s ‘understanding’ of Iraq was shaped to a large extent by Iraqi expats such as Ahmad Chalabi, who painted a fake picture of their country – using colours they knew were fashionable in the West.  Including similar claims about ‘the Iraqi people’.  The West learned the hard way that the Iraqi reality was utterly different from those self-serving pictures.

Shouldn’t that learning be applied to Syria?  Or should the West commit the same mistakes again – allow its military and/or its economic might and/or its moral support be used in the service of yet another ignoble ‘cause’?

The Syrian reality is that, by and large, there is no “Syrian people”.  Like Iraq and Lebanon, ‘modern’ Syria is an invented country – cut by British and French colonialists out of whole cloth.

And – also like Iraq and Lebanon – the territory of ‘Syria’ is home to a variety of people, differing by ethnicity and faith.  Even the hapless BBC found it necessary to remark:

“While Sunni Arabs are the dominant ethnic and religious group in Syria, the country is notably diverse, with a range of minority groups including Shia Alawites, of which the ousted president Bashar al-Assad is a member, Kurds, Christians, Druze, Turkmen and Ismailis, in addition to other small groups.”

The term ‘diversity’ may sound comfortingly positive to Western ears.  But the Middle Eastern reality is that ‘diversity’ translates into sectarian division and lack of national cohesion.

Ethno-religious map of Syria

In Syria, eight decades of independence (more than five of them under the Assads) failed to forge a ‘Syrian’ national identity.  Ask the Kurds whether their allegiance is to a ‘Syrian state’ ruled from Damascus – or to other Kurds, like the ones enjoying a great deal of autonomy in Iraq, or the ones struggling under oppression in Turkey.  Ask the Druze or the Christians if they trust a ‘Syrian’ government (any Syrian government – let alone a Sunni Islamist one) to respect and preserve ‘diversity’.

Yes, the “barbaric state” of the Assads was hated by many in Syria – and with good reason.  But no, “the Syrian people” had little to do with the recent change of regime.

 

So what the hell happened?

Those who don’t know history, are condemned to repeat it.  For three decades, Syria has been held together in the iron grip of a ruthless tyrant – Hafez Al-Assad.  But Bashar Al-Assad, his son and successor, was widely viewed as an epigone.  His perceived weakness emboldened internal opponents and attracted the (initially covert, then blatant) interference of ‘neighbours’ such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Faced with an extensive insurrection that threatened to overwhelm those forces still loyal to him, Bashar was propped up by Iran and Russia.  The former supplied ground troops (via the Lebanese Hizb’ullah and various Shia militias), the latter air support.  They differed also in terms of interests: Iran viewed Syria as a land bridge to Lebanon and through it to Israel; Russia wanted to preserve its military bases on the Syrian coast – its only remaining foothold in the Middle East.

With Russian and Iranian support, Assad re-established control over the country’s largest cities and its most populous parts.

Worried by Shia Iran’s expanding influence, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates lavished funds on a plethora of Sunni Islamist organisations, often at odds with each other, but all of them opposed to the Assad regime.

The West also intervened in Syria, deploying air operations and special forces, both against the Assad regime and against ISIS.  The US armed and funded a local Kurdish-led militia – the Syrian Democratic Forces.  The SDF fought ISIS and achieved control of the majority Kurdish areas in the North and North-East.

In turn, Turkey worried that its own restive Kurdish minority might join their brothers just across the border – demanding autonomy and, potentially, independence.  Its military (plus Turkish-sponsored Syrian militias) established control of a 20-mile wide ‘buffer zone’ inside Syria’s border with Turkey – a ‘buffer’ the size of Lancashire.

Responding to the Iran-sponsored encroachment, Israel launched hundreds of aerial bombardments on Syrian territory, targeting Islamic Republic’s military installations and personnel, as well as assets involved in supplying weapons to Hizb’ullah in Lebanon.

Add to the dry paragraphs above lots and lots of human suffering.  Half a million dead – many of them women and children.  Many more maimed.  Widespread hunger and economic deprivation, abysmal lack of healthcare, collapse of children’s education.  More than 12 million Syrians (i.e., more than half of the population) displaced from their homes, of which almost 5.5 million (roughly a quarter of the population) in neighbouring countries and overseas.

But all this is history.  Until a couple of weeks ago, it was clear to everybody that Assad won and was there to stay.  So unbreakable seemed his grip on the country, that there were voices in the West advocating ‘bringing him back from the cold’ in diplomatic terms – since the world would have to work with him for many years to come…

So why the sudden collapse?

Most commentators attribute it to the lack of military support from the two allies – Russia and Iran.  Russia is busy fighting in Ukraine, while Iran’s main ‘tool’ in Syria – Lebanon’s Hizb’ullah – is licking the many wounds inflicted by Israel.

Or so the story goes.  Frankly, this sounds utterly unconvincing to me.  There are Russian planes at the Hmeimim base on the Syrian coast – and they’re not bombing Ukraine.  Before the recent ceasefire, Hizb’ullah still had enough forces to fight the IDF – so surely those forces could now be deployed in Syria?

And while complete abandonment by allies may explain Assad’s downfall, it does not explain the lightning speed of that defeat.  After all, before the Iranian and Russian intervention Assad was gradually losing ground – but his regime did not crash down within days.

As for the main rebel force – The Organisation for the Liberation of Levant (Arabic: Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS) – it is not a new movement.  It was established almost 8 years ago (almost an eternity in terms of Syria’s volatile politics) through the merger of even older groups.  Since then, it established control over the Idlib region – in the north-western corner of Syria, not far from Aleppo – but until recently showed little appetite for a frontal fight with the regime.  What changed?

 

The Turkish connection

In the absence of democracy, power springs from the barrel of the gun.  That means men, money and weapons.  In the Middle East, men are moved by ideologies – and there are plenty of them sloshing around.  Most Arabs are observant Muslims and many of them can – with relative ease – be persuaded to join Islamist ‘causes’.  But while beliefs and ideas can send them to wage jihad, they still expect their leaders to ‘take care of them’ from a material perspective.  Even believers have to make a living; families left at home need to be provided for; and generous compensation is expected for property damage and other losses incurred by the valiant mujahideen.

And then there’s weapons.  Assault rifles are not hard to find in the Middle East – though they (and attending ammunition) still have to be procured and paid for.  A rifle, a hand grenade, even a humble knife may be enough for martyrdom; but the leaders want power – and these days it’s hard to win a war with such weapons, no matter how uplifted one is by the spirit of jihad.  We’re talking machine guns, cannon and missiles – sometimes even drones.  Not to mention vehicles – from the humble motorbike to cars, pickup trucks and even light armour.  There’s a market for all that, yes – but not enough to equip an army.  Only a state can provide that.

So what state equipped HTS – to the point of causing the Syrian Army to largely disperse after a few skirmishes, rather than facing it?

Let’s ask the same question in a different way: what country, just days after HTS conquered Damascus, called on the UN to remove the group’s designation as a terror organisation?  You got it – it was Turkey!

Turkey’s increasingly autocratic leader Erdogan – himself an Islamist, ideologically close to the Muslim Brotherhood – harbours a longing for the old Ottoman world order, much as Putin dreams of a reborn USSR.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a speech during the celebrations of the 563rd anniversary of Istanbul's conquest by Ottoman Turks. On May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmed II conquered Istanbul, then called Constantinople. The conquest transformed the city, once the heart of the Byzantine realm, into the capital of the new Ottoman Empire. (Photo by Kayhan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Of course, Turkey and its sponsored militias clashed with HTS in the past; but it is hardly unusual – certainly in the Middle East – for past adversaries to become allies, especially when they discover some shared interests.

Turkey’s involvement can explain a few other mysteries.  For instance – why were Iran and Russia so quick to abandon their faithful ally Assad in his hour of need?  And how come that no Russian soldiers, no Iranian-sponsored militiamen and no IRGC ‘advisers’ were captured by the rebels – to be publicly lynched by mobs thirsty for revenge?  How come that the Damascus embassies of neither Russia nor Iran were invaded, looted and set on fire – as usually happens in this sort of ‘revolution’?

Is it that the HTS fighters are so generous in victory that they decided to let bygones be bygones?  Or is it that two deals were actually (and secretly) made: one between Turkey and HTS, the other involving Turkey, Russia and Iran?

Both Russia and Iran are under Western sanctions and desperately in need of allies.  Neither Russia nor Iran are interested in Syria per se, but in its narrow utility: Russia wants to maintain its military bases; Iran wants a land bridge to Lebanon.  Both things that the HTS can afford to grant, in return for Turkish support, plus Russian and Iranian non-interference.

No, Mr. Macron: what we have witnessed is not the ‘courageous and patient’ “Syrian people” removing “at last” the “barbarous state”.  What’s just occurred is a regional power with neo-colonial ambitions colluding with two other powers and a local agent to further their respective interests.

Under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey is increasingly adventurous, aggressive and overbearing.  That this Islamist ideologue with a hanker for dictatorship also controls an impressive arsenal of Nato weaponry shouldn’t make anyone’s sleep easier.

No, this is very unlikely to bring “security of all in the Middle East” – with all due respect to France’s generous ‘commitments’.  If it is allowed to continue unopposed, Turkey’s lunge into the Levant is likely to end up in war and strife on a scale yet hard to fathom.

As for the “Syrian people,” they just exchanged one bloody, murderous tyrant for another – at least as bad and potentially even worse.

Make no mistake: HTS is not a ‘Syrian nationalist’ movement – as the BBC and other hapless Western outlets want to believe.  It’s not ‘just’ the group’s past affiliations with ISIS and Al-Qaeda; it’s not ‘just’ the acts that ‘earned’ them the terrorism listing in the first place.  No, it’s in the name: the ‘S’ in HTS does not stand for ‘Syria,’ but for ‘al-Sham’ – a term loaded with almost mythological significance in the Middle East.  This is the same ‘S’ as the second ‘S’ in ISIS.

The recently Islamised Arabs who conquered the area in the 7^th century CE called it بِلَاد الشَّام (Bilad Al-Sham, literally: ‘the Land of the Left Hand’).  They emerged from the Arab Peninsula and – when standing there and facing the rising sun – the Levant is to the left…  Al-Sham was just an internal province within the early Islamic Caliphate – hence its ‘borders’ were not clearly defined.  But it included roughly the territories of modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel (including West Bank and Gaza), as well as a large chunk of Jordan.

HTS is not the Organisation for the Liberation of Syria (as some would like to think in the West); its goal – declared in its very name – is to ‘liberate’ the entire Levant.

If your world view is that the entire world will eventually ‘see the light’ and (one way or another) embrace Islam; if your ideal model of society is the Islamic Caliphate of 7^th century CE; then you won’t be put off by foreign and irrelevant concepts such as internationally-recognised borders.  And from that perspective ‘liberation’ doesn’t just include removing the Jewish state and the Western ‘Crusaders’ – but also most Arab regimes, seen as not truly Islamic. ‘Liberation’ means returning to the ‘purity’ of 7^th century Islam: its supremacy uncontested; its men dressing in the prescribed way, its women returned to their designated place, its infidels either suitably humble or put to the sword; and the various deviations punished as ordained.

Of course, if you’re a clever Islamist, you don’t say things like that in English, or in the hearing of infidels.  No, you’ll assume a moderate, even ‘progressive’ vocabulary.  You’ll talk about bringing back peace and social justice.  You might even force yourself to pronounce the name ‘Israel’ and declare that the Jews have nothing to fear.

You will, of course, talk unctuously to the likes of BBC’s ‘International Editor’ Jeremy Bowen.  Not that it’s difficult: these Western ‘journalists’ are, after all, absolutely clueless: they speak none of the local languages (making them totally dependent on local translators and ‘fixers’) and understand none of the local customs and culture (beyond, at most, having acquired a taste for sweet Arabic coffee).  And they’re not easy to dupe just because they don’t understand when someone lies to them, but because they so desperately want to believe – they end up lying to themselves.  Imbued by a keen desire to ‘please the natives’ (and thus atone for historic wrongs or for their own racist prejudices) they want to show affinity; it comes out as asininity.

BBC's International Editor Jeremy Bowen is paid c. £250,000 a year for onerous jobs such as 'gently interviewing' the likes of Bashar Al-Assad and Abu Muhammed Al-Jawlani.

A case in point: these Western journalists have all been told to refer to the HTS leader by his real name of Ahmed al-Sharaa – and immediately complied.  Most have ‘reported’ this (swapping the ‘nom-de-guerre’ for the ‘real name’) as a sign of the man’s confidence or even as a declaration of peaceful intentions.  It’s much more likely an attempt at dissimulation.

I have yet to read a Western article commenting on the significance of that ‘nom-de-guerre’ – Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani.  In itself, it represents a symbolic ‘return’ to early Islamic tradition, which – for any Islamist – represents ‘the Golden Age’.  ‘Abu Mohammed’ is the traditional ‘kunya’: it means ‘father of Mohammed,’: the bearer of that ‘kunya’ obviously named his firstborn son after the Prophet – itself an unmistakable mark of piety.  The latter part of the name (called ‘nisbah’) is an indication of origin: the late Islamic State ‘caliph’ was called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – indicating that he is ‘from Baghdad’.  The late leader of Al-Qaeda was called ‘Al-Zawahiri’ (‘from Zawahir’ – a town in Saudi Arabia).  Al-Masri means ‘from Egypt’, Al-Soodani – from Sudan and so on.  As for the current leader of HTS, his chosen ‘nisbah’ is al-Jawlani (or al-Julani, but not al-Jolani, as incorrectly rendered in the West).  ‘Jawlan’ or ‘Julan’ is the Arabic name for the Golan Heights… 

Ahmed al-Sharaa, alias Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani

The current HTS warlord was born… no, not in Syria and not on the Golan Heights, but in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  The man the BBC calls ‘a Syrian nationalist’ joined Al-Qaeda in… Iraq – where he fought for a few years alongside another famous terrorist – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (from Zarqa, a town in Jordan).  He only returned to Syria in 2011 – on an al-Qaeda mission.  Islamists are not nationalists – their homeland is the Umma, ‘the Nation of Islam’.  Still, Abu Mohammed’s family originated from the Golan Heights – and that seemed important enough for Abu Mohammed to change his ‘nisbah’ to Al-Jawlani.  I wonder why?

 

So what should ‘we’ do about Syria?

(By ‘we’ I mean the rest of the world – the West in particular.)

Here’s something my science teachers taught me: before trying to invent a new solution to a problem, have a look around: it may be that somebody has already tried and tested a solution to a similar problem.  Saves you time and embarrassment!

Not so long ago, in the heart of Europe, there was a country called Yugoslavia.  Also an invented name, meaning ‘Land of the Southern Slavs’.  Also created by political interests, out of the shards of an Empire.  Also home to a ‘diversity’ of people, differing by ethnicity, faith and language.  For decades, that fake country was held together in the iron fist of a bloody dictator.  People were talking about ‘the Yugoslav people’…  But then the tyrant died – and it turned out there was no such people.  There were Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croatians, Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians who didn’t quite see eye to eye… and so the civil war began.  People were slaughtered by the thousand; women and girls were gang-raped.  Hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes or fled out of justified fear – this was the war that gave the phenomenon the name we use (and sometimes abuse) today: ethnic cleansing.  Foreign powers got involved, as they do – Russia, Turkey, NATO…

Ethno-religious map of Yugoslavia

The war ended only when everybody accepted that there was no Yugoslavia; that Croatians did not wish to be ruled by Serbs, in ‘Yugoslavia,’ but to govern themselves in their own country – Serbia.  The fake ‘Land of the Southern Slavs’ disappeared into history’s ‘failed experiments’ bin and a handful of nation states came into being: Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosova.  None of those are ‘ethnically pure’ – nor should they be.  There are Croats living as a minority in Serbia and Serbs in Croatia.  But, however wicked in itself (and it was!), the big ethnic cleansing was never reversed – as that was likely to generate more suffering.  Those new nation states have meanwhile by-and-large learned to treat their minorities fairly – since they are minorities and do not threaten to take over and oppress the majority.  They also learned to live in peace with each other and are gradually building something they still hesitate to call friendship.

So why don’t ‘we’ learn from that example?  Why don’t we adopt (or, better still, adapt) a similar solution to a similar problem?  Why is it that – just a few days ago – the European Commission (i.e., the same body that played a role in pacifying ‘Yugoslavia’) was:

“in agreement [with Turkey’s President Erdogan] on the need to preserve Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity, with a particular focus on creating an inclusive government…”

Now, why should foreigners continue to impose “Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity” upon “the Syrian people,” rather than allow (nay, encourage and help) those people to choose how they wish to organise and govern themselves?  Why does the EU believe that Kurds and Alawis want less self-determination than Croatians, Bosnians or Kosovar Albanians?  Or does Ursula von der Leyen believe that they deserve it less?

I think, unfortunately, that it’s even worse than that.  Western ‘leaders’ with no sense of history and morals are simply driven by political convenience.  They understand only too well that Turkey was behind the HTS takeover, that’s why Ms. Von der Leyen rushed to Ankara: to try and appease Erdogan, to make sure the EU is ‘on the side of the winner’ – and attempt to get something in return for the EU ‘support’.  That in the process she betrayed “the Syrian people” (along with EU’s own loudly proclaimed principles) is no skin off her hard nose.

And that’s where ‘we’ get it horribly, dreadfully wrong.  Despite their ‘inclusiveness’ and their in-your-face wokeness, too many Western leaders believe – deep inside and concealed even from themselves – that ‘brown people’ are different; that they have different aspirations, that they don’t crave freedom and identity like ‘we’ do.  That they can be fobbed off with less – for instance made to live in an invented country with an “inclusive government” (like Lebanon, perhaps?)

But people are people.  They are endowed with intelligence and moral sense, whatever the colour of their skin and the shape of their eyes.  From the ruins of Syria, from the misery of Africa and Asia and Latin America, those eyes are watching ‘us’.  From ‘us’ who have already conquered our freedom, they expect righteousness, integrity and hope.  But they see Emmanuel Macron.  They see Ursula von der Leyen standing next to Recep Tayyip Erdogan – and they see through her.  What they see is utter hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, callousness and crypto-racism.  No, they don’t like what they see.  And can ‘we’ really blame them??

It’s the Holocaust, stupid!

"The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz!"

Zvi Rex, Israeli psychiatrist

 

On 5 July 2024, King Charles III approved the appointment of Rt Hon Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.  Rt Hon David Lammy was appointed as Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs.

On 14 July, the latter announced that the UK would “restart funding to UNRWA in order to get aid as quickly as possible to those who need it in Gaza”.  The funding had been stopped when some UNRWA ‘humanitarian workers’ were found to have taken active part in the 7 October attack and massacres.  But the new government declared that it was

“confident that UNRWA is taking action to ensure it meets the highest standards of neutrality”.

“Is taking action” is an interesting way to put it: it clearly refers to something that may bear fruit in the (undefined) future; but the funding resumed with immediate effect.

On 25 July, the UK Labour government announced that it would withdraw the objections (submitted by the previous administration) to the issuance, by the International Criminal Court, of arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence.

On 2 September, the UK government banned the export of certain weapons to Israel.  The announcement explained:

“On day one in office, the Foreign Secretary commissioned a thorough review into Israel’s compliance with International Humanitarian Law, and has travelled to Israel twice since being appointed to the role to understand the situation on the ground.”

“On day one in office” would seem to indicate a huge sense of urgency.  These three measures – all taken within 60 days of its appointment – were by far the most prominent foreign affairs decisions taken by the new government; and, in fact, arguably the most forceful decisions it took in any area.  It seems that the Jewish state and its behaviour is – for some reason – the new UK government’s top concern.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Israel twice in his first 60 days in office, "to understand the situation on the ground". He concluded that Israel might be breaching the laws of war in Gaza, and banned the export of some weapons to the Jewish state. Here he is on a previous visit to Israel, organised in 2022 by Labour Friends of Israel. Some friend!

On the other hand, the Labour government also did something else, though perhaps not “[o]n day one in office”: it commissioned a review of the national curriculum for schools in England.  Of course, the matter of what British children are taught in British schools is not quite as burning as whatever happens in Gaza; so the curriculum review will take at least a year, not a fortnight.  It is scheduled to report sometime in autumn 2025.

Well, I suppose education reforms can wait; but some things clearly cannot.  Thus, already on 16 September this year, Prime Minister Starmer announced that, as part of the review to be completed in a year’s time, he was making “Holocaust education” a mandatory topic of study in every school in England.  Of course, the national curriculum – which is followed by the vast majority of schools in England – already includes “Holocaust education”.  And Mr. Starmer’s decision won’t be applied with immediate effect anyway – but only “when the new curriculum comes in” – i.e. after the review is completed, hopefully in autumn 2025.  So why did he announce it already – and with such fanfare?

In opposition, Sir Keir Starmer promised to mend the Labour Party's relationship with the Jewish community. Once in office, he started by making 3 anti-Israel decisions, in quick succession. No wonder that he felt he had to throw the Jews a bone. And he chose "Holocaust education".

Clearly, Rt Hon Starmer needed to balance his government’s slew of hostile measures against the Jewish state with ‘doing something good for the Jews’.  But why “Holocaust education”?  Sure, the memory of the Shoah is a very important part of contemporary Jewish identity.  But, when it comes to their expectations from the government, British Jews have many pressing concerns: “Preserve the memory of the Holocaust” was #8 on the list of ‘Ten Commandments’ included in ‘The Jewish Manifesto for the General Election 2024’ published by the Board of Deputies of British Jews.  (Interestingly, the cover of that brochure boasted a picture of Jews holding up photos of Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas!)

So why bring up the Holocaust?  Jews have been accused of being obsessed with the Shoah.  But it seems many Gentiles are fascinated by it, too; only in different ways.

Let us remember: in the ‘enlightened’ 20th century, the world attempted to murder its Jews and wipe out their memory.  I say ‘the world’ advisedly: while it was Nazi Germany that led that ‘effort,’ members of many other nations lent ‘a helping hand’.  From Ukrainian guards to Polish peasants, from Vichy government officials to Norwegian collaborators – they all played an active role in the Shoah.  Fortunately, the Nazis never conquered the isle of Britain; but even there there were those only too eager to take part in ‘freeing the world from Jewish domination’.

Of those who did not murder Jews themselves (or delivered them to be slaughtered), many were guilty by omission: the vast majority of countries refused to accept Jewish refugees fleeing unimaginable threats and persecution; the British government of the time even callously banned Jews from fleeing to the ‘Jewish Home’ they were supposed to establish.  As for the United States, it responded to European Jews’ desperate need for a safe haven by… further reducing immigration quotas – in particular (and purely coincidentally, of course!) from Germany and Poland.

Ultimately, of course, nations went to war against the Axis; soldiers spilled their blood to defeat it.  But no country fought to save the Jews – they did so to defend their own interests.  The enormity of what was being done to the Jews eventually became known to the Allies, not in the least because so many trains were crisscrossing Europe to deliver raw material to the Nazi death factories.  But, if Hitler hated Jews enough to take those trains away from the Nazi war effort and employ them as vehicles of murder – the Allies didn’t love Jews that much; otherwise, they might’ve used their clear air superiority to destroy those railways.

No wonder that, when finally the war ended and the horrors became widely known, many felt – deep in their hearts – a sense of guilt.  No, not because they felt they contributed to those horrors themselves – the perpetrators were soon declared to be just the Germans and, even among them, only a small circle of Nazis, most of whom were by then conveniently dead.  No, the reason many people secretly felt guilty was that, looking candidly into their souls, they discovered (shhhh, don’t tell anyone!) some of the same feelings that the Nazis harboured.  After all, the latter did not invent antisemitism; the Holocaust was but the culmination of many centuries of hatred, persecution and massacres.

Guilt – as any good Jew or Catholic will tell you – is a very oppressive feeling.  And so, the ovens of Majdanek had barely cooled down, when denial started.  Already by 1948, a French ‘intellectual’ and journalist was publishing a book ‘demonstrating’ that the Shoah was a false narrative.  Other ‘intellectuals’ and ‘academics’ followed suit.

The problem with Holocaust denial is, however – from the point of view of its promoters – that it’s too easily debunked.  Too many people were involved; in too many places; there were too many surviving witnesses; and, despite Nazi efforts, there was also physical evidence.  If – as the deniers claim – the gas chambers were only used to de-lice clothes, it is rather difficult to explain what happened to the people who wore those thousands of shoes left in a dusty warehouse.  The denial approach is still alive and kicking of course – massively in Muslim countries and occasionally in Europe, N. America and elsewhere.  But it struggled to attract a mass following – not in the least because its promoters tended to be obviously unsavoury characters: Islamists and neo-Nazis.

A more appealing way to deal with the guilt is Holocaust trivialisation – promoted primarily by ‘progressives’ like Jeremy Corbyn or Jackie Walkers.  The Holocaust – proclaim supporters of this particular brand of deniers – indeed happened.  But… it didn’t happen only to Jews, it affected many other categories of victims (Communists, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, disabled people).  And ‘the Holocaust’ was really just ‘one Holocaust’ among many; perhaps not quite as horrific as the transatlantic slave trade – to cite a favourite item on that list.

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone (right) ‘resigned’ from the Labour Party. Former Vice-Chair of Momentum Jackie Walker (left) was expelled. Both are notorious for having made very ‘controversial’ statements involving Jews and the Holocaust.

But if the Holocaust never happened; or if it happened as just one such event among many others; then what explains the widespread belief in the contrary (i.e., that it did happen and was an extraordinary, exceptional event)?  If the deniers are really truth-tellers, then there’s a conspiracy to be found in the opposite camp.

And who are more credibly accused of conspiracy than the Jews?  Of course, blaming ‘the Jews’ as such has become a little unfashionable.  But hey, there is by now a Jewish state.  From the point of view of the deniers (of all tinges and methodologies), Israel is an ideal scapegoat: on one hand, it’s mostly Jewish – so mostly suspect; but on the other hand, one can attack that ‘mostly’ by referring to them as ‘Israelis’, thus avoiding the potential pitfall of bashing ‘the Jews’ – like a certain fellow with a funny moustache!

By the mid-1950s, all references to Jews as its main victims have been ‘expunged’ from the ‘history’ of the Holocaust – as told by the Soviet Union and by many ‘progressive’ circles in the West. By mid-1970s Israel was commonly accused – in the same circles – of ‘weaponising’ the Shoah to ‘justify the crimes against the Palestinian people’.  Eventually, someone (a renegade Jew, just like in the times of inquisitorial trials) came up with the term ‘Holocaust industry’; a term invented to describe not the industrialised murder of Jews – but the Jewish ‘exaggerate’ propensity to ‘over-memorialise’ and ‘exploit’ it.

This form of denial is, it seems, much easier for people to ‘buy’ into.  A 2017 survey found that just 2% of the population strongly agreed/tended to agree with the proposition ‘The Holocaust is a myth’.  ‘The Holocaust has been exaggerated’ gained the agreement of 4%.  But no less than 10% agreed that ‘Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes’.  (‘No less’ is not a figure of speech: this particular question elicited a lot of ‘Neither agree nor disagree’ responses (19%), as well as ‘Don’t know/Refuse to respond’ (15%).  So, in addition to the 10% that agreed, 34% of respondents abstained – for some reason – from providing a clear answer to that question.)

But ‘merely’ accusing Jews of nefariously ‘exploiting Holocaust victimhood’ doesn’t go far enough in terms of relieving the guilt.  Because the implication is that, whether ‘exploiting’ or not, they were victims.

How about accusing the Jews themselves of somehow bringing that catastrophe upon themselves?  Of course, accusing an entire population of ‘deserving’ to be massacred is a bit problematic in ‘progressive’ circles.  And before 1948 there was no Jewish state to blame.  But, conveniently, there was a movement aiming to establish one; a movement that, for some reason, was desperate to save Jews from the claws of the Nazis – especially by bringing them to Palestine Mandate.  By 1982, the Institute of Oriental Studies (no, not SOAS; this was IOS, affiliated with the Soviet Academy of Sciences!) was awarding a PhD to a certain PLO leader called Mahmoud Abbas – upon the successful defence of his thesis “The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945”.  Few people read this piece of original research, but the theme itself is still popular among hard-leftists – see comments made by former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone in 2016.

For some, however, such theories still don’t go far enough.  After all, even if one were to believe that ‘Zionists’ collaborated with the Nazis (or, in Livingstone’s version, that ‘Hitler supported Zionism’), those Zionists would have been no worse than so many others on the European continent.  And the victims were still Jews!

No, the ultimate guilt-relieving medicine is Holocaust inversion.  If one can persuade oneself that the Jews (or the Jewish state, as the guilt-free euphemism for ‘the Jews’) perpetrate ‘a Holocaust’ themselves – then one can finally hate with no niggling unease.  One can even proffer one’s hatred as a noble endeavour, a kind of belatedly-found and cost-free anti-Nazism.  What better way of bearing the Mark of Cain, than wearing it as badge of honour?

It’s not easy, but with persistence everything is possible.  The Naqba can be narrated as ‘a Holocaust’; Gaza Strip can be equated to ‘a concentration camp’; and bombing Israel with thousands of rockets can be likened to ‘the Revolt of the Warsaw Ghetto’.

Can you name one symbol – other than the Star of David – that is so often associated with the Swastika?

The intention was clear.  Of course, one can believe – especially if one is so inclined – that Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians is bad, bad, bad.  But there is ‘bad’ (and there’s no penury of bad behaviour in the world) – and then there is ‘Nazi’.  Others are occasionally accused of Nazi-like behaviour; when it comes to Israel, such ‘metaphors’ abound.  There’s an overwhelming propensity to cast Jews (and only Jews) in the role of Nazis.

In fact, some people found creative ways to claim that Jews are actually worse than Nazis.  After all, unlike the original Nazis, Jews have been themselves victims of the Holocaust; so, as an Honourable Member of the House of Commons once said, they should know better, shouldn’t they??

A 1998 article (published by two ‘researchers’ holding academic positions in London and Paris) stated:

“[T]he Holocaust does not free the Jewish state or the Jews of accountability.  On the contrary, the Nazi crime compounds their moral responsibility and exposes them to greater answerability.  They are the ones who have escaped the ugliest crime in history, and now they are perpetrating reprehensible deeds against another people.”

Ah, but there was still something missing: after all, “reprehensible deeds” is rather weak – if you are to accuse somebody of perpetrating ‘a Holocaust’.  The Holocaust was more than displacement, ghettos and concentration camps; it was history’s largest and most obvious genocide.  Indeed, in most people’s minds, it is synonymous with ‘genocide’.

So, when a truly genocidal attack by Hamas triggered a harsh Israeli response; and when that response resulted (if we are to believe Hamas) in more than 40,000 Palestinian deaths; that’s when the final component fell in place.

40,000 is a large number, but hardly an unusual one.  According to a 2021 UN Development Programme report, the Saudi-led war in Yemen (prosecuted among others with British weapons) caused some 377,000 fatalities – around 150,000 from the fighting itself and the rest from lack of safe water, food and medical care.  The Saudis, by the way, did what Israel arguably should have done: they did not wait for the Houthis to attack them, but hit them first – on the assumption that an Iranian-sponsored terror group on the border is enough of a casus belli.  They also imposed a comprehensive blockade on Yemen, which according to the UN resulted in 3.5 million cases of acute malnutrition and 131,000 deaths between 2015 and 2020.

One of the indirect victims of the war in Yemen.  A 2016 UNICEF report claimed "one child dies every 10 minutes because of malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory-tract infections."

But all that’s irrelevant, ain’t it?  Saudi Arabia has not been accused of genocide; it hasn’t been dragged before an international court.  Its leaders aren’t going to be indicted for committing ‘the crime of extermination’.

Will Netanyahu be indicted?  Will Israel be found guilty of genocide?  It doesn't matter, folks.  The words have been spoken; the accusation is all that matters.  The image of Jews as Nazis has now been planted into the minds of those who did not harbour it already.

In short, the Saudis aren’t Jews.  There’s no specific interest – and certainly no morbid satisfaction – in accusing them of perpetrating a new Holocaust.  When Saudis kill children, it’s bad luck; when Jews do it, it’s – for some reason – fascinating...

Night is the new day, folks!  Haniyeh’s a moderate, Netanyahu the devil incarnate.  Hamas is progressive, the PLO moderate, Isreal is a racist state.  Hizb’ullah are brave and noble warriors, the J… err… Zionists are the new Nazis.  Palestinians are the new Jews, and the old ones – having failed to internalise the valuable lessons of the Shoah – are holocausting them poor bastards!  They need to be stopped!  Otherwise, what’s the point of getting all that “Holocaust Education”??  What better way to honour all those dead Jews than prevent the ones alive from doing to others what’s been done to them?  It’s time to finally apply the ‘Never again!’ injunction and all the international treaties that – as we all know – have been put in place precisely with this in mind.  The way to ensure this never happens again is to immediately restore the ceasefire that was in place before 7/10.  The way to preserve peace in the Middle East is to deny Israel weapons.  And put them nasty Isrealis in the dock, not in the Hague, but at Nuremberg – now that’s an idea!

After all, we live in a just, fair and delightful world, governed by the International Humanitarian Law.  Enjoy!!!

Of genocide and Doritos crisps

ICJ President Joan E. Donaghue reads the 29-page ruling.

Arrest the Common Sense – it broke the Common Law!

Here’s a quote from James Clavell’s most famous novel:

“The law may upset reason but reason may never upset the law, or our whole society will shred like an old tatami. The law may be used to confound reason, reason must certainly not be used to overthrow the law.”

Many legal scholars fell in love with this adage. What they apparently failed to notice is that Clavell put these ‘wise words’ in the mouth of Yoshi Toranaga – a wily war lord who only pretended to obey the law, while manipulating it to his advantage to make himself Shogun, absolute ruler of medieval Japan.

No, to set the law above reason is to invite fanaticism; to apply a law that confounds reason is to perpetrate injustice.

Laws and the Rule of Law are two of humanity’s most valuable inventions.  They can guide us on the road to justice – in the spirit of the biblical injunction צדק צדק תרדף (justice, justice thou shalt pursue).

But, no matter how valuable, every human invention can be used for good or evil purposes.  The domestication of animals improved communications, allowed people to ‘delegate’ back-breaking work, reduced famine and filled our innate desire for companionship; but it also provided more destructive ways to make war – war elephants, cavalry charges and horse-drawn cannon. More recently, the discovery of radioactive materials provided a means to save human beings affected by terrible diseases – but also to kill people by the tens of thousands.

Laws are no different: they can be wonderful guardians of life, dignity and freedom; but, throughout history, they were often turned into instruments of oppression.  Jews suffered from ‘legal’ persecution even more than they did from lawlessness: think the Inquisition, the Dhimmitude, the Nuremberg Laws, the Soviet show trials…  And it’s not always because of bad laws; often it’s about good laws that are twisted to promote hatred and perpetrate persecution.  Laws against murder have often been employed in blood libel accusations; those against treason were used to condemn Alfred Dreyfus…

One of Stalin's 'tribunals' delivers its verdict in 1937.  17 people were condemned - some to immediate execution, while others were eventually murdered in 'labour camps'. 

And now an international convention against genocide is being used to reward and succour a genocidal act.

I blame South Africa’s government, of course.  But then, there will always be slimy politicians eager to deflect people’s attention from their own woeful mismanagement – by pointing the finger at issues ‘out there’.

All South Africa did was to formulate a ridiculous claim – thousands of pathetic litigators do that each year.  In one such case, a plaintiff who choked on a Dorito crisp sued the supplier, arguing that the product was inherently dangerous.  After nine years of costly litigation, the claim was finally rejected by the Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania, with one judge referring wryly to

“the common sense notion that it is necessary to properly chew hard foodstuffs prior to swallowing.”

Which begs the question: where was the common sense of the judges who allowed that case to proceed and burn through taxpayers’ money for nine tedious years?

A clever lawyer can argue that Doritos are indeed dangerous – by ‘learnedly demonstrating’ that they (‘prima faciae,’ in certain ‘plausible’ ways and all that jazz) tick boxes in legal definitions of ‘potentially harmful products’.  S/he might even bring ‘expert witnesses’ ready to swear that people have indeed choked on crisps…  But a judge endowed with common sense will rule that Doritos are as much a ‘choking hazard’ as any other tasty snack.

Imagine if the judges would, a few days into those nine years of pointless litigation, ordered ‘provisional measures’ – for instance that the supplier must stop producing Doritos, to prevent the ‘plausible risk’ of people choking on them!

The ICJ judges should have thrown out South Africa’s claim as vexatious; as a politically motivated attempt at ‘legal’ harassment – even more absurd than the Doritos case.  That they did not do so is due to a combination of lack of integrity (in the case of some judges) and lack of common sense (for others).

A barrister friend of mine once quipped that judges are interested in law, not justice.  The International Court ‘of Justice’ (ICJ) isn’t different in that respect.  It seeks to apply what it sees as ‘the Law’.  But it shouldn’t do so mechanically, unthinkingly.  Justice may be blind, but it shouldn't be brainless.  Judges must deliver it without fear and favour, but with fairness.  In the absence of integrity and/or common sense, what they’ll deliver is oppression and injustice.

Portrayal of 'Justice': blind, but not batty!

True, the ICJ took pains to explain that it wasn’t (yet) making a determination on the actual claim of genocide.  But it found the ‘risk’ that Israel may commit genocide ‘plausible’ enough to allow the litigation to continue – and to order ‘provisional measures’ aimed at mitigating that ‘risk’!

It did so by suspending common sense and engaging – either deliberately or through fanatic adherence to words over facts – in a box-ticking exercise.  It’s all in the 29-page long ruling.  Which – unlike the thousands of journalists reporting and the millions of people talking about it – I took the time to read.  I also spent my precious time reading the five accompanying documents:

• The Declaration of Judge Xue (China)
• The Dissenting Opinion of Judge Sebutinde (Uganda)
• The Declaration of Judge Bhandari (India)
• The Declaration of Judge Nolte (Germany)
• The Separate Opinion of Judge ad hoc Barak (Israel)

They make for an interesting reading!  So let’s analyse the judges ‘reasoning’ – such as it is.

Apparently clear, clearly apparent

The first question that the ruling addresses is that of jurisdiction: does the Court have (at least apparently or ‘prima faciae’) jurisdiction over this case?  In order for South Africa to sue Israel, it has to show that there is a “dispute” between the two states “relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention”.  But South Africa is thousands of miles away from Israel.  What do they have to quarrel about?

Yet the Court ruled that there was a dispute:

“26. The Court notes that South Africa issued public statements . . . in which it expressed its view that . . . Israel’s actions amounted to violations of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

. . .

27. The Court notes that Israel dismissed any accusation of genocide in the context of the conflict in Gaza…”

So there you are: South Africa accused and Israel denied, hence there’s a dispute – let’s go to court.  According to this ‘logic’, had Israel abstained from denying and just contemptuously held its piece in the face of South Africa’s angry accusations, there would’ve been no dispute and hence no Court jurisdiction over this case.  But once Israel denied…

Absurd, I know; but apparently sufficient for this Court to conclude:

“28. In light of the above, the Court considers that the Parties appear to hold clearly opposite views . . .  The Court finds that the above-mentioned elements are sufficient at this stage to establish prima facie the existence of a dispute between the Parties…”

The judges must’ve thought long and hard whether “the parties appear to hold clearly opposing views”, or rather ‘clearly hold apparently opposing views’!

Anyway… according to their ‘logic’, if you shout ‘your sister is a whore’ and I respond ‘but I have no sister’ – there’s ‘apparently a clear dispute’ that justifies Court intervention!

Innocent until found ‘plausible’

But is the Convention even applicable in this case?  The Court does not know – it hasn’t even begun to judge the merits of the claim.  This ruling isn’t about whether Israel committed genocide – it’s about ‘provisional measures’ to be ordered in the meantime.  It’s not even about ‘potentially’ – it’s about ‘plausibly’.

‘Plausible’ is such a great word!  Not even dictionaries agree what it really means.  Cambridge interprets it as

“seeming likely to be true, or able to be believed.”

while Merriam-Webster says it means

“superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often deceptively so.”

The two are apparently different, but to the Court one thing is clear: in the world of mere ‘plausibility’, there’s no need for evidence:

“30. At the present stage of the proceedings, the Court is not required to ascertain whether any violations of Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention have occurred.  Such a finding could be made by the Court only at the stage of the examination of the merits of the present case. . .  [A]t the stage of . . . provisional measures, the Court’s task is to establish whether the acts and omissions complained of by the applicant appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Genocide Convention.”

So there you are: if I say that Doritos are a choking hazard, this is enough to take Doritos off the market if, in the learned opinion of the Court, the allegations “appear to be capable of falling within” the provisions of food safety legislation.

But what’s all this to do with South Africa, anyway?  South Africa isn’t ‘at risk’ of genocide at the hands of those horrible Israelis – not even on ‘Planet Plausible’.  So what gives South Africa the right to sue or – in legal terms – what is South Africa’s ‘standing’?  I may be really disgusted by Donald Trump’s behaviour; but I cannot sue him for defaming E Jean Carroll.  He defamed, not me – so I have no ‘standing’.  Why does South Africa?

The Court ruled that, as an international treaty, the Convention is a form of contract, with any country that agreed to be bound by it a ‘party’ to the contract.  And so,

“any State party to the Genocide Convention may invoke the responsibility of another State party, including through the institution of proceedings before the Court…”

There you are, problem solved.  Anyone can sue anyone.  There are 152 such ‘parties’ to the Convention – each of them able to bring any of the other 151 before the Court!  In total (use this calculator if you don’t believe me) a possible 11,476 lawsuits.

But, even after granting South Africa ‘standing’, the Court is still left with a major issue: is it even remotely conceivable that Gaza may be subjected to ‘genocide’?  Either ‘clearly’, or ‘apparently’ – or both?  Even on ‘Planet Plausible’?

‘Just’ killing people – whether combatants or innocents, whether lawfully or criminally – isn’t genocide.  Otherwise every war would be a ‘genocide’.

Here the box-ticking exercise begins.  The Convention defines ‘genocide’ as

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”.

Are Palestinians “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”?  That in itself could be the subject of nine years of debate.  ‘Luckily’, we are still on ‘Planet Plausible’, where no evidence is required – it’s all about appearance:

“45. The Palestinians appear to constitute a distinct ‘national, ethnical, racial or religious group’, and hence a protected group…”

But why does the Convention say “in whole or in part”?  Isn’t genocide (as the name implies) an attempt to destroy the entire group?  Well, perhaps those who wrote the Convention wanted to prevent ‘defences’ like ‘but I don’t want to kill all the Jews, Your Honour!  Just the Zionists…’  I’m just speculating here!

Still: in previous debates, the Court has already established that wanting to kill just a few people isn’t genocide.  It has to be ‘substantial’ (whatever that means):

“[T]he intent must be to destroy at least a substantial part of the particular group”.

So how many Gazans were killed?  Again, we don’t need evidence – we just need ‘information,’ whether verified or not:

“While figures relating to the Gaza Strip cannot be independently verified, recent information indicates that 25,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 63,000 injuries have been reported, over 360,000 housing units have been destroyed or partially damaged and approximately 1.7 million persons have been internally displaced…”

The Court rather deceitfully attributes the “recent information” to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).  But, of course, OCHA was merely quoting the ‘health ministry’ run by Hamas.  No matter – OCHA found Hamas data ‘plausible’ and the Court of course believes OCHA.  After all, the ‘International Court of Justice’, isn’t really a court and has little to do with justice; it is, just like OCHA, an organ of the United Nations.  Part and parcel of its structure and mechanisms.  One hand washes the other…

In the process, some of the judges demonstrate not just bias and partiality, but also superficiality and contempt for the facts.  In his Declaration (appended to the Court’s ruling), Judge Bhandari writes, inter alia:

“To date, however, more than 25,000 civilians in Gaza have reportedly lost their lives as a result of Israel’s military campaign…”

Of course, nobody – not even Hamas – claims that “more than 25,000 civilians” have been killed.  That would imply that the IDF failed to kill even one Hamas combatant.  (They must be fighting shadows in Gaza!)  In fact, the numbers published by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza do not differentiate at all between civilians and combatants – but refer only to the gender and age group (adults or ‘children’) of the victims.  (I placed scare quotes around ‘children’, because Hamas’s definition of the term – below the age of 18 – does not unfortunately reflect the organisation’s recruiting practices.  There are ‘reportedly’ plenty of 16 and 17 year olds in the ranks of the jidadists).

“[M]ore than 25,000” was, at that time, the total number of Gazan fatalities –civilians and combatants – as alleged by Hamas.  That a judge sitting on the high and mighty International Court of Justice – no less – and deliberating on such grave allegations could get such a basic fact wrong is shocking.  And who knows how many other judges – who did not bother to append a separate Declaration – are equally poorly seized of the facts?

But even such egregious blunders are irrelevant in the big scheme of things.  Because, even if one were to accept at face value the numbers provided by Hamas, it would still be difficult – even for a UN agency – to claim that killing 25,700 people (out of a self-assessed 14.5 million Palestinians) is consistent with “intent . . . to destroy at least a substantial part of the particular group”.  That’s why the Court resorts to a sleight of hand:  It observes that

“according to United Nations sources, the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip comprises over 2 million people.  Palestinians in the Gaza Strip form a substantial part of the protected group.”

They do indeed.  And if the Israelis were intending to kill all 2 million of them, that would constitute a ‘plausible’ suspicion of genocide.  But do they?

Intent is essential when it comes to genocide.  In World War II, the Allies killed at least 5 million Germans, including circa 500,000 civilians killed by British and American airstrikes.  The Soviets worked to death another 500,000.  But, however “significant” those numbers were, this wasn’t genocide: what the Allies wanted was to win the war and remove the Nazis from power – not to destroy the German people as such.

In his Separate Opinion, Israeli judge Aharon Barak reminded the Court,

“[t]he drafters of the Genocide Convention clarified in their discussions that

‘[t]he infliction of losses, even heavy losses, on the civilian population in the course of operations of war, does not as a rule constitute genocide.  In modern war belligerents normally destroy factories, means of communication, public buildings, etc. and the civilian population inevitably suffers more or less severe losses.  It would of course be desirable to limit such losses. Various measures might be taken to achieve this end, but this question belongs to the field of the regulation of the conditions of war and not to that of genocide.’”

In other words, the number of casualties is rather irrelevant to the genocide/not genocide debate.  It is the intent that matters.

Twisting words to twist minds

In order to establish ‘plausible’ intent, the Court provided 3 quotes taken from public pronouncements by Israeli politicians.  But it did so only after quoting the head of UNRWA, who complained of “dehumanizing language” – as if worried that, without the prior warning, people might not recognise that language as “dehumanising”.  In passing, let us note that the head of UNRWA never accused Hamas of dehumanising and genocidal discourse, despite their Covenant overtly calling to the killing of all Jews!

Head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini

But once again: ICJ is just another UN agency – and so is UNRWA.  The head of the latter is, apparently, infallible in the eyes of the ICJ judges – just like the Pope in the eyes of devoted Catholics.

Later in its ruling, using yet another sleight of hand, the Court refers to “direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip”.  This is merely a quote from the Convention (Article III) – but many will interpret those terms as referring to the same Israeli statements, previously referred to as ‘just’ “dehumanising”.

All three quotes, by the way, are from the days immediately following the 7 October massacre perpetrated by Hamas, so they are suffused with shock and anger.  The first (by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant) was uttered on 10 October.  Here is the English transcript, as reproduced by the Court:

“I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. This is what we are fighting against . . . Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week, it will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”

“[H]uman animals” may sound like dehumanising language.  But there is zero evidence that Gallant was referring to “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.  Quite the opposite: the comparison he makes is with ISIS – a terrorist organisation; emphatically not a protected group.  He describes the mission as fighting against “the ISIS of Gaza” – a phrase used extensively in Israel to refer to Hamas (including the oft-used hashtag #HamasIsISIS).  In describing Gaza after the Israeli operation, Gallant says “There will be no Hamas”, not ‘there will be no Palestinians’.  So how exactly – even on Planet Plausible – is this “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”?

Israel’s leftist President Yitzhak Herzog is also quoted as saying, on 13 October:

“We are working, operating militarily according to rules of international law. Unequivocally. It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It is absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état. But we are at war. We are at war. We are at war. We are defending our homes. We are protecting our homes. That’s the truth. And when a nation protects its home, it fights. And we will fight until we’ll break their backbone.”

Since the “rules of international law” prohibit the targeting of uninvolved civilians (not to mention genocide!), Mr. Herzog’s expressed commitment to those rules seems to preclude the notion of genocidal intent.  True, the Israeli President opines that ”an entire [Palestinian] nation . . . is responsible”.  But is that really a call to commit genocide?  Many people claim that the entire German people bore some level of collective responsibility (Kollektivschuld) for the Shoah; that they largely accepted – if not actively supported – Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime; that they followed orders rather than standing up for basic morality; that they were aware of the genocide and yet remained largely silent.  All that does not mean that random Germans can be killed, let alone that the German people should be destroyed as such.  Assigning moral (or even legal) responsibility is one thing; inciting genocide is quite another.  As for “breaking their backbone”, who says that refers to “an entire nation” rather than to “that evil regime”, i.e. Hamas?

The ICJ quote leaves out other comments that Mr. Herzog made with the same occasion.  Here’s ITV’s International Affairs Editor Rageh Omar, reporting on that press conference:

“’… until we break their backbone.’

He [President Herzog] acknowledged that many Gazans had nothing to do with Hamas but was adamant that others did.

‘I agree there are many innocent Palestinians who don't agree with this, but if you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself.  We have to defend ourselves, we have the full right to do so.’"

So Mr. Herzog makes a clear distinction between “many innocent Palestinians” and those who store and launch missiles.  The right of self-defence is invoked only against the latter group.  Hardly “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.  Or even “dehumanizing language”!

Finally, the ICJ ruling quotes a tweet by Israel Katz, currently Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.  On 13 October 2023, when he was Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Mr. Katz posted:

“We will fight the terrorist organization Hamas and destroy it.  All the civilian population in [G]aza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

Mr. Katz also draws a clear distinction between “the terrorist organization Hamas” and “the civilian population in [G]aza”.  Only the former is to be destroyed, while the latter is ordered to get out of the way.  It is pretty clear that the “they” who are supposed to “leave the world” are Hamas – otherwise why make the distinction at all?

If that’s the ‘best’ that can be found as evidence of “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” by Israeli leaders, it decidedly represents slim pickings.

And why would the Court ignore the many statements by Israeli leaders making it clear that the target is Hamas, not the population of Gaza as such?  Here’s a selection of such statements – but there are many similar ones.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on 16 November 2023:

"Any civilian death is a tragedy . . . we're doing everything we can to get the civilians out of harm's way . . . we'll try to finish that job with minimal civilian casualties. That's what we're trying to do: minimal civilian casualties.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, 29 October 2023:

“We are not fighting the Palestinian multitude and the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, on 18 December 2023:

“[O]ur war against Hamas, the Hamas terrorist organization, is a war — it’s not a war against the people of Gaza.  We are fighting a brutal enemy that hides behind civilians.”

President Yitzhak Herzog, on 19 December 2023:

“One thing is clear: The people of Gaza are not our enemy. The enemy is only Hamas.  And we’re fighting Hamas and its partners.”

Minister Israel Katz tweeted on 14 October (in Hebrew, translation mine):

“The purpose of the movement [of civilians] southwards is to prevent the Hamas murderers from using the population as human shields, to save lives and to remove the threat posed by those Nazis.”

Words can be twisted, statements can be taken out of context, ill-intentions can – if someone is so inclined – be inferred from imprecise language.  But real incitement?  Here’s an example of “dehumanising language” and of genuine “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”:

“For us, this [the ‘Jewish problem’] is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to-one to be solved by small concessions.  For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated.  Don't be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus.  Don't think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis.  This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.”

Taken verbatim from a speech given by Adolf Hitler in 1920, this is a very relevant example.  Not because Israeli leaders should ever be compared to the Nazis, but because this is the type of statement that the authors of the Genocide Convention had in mind when, shortly after the end of World War II, they wanted to prohibit “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.

Perhaps sensing that the evidence of “incitement” is embarrassingly thin, the judges resorted to quoting ‘witnesses’:

“53. The Court also takes note of a press release of 16 November 2023, issued by 37 Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts and members of Working Groups part of the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council, in which they voiced alarm over ‘discernibly genocidal and dehumanising rhetoric coming from senior Israeli government officials’. In addition, on 27 October 2023, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination observed that it was ‘[h]ighly concerned about the sharp increase in racist hate speech and dehumanization directed at Palestinians since 7 October’.”

The problem is that these are not witnesses – they are UN employees with a long history of anti-Israel bias.  But even ignoring that bias, it beggars belief that judges would quote non-specific hearsay as ‘evidence’ (however ‘prima faciae’).  If ‘s/he said, they said’ were taken to represent evidence, we would all be criminals on our way to prison!

No wonder that Israeli Judge Aharon Barak – himself a stickler for ‘the Law’ above all else – said that the Court’s ruling was based on “scant evidence”.

Ugandan Judge Sebutinde stated that “there are . . . no indicators of incitement to commit genocide”.

Even the German Judge Nolte (who voted in favour of the ruling) was forced to admit that South Africa had not “plausibly shown . . . genocidal intent.”

We’ve no idea what you’re doing – but make sure you don’t!

And yet it’s based on such flimsy non-evidence that the Court decided that the ‘risk of genocide’ to Palestinians in Gaza was ‘plausible’ enough to warrant ‘provisional measures’.

On the other hand, the Court did refuse to order Israel to cease its military operations in Gaza.  Now, this is interesting.  Not only did South Africa request such an order (it was first and foremost among its demands); but also the Court acted in contradiction with its own very recent precedent: on 16 March 2022, it ordered Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations . . . in the territory of Ukraine”.

So if the Court truly believed that the Jewish state was harbouring ‘plausible intent’ to commit genocide in Gaza, how come it allowed it to continue its military operations in that territory?  If I genuinely suspected that they are a choking hazard, why on earth would I allow Doritos to continue to be manufactured and sold?

But, of course, the judges don’t really believe that South Africa’s claims have any merit.  They are just going through the motions, immersed in their ‘learned’ box-ticking exercise and practising the suspension of common sense.  This was, after all, just a ruling on ‘provisional measures’ with no bearing on the final verdict…  In the mind-boggling words of Judge Nolte:

“Even though I do not find it plausible that the [Israeli] military operation is being conducted with genocidal intent, I voted in favour of the measures indicated by the Court.”

Read: ‘even though there’s no Israeli genocide, I voted to protect the Gazans from the Israeli genocide…’

But what ‘provisional measures’ did the Court indicate?  Besides the request to impose a cessation of Israel’s military operations, South Africa requested the Court to order as follows:

“The Republic of South Africa and the State of Israel shall each, in accordance with their obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in relation to the Palestinian people, take all reasonable measures within their power to prevent genocide.”

This was a bridge too far even for this court: as proposed, the text would conceivably have given the South Africa an excuse (or even a licence) to intervene militarily in Gaza, in order “to prevent genocide”!

Instead, the ICJ ordered

“[t]he State of Israel . . . [to] take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this [Genocide] Convention”

There are almost as many absurdities as there are words in the sentence above.

Firstly, the order is addressed to “[t]he State of Israel”.  But states (or nations) are abstract constructs.  States don’t make decisions – governments and leaders do.  Quite obviously, states as such cannot harbour intent, such as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

And what the hell does it mean to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission” of genocide?  As we have seen from the definition included in the Convention, genocides don’t just ‘happen’, they are perpetrated.  Killing people – even killing a lot of people – isn’t genocide, unless the killing is perpetrated with a particular intent.  Either the government of the State of Israel harbours such intent (in which case it should be ordered to abandon it or not to implement it in practice), or it doesn’t – in which case whom and how is it supposed to “prevent”?  Indeed, given the way in which the ICJ order is worded, the Israeli government might interpret it as an injunction to continue to fight Hamas, in order to prevent that terror organisation from committing “all acts within the scope of Article II of this [Genocide] Convention”.

But what if we interpret the order as saying (albeit in an exceedingly vague, convoluted and imprecise manner) ‘Government of Israel, you are hereby ordered not to commit genocide in Gaza’?  Put like this, such order may sound quite stern; but it goes no farther than the legal obligations that Israel had anyway – prior to and independent of the ICJ order; obligations that Israeli leaders do not contest at all.

As Judge Sebutinde wrote:

“In my view, the First [provisional] measure obligating Israel to ‘take all measures within its power . . .’ effectively mirrors the obligation already incumbent upon Israel . . . and is therefore redundant.”

In fact, 5 out of the 6 ‘provisional measures’ prescribed by the ICJ fall in the same category of redundant injunctions: they ‘order’ Israel to do what it is in any case legally obliged to do.  That’s like issuing a court order to the Doritos supplier to ‘take all measures within its power to prevent the sale of products that contravene the Food Safety Bill’.

Ordering the unreasonable

But there’s more: extreme as it was, the South African proposal referred to “all reasonable measures within their power”.  In its lack of wisdom, the ICJ decided to do one better: the judges took away the term “reasonable” and left just “all measures within its power”.  This enables someone to argue that Israel must do absolutely everything in its power – however extreme, disproportionate and unreasonable.

Say Hamas were shooting rockets into Israel from within a residential building; Israel would presumably have to send its soldiers on a bayonet charge in order to remove the threat.  After all, a bayonet charge is definitely “within its power”, while bombing the building risks

“(a) killing members of the group,”

something that Israel has been ordered not to do.  But even a bayonet charge may not satisfy the judges, as it won’t completely eliminate that risk – let alone the risk of

“(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group;”

So perhaps Israel is obliged to do nothing at all in such a case.  Doing nothing is, arguably, “within its power” and presents no risk of genocide.  Well, not against the Palestinians, anyway!

Three of the ICJ judges are native English speakers.  Don’t they understand that the antonym of ‘reasonable’ is…  ‘unreasonable’??

As for the 6^th ‘provisional measure’ (the only one that isn’t superfluous by definition), the Court ordered Israel to

“submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to give effect to this Order”.

And to do so “within one month” (rather than within one week, as South Africa requested).

We know what the Court intends to do with that report:

“The report so provided shall then be communicated to South Africa, which shall be given the opportunity to submit to the Court its comments thereon.”

But we also know (and so should the Court) what South Africa’s comments will be.  After all, South Africa wanted the ICJ to order Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza”.  So, unless Israel offered to do exactly that (despite not having been ordered to), South Africa will surely argue that Israel’s “measures” are insufficient – that they do not completely “prevent” genocide.  And how exactly will the Court assess what really is “all measures within its power” etc. etc. – and what isn’t?  Will the Court (which lacks any military expertise) end up dictating specifically what should be done in the field and how – and thus in effect put itself in charge of IDF operations?  Even more importantly: exactly how is all this relevant to the issue of intent – which is the crux of the matter when it comes to genocide?

Some – including Israelis and Diaspora Jews – have tried to find consolation in the following paragraph of the ICJ ruling:

“85. The Court deems it necessary to emphasize that all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law. It is gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on 7 October 2023 and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release.”

In my opinion, rather than improving, this paragraph makes the ruling – if it were possible – even more outrageous.

The paragraph has no place in a case of genocide – it is a transparent political attempt to ‘demonstrate’ even-handedness.  To ‘call’ for the release of hostages is the language of empty diplomacy, not of law.  If the Court wanted to deliver a meaningful gesture, then it should have joined Judge Sebutinde, who remarked, with thin irony:

“In its Request for provisional measures, South Africa emphasised that both Parties to these proceedings have a duty to act in accordance with their obligations under the Genocide Convention . . . leaving one wondering what positive contribution the Applicant could make towards defusing the ongoing conflict there. During the oral proceedings in the present case, it was brought to the attention of the Court that South Africa, and in particular certain organs of government, have enjoyed and continue to enjoy a cordial relationship with the leadership of Hamas. If that is the case, then one would encourage South Africa as a party to these proceedings and to the Genocide Convention, to use whatever influence they might wield, to try and persuade Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release the remaining hostages, as a good will gesture. I have no doubt that such a gesture of good will would go a very long way in defusing the current conflict in Gaza.”

I would add (with plenty of Zionist irony and zero expectations) that the UN, including the ICJ, views Gaza as part of the State of Palestine.  So – having expressed ‘grave concern’ for the Israeli hostages – shouldn’t the Court order the State of Palestine to “take all measures in its power” to bring about their release?  For starters, how about indicting the leaders of Hamas for an obvious war crime perpetrated – in theory at least – under the jurisdiction of the State of Palestine?

Stupidity has consequences

So let me summarise: the International Court of Justice’s failure to recognise South Africa’s application as vexatious, politically motivated and fundamentally without merits will ensure that this ‘legal’ circus will now perform for years, abusing public money, misusing resources, poisoning international relations and distracting attention from genuine issues.

The ‘provisional measures’ ordered by the Court are not just unnecessary, but pointless and irrational.

Unfortunately, however, this is not all.  By their failure to apply common sense, their blind dive into legalistic detail at the expense of assessing the bigger picture and (in some cases at least) their lack of integrity, the judges have produced a series of severely deleterious consequences.  I will analyse some of them below – not necessarily in the order of gravity.

Firstly, this harms the reputation of the Court – such as it is.  The ICJ has no enforcement power (both USA and Russia have already treated its rulings with contempt) and relies entirely on reputation to lend it any sort of influence.

Secondly (and more importantly), by ‘playing along’ with South Africa’s charade, the judges trivialised the notion of genocide (aptly called ‘crime of crimes’) and made a mockery of one of the most important international agreements arising from the inferno of World War II.  Their ruling –now elevated to the rank of ‘existing jurisprudence’ – guarantees that the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and similar agreements will increasingly be abused.  They will more and more become political tools, instruments of ‘lawfare’, additional ways for dictators, corrupt governments and rogue regimes to harass other nations.  Expect an inflation of ‘genocides’ and other specious accusations that (since the Court has set the bar of ‘plausibility’ so low) will now have to be examined and will produce a flurry of devalued ‘provisional measures’ and ‘rulings’ that – increasingly – nobody will give a damn about.

Thirdly, such frivolous ‘judicial’ process will surely discourage states from joining the Genocide Convention – and other international instruments.  Currently, 153 states are members of the Convention, while 41 UN members states are not.  But among the member states, many (including USA, Russia and China) have joined with reservations and objections.  Many of these reservations (including one submitted by USA) deny ICJ jurisdiction – unless expressly accepted by the member state in question.  Israel signed the Convention (with no reservations) in August 1949 – almost immediately after the end of its War of Independence and much earlier than the UK (1970) and USA (1988).  But knowing what they know now, what conceivable Israeli government would voluntarily put itself under ICJ jurisdiction?  Would Israel (and other countries) sign existing and future treaties, knowing that they can be used maliciously, to ‘legally’ harass them?

Fourthly, far from bringing about peace and understanding, accepting such tendentious claims serves only to sow discord among states and nations.  The ICJ procedure allows states to ‘intervene’ in favour of one side or the other – which of course results in the creation of acrimonious, bitterly opposed ‘coalitions’.  In one case, no less than 32 different countries ‘intervened’ in such a dispute.  More worryingly, this is likely to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians even more unlikely.  As Judge Sebutinde opined, “the dispute between the State of Israel and the people of Palestine is essentially and historically a political one, calling for a diplomatic or negotiated settlement” – rather than a legal dispute to be resolved in court.  We are looking now at years of litigation, during which the Palestinian leadership would pretend at least to believe Israel guilty of genocide.  How is that leadership then expected to ‘sell’ to their own people making concessions to ‘perpetrators of genocide’?

From ‘never again’ to ‘again and again’

But I left the saddest and most upsetting consequence for last.  Think about it: why genocide?  This is a rarely used accusation.  In fact, in 75 years the Convention has only been legally invoked only twice before:

• In 1993, Bosnia-Herzegovina sued Yugoslavia for alleged genocide perpetrated against its Muslim (Bosniak) population. More than 30,000 Bosniak civilians had been killed (out of a population of circa 1.8 million).  Bosniaks represented more than 80% of the total number of civilians killed in that war.  Yet the ICJ ruled that no genocide had been perpetrated – except in one particular instance: the massacre of Srebrenica.
• In 2019, the African state of Gambia sued Myanmar, alleging that the latter committed genocide against its Muslim Rohingya population. Circa 25,000 had been killed and 750,000 fled to Bangladesh.  The case is still being tried.

Needless to say, a lot of other mass atrocities – which many claim were genocide – took place in those 75 year.  One can point for instance at Indonesia (1965-1966, at least 500,000 deaths), Bangladesh (1971, at least 300,000), Cambodia (1975-1979, at least 1.5 million), Guatemala (1981-1983, c. 166,000), East Timor (1975-1983, at least 100,000), Rwanda (1994, at least 500,000), Ethiopia (ongoing), Sudan (ongoing), China/Xinjiang (ongoing)…

In the Middle East alone, genocide is alleged to have taken place in that period against Kurds, Marsh Arabs, Christians, Yazidis, Shabaks and Turkmens.

None of those instances (some of which continued for years or are still ongoing) was brought before the ICJ – although some countries ‘recognised’ those atrocities as genocide.  So we are entitled to ask – why Israel?  What makes the conflict in Gaza (only 100 days after it was started by the rulers of that territory) different?  Why is the Jewish state only the 3^rd country in 75 years to be formally accused of this ‘crime of crimes’ – and dragged before the international court?

Accusations of war crimes against Israel are not a new thing.  Nor are a host of other allegations: massacres, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, land grab, etc. etc.  But let’s be clear: genocide is not ‘more of the same’ – it is (or should be) in a category of its own.  The most well-known genocide in history is the Shoah – the systematic, industrial-style extermination of the Jewish population of Europe.  The term itself was coined by a Jew (Raphael Lemkin) in 1944 – as a generic category for the Shoah, for what Churchill initially called “a crime without a name”.

That, a few decades later, the Jewish state (‘the Jew among nations’) finds itself accused that that exact crime is not by chance; it’s symptomatic.

Israeli psychiatrist Zvi Rex once remarked:

"The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”

But, of course, it wasn’t just the Germans and not just at Auschwitz.  To paraphrase Rex, the world has never forgiven the Jews for the Shoah.  It seeks to assuage pangs of conscience by discovering new ‘reasons’ to hate the Jews.  German social psychologist Peter Schönbach called this ‘push back’ against feelings of guilt ‘secondary antisemitism’.

Most European and America Jews are shocked by the current ‘sudden eruption’ of antisemitism.  They did not personally experience such intense hostility in the past, so they view it as a new phenomenon.  But nothing is farther from the truth.  Of course, after the Shoah it became less acceptable to manifest overt antisemitism in the street.  But antisemitic ideation continued in ‘scholarly’ circles, under the excuse of ‘academic research’ and academic freedom.  It grew and fermented in that fertile environment, before first seeping and then bursting out in the open.

The crudest form of secondary antisemitism is Holocaust denial.  It is still very much ‘out there’, but more ‘subtle’ varieties have been developed.  In both ‘über-progressive’ and far right circles, there is widespread universalisation, trivialisation and banalisation of the Shoah.  As early as 1949, German philosopher Martin Heidegger was comparing “the production of corpses in gas chambers and extermination camps” with… modern agriculture.

While such far-fetched ‘metaphors’ may be relatively rare, it has become commonplace to refer to the Shoah as ‘just another’ genocide – and even to imply that it is surpassed in importance by other historic phenomena: the Atlantic slave trade, the colonial oppression, capitalist exploitation, anti-black racism in USA, homo- or transphobia, etc.

Reflecting precisely this tendency, in 2011 Jeremy Corbyn (at the time a Labour Party backbencher, but later elected to lead that party) submitted a proposal to change the name of Holocaust Memorial Day to “Genocide Memorial Day – Never Again For Anyone,” to reflect that “Nazism targeted not only Jewish [people]”.

But the ultimate form of secondary antisemitism is ‘Holocaust inversion’.  If one can claim that Jews are now the ones committing genocide – then feelings of guilt are no longer required.  Quite the opposite – one can signal one’s virtue by fighting (at no risk to life or limb) against the ‘Zionists’ (portrayed as the new Nazis) and in defence of the Palestinians – the new ‘Jews’.

The post above has been 'liked' by almost 10,000 X (formerly Twitter) accounts.

In hard-left and hard-right circles, accusations of genocide against Israel are nothing new.  But South Africa’s ICJ application is meant to give it a ‘seal of approval’ and bring this ‘perfected’ version of secondary antisemitism into the mainstream.  In this context, it does not matter if, 5 or 7 years from now, the Court will acquit the Jewish state.  No, the damage was done the moment the judges agreed to try the case – the minute they declared that accusation ‘plausible’.  Future historians will look at 26 January as a watershed moment.

On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, the International Court of Justice legitimised Holocaust inversion.  ‘Never again’ was used to promote ‘again and again’.

Ghazi Hamad (a senior leader of Hamas) says that the latter will strike "again and again", until Israel is "removed"