Weaponizing the crime of genocide

(Conclusion)

Under these horrifying conditions Israel makes extraordinary efforts to minimize the damage caused to the lives of the Palestinian civilians that Hamas disdains. These efforts include hundreds of thousands of messages and phone calls urging civilians to evacuate areas of terrorist entrenchment, and aborting attacks where disproportionate non-combatant casualties are likely. Western militaries have acknowledged that many of the measures undertaken by Israel might not be taken by them in similar circumstances.

Hamas would not be able to advance the grotesque inversion in which Israel’s actions to defend itself are framed as ‘genocide’ while its own acts of murder, rape and kidnapping are ignored or even celebrated, without the complicity of willing partners. Sadly, South Africa has eagerly stepped forward to play this role.

South Africa’s eagerness to file the genocide case against Israel has little to do with the suffering of Palestinians. It has never raised its voice in relation to the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Syria nor indeed their persecution by Hamas in Gaza. Nor is it a response to recent events. As far back as 2007, South Africa invited a Hamas delegation on an official visit. It has hosted Hamas terrorist leaders, just as it hosted Omar Al Bashir following his indictment for the commission of genocide in Darfur.

On Oct. 8, the day following the worst atrocities committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, South African leaders called senior Hamas leaders to express their solidarity and, before Israel had even begun to defend itself, blamed Israel for the new conflagration.

Far from being motivated by any humanitarian concern, the South African initiative is a brazen attempt to weaponize a term coined to describe the worst crime committed against the Jewish people themselves and use it against the Jewish state in order to deprive it of the ability to defend itself.

Seventy-five years after the adoption of the genocide convention there are still survivors of the Holocaust among us. One, Yaffa Adar, lived through the horrors of the Shoah and is now a mother of three, grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of seven children. She was taken hostage on Oct. 7 and spent 49 days in Hamas’ brutal captivity. Her eldest grandson, Tamir Adar, a father of two, remains in the hands of Hamas.

After all that Yaffa has been through, in the Holocaust 78 years ago and at the hands of Hamas today, it is hard to fathom that she has to bear witness to a grotesque attempt to weaponize the crime of genocide itself.

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Daniel Taub is an international lawyer and former Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom.