January 12: When is it genocide?

In which, South Africa hauls Israel before the ICJ on genocide charges, America and the UK hit back at Houthi rebels, and President Biden misplaces his Defense Secretary.

When is it genocide?

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

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

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

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

That is the legal definition of genocide articulated in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and that is what South Africa is accusing Israel of perpetrating on the Palestinian people in opening argument before the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The suit and its opening arguments were coordinated with multiple demonstrations in South Africa, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. 

South Africa has got a fairly steep uphill climb to prove their case given the need to prove “intent” and the trickiness of the “in part”. Indeed the case may be more about getting the genocide term to stick to Israel with the appearance of legitimacy, not unlike the way “indictment” has come to mean “guilty” for many Americans when it comes to Donald Trump.