In the eyes of the world, Israel has lost
Bangladesh's recent announcement to join South Africa in the lawsuit against Israel for committing genocide has added fuel to the judicial war against Israel. This courageous decision comes at a time when South Africa needs international support, especially after Germany's decision to stand by Israel and defend it in the upcoming litigation. It is true that more than 80 countries declared their support for South Africa by publishing statements, but none translated their words into actions besides Bangladesh. Bangladesh's decision to file a declaration of intervention has a distinctive characteristic, reflecting a principled position: we mean what we say. It is not lost on us that it is one country that has been ravaged by colonialism, racism, and apartheid and another which fought for its independence who are fighting against injustice in Palestine.
Netanyahu couldn't fathom that the world would finally see how Israel has victimised Palestinians, and how the same people whose ancestors were victims of extermination have now become perpetrators of the same inhumanity.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently condemned South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, saying, "Today we saw an upside-down world. Israel is accused of genocide while it's fighting against genocide." Netanyahu could not comprehend that The Hague would unveil the oppression perpetuated by him and his apartheid state, that he would not have a chance to play the victim by citing the Holocaust, and that the Palestinians would display Israel's oppression in technicolour for the world to see. The case by South Africa accused Israel of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention, which was enacted in the wake of mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust. Netanyahu couldn't fathom that the world would finally see how Israel has victimised Palestinians, and how the same people whose ancestors were victims of extermination have now become perpetrators of the same inhumanity.
Israel itself did not think when it ratified the Genocide Convention in 1948 that it would ever stand in front of the podium at The Hague, accused of the very act of genocide—the annihilation of the people that it has forcefully displaced and fragmented into countless refugee camps. Israel did not imagine that the false Zionist narrative could so easily fall apart in The Hague, like a fragile house of cards, and that the incessant talk about the debunked kidnapping and beheading of babies would sound like a broken record, or that the rumination of the Holocaust would become the empty talking point of a genocidal regime.
For over 100 continuous days, Israel has ruthlessly murdered Palestinians in Gaza. Every sentence to justify its acts has involved the all-too-common fabrication: "Hamas uses civilians as human shields" and "Hamas stole humanitarian aid that led to the suffering of the people of Gaza." According to Israel, South Africa failed to pinpoint the singular value of genocide which, in Israel's point of view, is the rampant burning of a population at one go, and not the killing hundreds of civilians on a daily basis for months that Israel has been doing. Extermination, Israel seems to believe, is a singular act of aggression carried out on a certain day. We all know that the October 7 Hamas attacks don't constitute "genocide," but Israel carpet-bombing the whole of Gaza, attacking Palestinians in the West Bank and elsewhere, does.
In Israel's response, it is clear that it doesn't believe the ICJ has the right to consider a lawsuit against it, or that South Africa has the right to prosecute it. Opening for Israel, Tal Becker stated that South Africa was "asking the UN court to substitute the lens of an armed conflict between a state and a lawless terrorist organisation." Underlying Israel's rebuttal is the concern of ensuring that the ICJ does not issue provisional measures to prevent it from furthering its acts of genocide in Gaza, either fully or partially towards the persecuted Palestinians, 24,000 of whom have been killed so far.
The truth is that Israel's presence in the dock, under the title of a "genocide lawsuit," terrified the oppressive government, dwarfed its ability, distracted and weakened it, distorted its image, and discredited its guise of purity as "the most moral army." And most importantly, the case signifies the removal of the Zionist narrative that they are historically oppressed. Beyond legal terms, this case refuses to allow Israel to use history in defending the present injustice it is committing. It shows Israel that no amount of historical victimhood can justify the blood on its hands. Whatever the verdict of the ICJ, and no matter how much Israel continues to deny the facts with backing from the US, the UK and Germany, Israel has lost in the eyes of Palestinians and in the eyes of the people of the world. That is what these past 100 and more days have shown.
His Excellency Yousef SY Ramadan is the Palestinian Ambassador to Bangladesh.
Views expressed in the article are the author's own.
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