The UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ). Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

i24 News – Israel’s defense team on Friday marshaled a wealth of evidence and advanced a range of legal and moral arguments rebuffing the charge of “genocide” leveled at it by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Rejecting the accusations of genocide as baseless, Israel accused Pretoria of playing “advocate of the devil” for Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group Israel is waging war against in Gaza following the October 7 massacre.

Dr. Gilad Noam told the court that accepting South Africa’s spurious claims would embolden terrorist groups and provide them with cover to commit crimes against humanity.

“Entertaining the applicant’s request would weaken efforts to punish genocide and instead of the court being an instrument to prevent terrorist horrors, would turn it into a weapon in hands of terrorist groups who have no regard for humanity and rule of law,” said Noam.

Accepting South Africa’s politicized misrepresentations “would signal to terrorist groups that they can commit war crimes and crimes against humanity and then seek the protection of this court,” Noam charged.

In conclusion, Israeli legal experts argued against the “cheapening” of the term “genocide,” coined after WWII to refer to the industrialized racist murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.

Galit Raguan, acting director of the international justice division at Israel’s justice ministry, attributed the civilian death toll in Gaza to Hamas, noting that “Urban warfare will always result in civilian harm.”

According to Raguan, these deaths, while tragic, represent a lawful consequence of targeting military objectives and do not amount to genocide. She further explicated that Hamas exacerbates civilian tolls by operating from within civilian areas, including schools and hospitals.

She further argued that the IDF has found incontrovertible evidence of Hamas military activity in every single hospital in the Gaza Strip.