Genocide, real and imaginary

South Africa’s obscene and false charge before the World Court that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in pursuit of Hamas terrorists to prevent more attacks like Oct. 7 was rejected by the judges yesterday. The court refused to order the ceasefire that Hamas and South Africa sought, as the tribunal lived up to its formal name of the International Court of Justice.

What the court did was direct that Israel, like all combatants, “in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts” of genocide. That order applies to every party in every war.

The court rejected the South African claim that their brief “shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts.” There is no genocide before the court. But there has been actual genocide nearby, and fittingly, today, Jan. 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the date in 1945 when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz.

The World Court meets in the Dutch city of The Hague. Before World War II, The Hague had about 10,000 Jews, of whom 80% were deported and murdered by the Germans after they invaded in 1940. Two of those Jews were Lodewijk Ernst Visser and his wife, the former Cornelia Johanna Sara Wertheim. In 1939, he was 68 and she was 65. That was the year that he was appointed by Queen Wilhelmina to be president of the High Council of the Netherlands, which is chief justice of the Dutch Supreme Court, which also sits at The Hague.

When the Germans invaded, Wilhelmina and her government fled to London. Chief Justice Visser could not escape and was soon kicked off the court by the occupiers as the Germans tightened their grip. He died of a heart attack at age 71 in 1942 before he would have been arrested. His wife survived him and she was arrested, and she died in a concentration camp in 1944, a 70 year old widow. That is genocide. oday’s democratic German government, born of a legacy of real genocide, has rallied to Israel’s defense at the World Court against the political propaganda ploy of South Africa, based not on any actual evidence of acts of genocide or an intent of genocide, but snippets of statements from assorted Israeli officials, many of them taken out of context or mistranslated from the original Hebrew, or both. The court didn’t buy the load of baloney that South Africa was selling.

But the court did say that, “It is gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on Oct. 7 and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release.” Let’s see if Hamas will obey that.

Several times in its written decision the court cites the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), concerning conditions in Gaza. Israel says that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the Oct. 7 pogrom and the UN has now fired the men and opened its own probe, prompting the U.S. to rightly cut off funding to UNRWA.

Justice and truth, buried by Hamas and its allies, may be winning.

T

‘In whole or in part’

Forest Hills: To Voicer Soterios Vrontis: Percentages are helpful when used in sports, taxes, budgets, etc., but not when it comes to human life and the deaths of innocent women and children. I ask again: What number of deaths have to occur to get you to say enough? Genocide definition: The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. If not genocide, what would you call it? You say it is “the cost of war.” Try telling that to the parents and families of the slaughtered innocent victims!

Mel Moskowitz

Updates requested

Mount Vernon, N.Y.: I have been disappointed that the Daily News has yet to publish the latest COVID-19 development on the front page like you guys used to do in the early days of the disease, back in 2020 and 2021, especially when certain variants like omicron first emerged back in late 2021. Why did the JN1 subvariant not make front-page headlines? There’s some people, especially the elderly, who may not have other means of receiving the latest COVID-19 news (i.e. text alerts) other than the traditional printed copies of your paper. With that in mind, can you post the latest COVID-19 development you can think of on the front page, please? As long as it’s not fearmongering.

Michael Pert