At The Hague, Israel Mounted a Defense Based in an Alternate Reality

Those were some very weak arguments by Israel. It is hard to see 1,700 as genocide and 23,000, ~10k being children, as "oopsies" or necessary and not genocide.

This might work. Compared to criticism of Apartheid, you can't criticize the Israeli government. If you do you're an antisemite that supports terrorism.

As BadEmpanada put it: "They're trying to give the judges an out to throw the case on ideological lines before it even starts, they're not arguing the facts because if they did they would lose badly" Basically all they did was gesture to any countries built on genocide that "hey if this case is allowed to go to trial we'll lose and it will set precedent which will come after you next" giving them plausible deniability to stop the trial on a technicality. See they're not voting FOR genocide, they're voting AGAINST the trial.

Basically they're banking on the fact that enough nations are as fascist and corrupt enough as to stop the whole thing before the facts are put on the table, in which case they instantly lose because they literally bragged that they were intentionally doing a genocide. It's in the public record, completely indisputable. They thought they were untouchable and smugly ran their mouths thousands of times, now it's catching up to them.

From the comfort of my home in the States, Israel’s response to being attacked is disproportionate af and is galvanizing the world against it. Which isn’t great for a nation surrounded by enemies. They need friends and sooner or later even for the US this will be beyond the pale.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

While Israel’s lawyers made legal arguments that the genocide charges leveled against it are invalid, their primary strategy was to appeal to the court on jurisdictional and procedural matters, hoping that they could form the basis for the panel of international judges to dismiss South Africa’s case.

Israel’s representative Tal Becker opened his government’s rebuttal by telling the judges at the ICJ that South Africa’s case “profoundly distorted the factual and legal picture,” claiming it sought to erase Jewish history.

Becker neglected to mention the fact that Netanyahu himself long advocated for Hamas to retain power in Gaza and worked to ensure the flow of money to the group from Qatar continued over the years, believing it to be the best strategy to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Shaw called this characterization as “outrageous” and said the only relevant historical “context” were the events of October 7, which he termed “the real genocide in this situation.” Given the civilian death toll caused by Israel in Gaza — upward of 23,000 as of this week — it was a stunning statement.

Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” Shaw argued there was “no need here for a theological discussion.” South Africa, he charged, took Netanyahu’s words out of context and failed to include the portion of his statement where he emphasized that the IDF was the “most moral army in the world” and “does everything to avoid harming the uninvolved.” The implication of Shaw’s argument is that Netanyahu’s platitudes about the nobility of the IDF somehow nullified the significance of invoking a violent biblical edict to describe a military operation against people Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described as “human animals.”

South Africa, in its argument on Thursday, contended that by refusing to cease its operations, Israel was ensuring that the pile of Palestinian corpses would continue to grow alongside the amputations of limbs without anesthesia and babies dying of treatable illnesses.

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