Letter to the editor:

The government of South Africa — whose people know a thing or two about the evils of apartheid — is charging Israel with the crime of genocide before the International Court of Justice. Israeli spokespersons and apologists may scream and howl in protest, but, as Pretoria’s legal brief documents, the pronouncements of their own officials give them away.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” Agriculture Minister Avi  Dichter declared, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba”, referring to the 1948 atrocity in which some 750,000 Palestinians lost their lives or their homes in a vicious ethnic cleansing operation that gave birth to Israel. Deputy Knesset Speaker Nassim Vaturi proclaimed, “Now we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for creating “sterile zones in the West Bank”, while Israeli President Isaac Herzog insists that “the entire nation out there is responsible. This rhetoric about innocents not involved is absolutely untrue.” It’s hard to conceive of a more chilling articulation of the criminal notion of collective guilt.

On January 4, Knesset member Tally Gotliv, from PM Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, condemned the entry of food and humanitarian aid to Gaza, suggesting that Gazans be “thirsted and starved.” Another Likudnik Knesset member, Mosha Saada, has urged Israelis to “destroy all Gazans” and thus end “the Palestinian matter.” And of course, the PM’s inflammatory reference to the biblical Amalekites, destroyed by the Jews as they took the Promised Land, certainly merits inclusion in this short, incomplete catalogue of lurid confessions of genocide.

The defendants will naturally don the mask of victims, citing Hamas and October 7. But they conveniently ignore the well-known reality that various Israeli governments since the 1980’s have funded and promoted Hamas, not despite, but rather because of, its terrorist proclivities, which create a perfect pretext for wildly disproportionate Israeli countermeasures, as that horror unfolds today.

The U.S. government has loudly demanded for months that Russian President Vladimir Putin be tried as a war criminal, based on allegations of inflicted civilian casualties. But, Washington staunchly defends Israel, which has killed more women and children in the first two months (!) since October 7, than did Moscow in 21 months of the Ukraine conflict. The hypocrisy is astounding!

Thank you, South Africa!

Sincerely,

Doug Mallouk, Baltimore