ICJ Genocide Trial Showcases Israel's Collective Temporary Insanity and Vile Government - Opinion - Haaretz.com
The second day in The Hague – Israel's day – was, in essence, a ringing slap in the face and indictment of this vile government and all the harm that it has caused in the past year.
In the elegant, wood-paneled hall, beneath crystal chandeliers, in the presence of the judge on Israel's behalf, former Supreme Court President Justice Aharon Barak – the man who Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters turned into Public Enemy No. 1 in the past few yeas – Israel's representatives insisted that the state's judiciary is independent and can be trusted to adjudicate in any case of soldiers committing war crimes.
This is the same judicial independence that the government tried to neuter last year.
They also emphasized Israel's commitment to the Genocide Convention, dismissed remarks by public figures cited the day before by South Africa's legal team, recognized the fact of the severe civilian suffering in the Gaza Strip, described the efforts to reduce the injury to the civilian population and praised Israel's humanitarian aid to the Strip.
It should be mentioned that this humanitarian assistance, very aid, which was a central aspect of Israel's line of defense before the judges but actually before the judgment of the entire world, was maligned and vilified by several members of Israel's government, as an act of capitulation.
These discussions were something of a relief after the first day, when South Africa submitted its evidence about the fighting, the conditions that Israel has created in the Gaza Strip, the destruction of buildings and infrastructure and the massive killing of civilians. Because the Israeli media does not show the full picture behind the scene of destruction, the numbers, the stories and the figures that they presented one after another were horrifying.
Destruction from Israeli aerial bombardment is seen in Gaza City in October.Credit: Adel Hana /AP
Alongside the descriptions of the difficult conditions in which hospitals in the Gaza Strip treat those injured in Israeli airstrikes, the petitioners began citing numerous remarks by senior Israeli officials in order to show intent, and the face blushes in embarrassment. The defamiliarization created by the courtroom in the European city echoed the poor level of most representatives of the Israeli public and the rotten political culture that Netanyahu has entrenched in his years in power.
The Israeli team had the difficult task of persuading the judges that the heritage minister, whose job title sounds very respectable to non-Israeli ears, represents nothing when he mulls dropping an atom bomb on Gaza, and it did its best to try to separate the actions taken by the government in practice from the bizarre calls by the deputy speaker of the Knesset to burn Gaza.
Even if it is not a legal category, what really hovered in the courtroom were the two great traumas of the two peoples, traumas that have unfortunately shaped reality in recent months and that led us to this moment. On October 7, Israelis heard the historical echoes of pogroms and the Holocaust: the indiscriminate killing, the invasion of homes, the abuse, abduction and being held hostage.
Yocheved Lifshitz, who was released by Hamas after 16 days in captivity, holds a picture of her captive husband Oded Lifshitz as she attends a protest with others holding signs showing portraits of other Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the October 7.Credit: AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP
The Palestinians, on the other hand, after decades of occupation and military rule, once again feel, every day since the outbreak of the war, the feelings that form the basis of their collective trauma – the fear of forced displacement, of a second Nakba, a fear that former Shin Bet security service chief Avi Dichter reinforced when he gleefully called the war "Gaza Nakba 2023."
Even if a defense based on a claim of temporary collective insanity is not strong enough, it expresses the deep truth of the past 100 days. Until the judges return from their deliberations and issue their ruling, the question remains whether anyone has thought about when enough is enough. In his poem "Easter, 1916," the Irish poet W. B. Yeats wrote about a different war: "Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart. / O when may it suffice?" If Israel loses its direction, does not know what it is striving for and what it will consider victory, how will it know when may it suffice?