The UN judges’ ruling on genocide is deeply damaging to Israel’s reputation

Whatever view is taken of the merits of the allegations of genocide, the interim judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel is, objectively, a disaster for the country.

Israel has, in effect, been told it has a case to answer for genocide – the crime of crimes. Poignantly, it has happened on the eve of International Holocaust Memorial Day. The reputation of Israel thus, inevitably, carries a grievous stain, despite its protestations.

Now, every time an Israeli minister, spokesperson or diplomat appears in public, or at a private meeting with their counterparts, they will have to contend with the jarring charge of genocide. The charge is, moreover, not one casually levelled by some extremist Islamist faction or antisemitic Western politician but by the international community’s highest court, delivered in sober and measured terms, citing relevant evidence. It can’t be lightly dismissed.

The words of the ICJ president, Judge Donoghue, will weaken the willingness of Israel’s allies to support it and alienate those states in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt, with whom Israel has been trying to establish and to maintain normal relations.

Israel has lost yet more of its moral case in a war that it regards as existential. America, in particular, will be dismayed and disappointed, predictable as the ICJ ruling probably was. As a brave and democratic nation long surrounded by enemies who wanted nothing more than to drive its people into the sea, Israel is used to having to scrap for its right to exist but its valour and its resources are not sufficient to guarantee its freedom and the security of its people.

If Israel wishes to live in peace and stability, it has to maintain the backing of its allies, near and far, and it has to remain within international law, even if those who wish to extinguish it never do. That is why what the ICJ says matters.

Albeit only framed as an interim judgment, Israel should never have found itself potentially in breach of the 1946 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Now, having been driven by the atrocities committed by Hamas against civilians on 7 October into what one former British minister called “a killing rage”, Israel finds itself potentially in contempt of the most sacred of international conventions.

Israel has, unhappily, fallen into the trap laid by Hamas when it invaded southern Israel three months ago, and the powerful wave of international sympathy for the Israeli people in that hour of anguish has been squandered. The war has indeed escalated and spread, and Israel has been drawn into something that, on the world’s TV screens and smartphones, looks like a war on children.

So now, it is Israel, not Hamas, that finds itself on trial for genocide.

The ICJ acknowledged the crimes against humanity committed by the Hamas terrorists but did not dwell on them – nor, more to the point, did it make much of Hamas’s self-declared genocidal tendencies. Of course, Hamas is not a sovereign state nor a signatory to any international conventions but the existence of an organisation dedicated to the extinction of Israel and the murder of every Jew should surely have got more of a mention.

The uncomfortable fact being forgotten is that the destruction of Gaza would never have happened had Hamas not chosen to murder, torture and rape some 1,200 civilians of various nationalities on that day in October. Perhaps we will see more of that context of provocation, and Hamas’s habit of using civilians as human shields, more fully explored in the ICJ’s final judgment.

In any case, it should not have been this way for Israel. Had Benjamin Netanyahu’s government heeded the warnings issued by Israel’s friends and allies weeks ago, then the South African case would have been far weaker, and the ICJ might well have dismissed the allegations.

But the casualties and dislocation kept mounting, and the sheer scale became hard to justify – more than 25,000 dead, 63,000 injured, and 1.7 million displaced. As the ICJ noted, and could hardly ignore, UN officials have declared Gaza “uninhabitable”, disease-ridden and harbouring a generation of children deeply traumatised – with baleful consequences for decades to come. Insufficient care was taken with civilians. Leaving all legal considerations to one side, this is not the way to destroy Hamas – nor, therefore, to secure the safety of Israel’s citizens.

There is not much comfort that Israel can pick from the ICJ’s decisions, though it did not rule Israel’s war unlawful, and implicitly recognised Israel’s right to self-defence and to exist. Neither did the court call for a ceasefire, immediate or otherwise.

Nonetheless, Israel would be unwise to now attack the ICJ and defy the “provisional measures” demanded by the court. The ICJ’s rulings are legally binding, and wilfully ignoring them will merely make Israel’s position worse.

Israel should therefore refrain from disparaging the ICJ or South Africa, despite the strong historic links between the ANC and Palestinian organisations. Israel should obey the ICJ’s instructions on the protection of civilians and prevention of genocide, which effectively means winding down the war, allowing much longer humanitarian ceasefires, and not calling Palestinians dehumanising names such as “human animals”.

The war in Gaza is not going well, in any case, and a radical change of strategy is required. Israel has been told what it must do by an international court; Mr Netanyhu must not be too stubborn about obeying international law.