Israel yesterday (Friday) denied that it was committing genocide in Gaza and urged the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to reject South Africa’s request for the indication of additional provisional measures and the modification of provisional measures previously prescribed by the court.

Only two representatives of Israel spoke at yesterday’s hearing: the deputy attorney-general for international law, Gilad Noam (pictured below left on May 16), and the principal deputy legal adviser at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tamar Kaplan Tourgeman (pictured centre). The Israeli delegation was given two hours to make their submissions, but only spoke for just under 90 minutes.

Seven representatives of South Africa made submissions on May 16.

Noam accused South Africa of giving a false picture of what was happening in Gaza and insisted that Israel was engaged in a war it did not want and did not start.

He complained that Israel had not been given adequate time to prepare its submissions and said its request for a rescheduling of the hearings was rejected.

Yesterday’s live stream was interrupted briefly when a protester shouted “liars” while Kaplan Tourgeman was making her final submission.

This happened just after Kaplan Tourgeman said that Israel was asking the ICJ to reject the request for the modification and indication of provisional measures submitted by South Africa.

Kaplan Tourgeman when the protester shouts “liars”.

Kaplan Tourgeman told the ICJ judges that acceding to South Africa’s request would be “an affront to the very idea of the protection afforded by the law”.

Gilad Noam gave an extremely combative presentation. He said South Africa had presented the ICJ with a picture that was completely divorced from the facts and circumstances. “Israel is engaged in a difficult and tragic armed conflict,” he said.

Noam told the ICJ judges that Israel was under attack and was fighting to defend itself and its citizens “since the horrific onslaught that began on 7th October, 2023”.

He said that South Africa was exploiting the Genocide Convention and was suggesting “a convoluted reading of international law under which any armed conflict could be brought before the court”.

Noam told the judges: “This case, even by its very name, the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip, suggests an inversion of reality.

“It has given rise to South Africa’s egregious and repeated efforts to bring Israel before this court through the obscene exploitation of the most sacred convention.”

South Africa was once again seeking to obtain provisional measures that would bind only Israel and not its adversary, Noam said.

“I am compelled to restate once again that there is a tragic war going on, but there is no genocide,” he told the judges.

Noam said that South Africa was making a mockery of “the heinous charge of genocide”.

Truth should matter, Noam said. “Words must retain their meaning. Calling something a genocide again and again does not make it genocide. Repeating a lie does not make it true,” he told the court.

Noam told the ICJ judges that Hamas “and other terrorist organisations in Gaza” continued to attack Israel, “including by indiscriminate rocket fire into Israeli cities and towns”.

Both Noam and Kaplan Tourgeman referred to Hamas as an “ally” of South Africa. Noam told the ICJ judges: “South Africa purports to come before you yet again as a guardian of humanity. In fact, it has a clear ulterior motive when it asks you to order Israel to stay away from Rafah and to withdraw all its troops from Gaza. It does so in order to obtain military advantage for its ally, Hamas, which is does not wish to see defeated.”

Kaplan Tourgeman said that, in order to show a genocidal intent that simply was not there, South Africa continued to distort statements by Israeli ministers.

Kaplan Tourgeman said that Israel had been making “extensive efforts” in recent months, together with various international partners, to increase the provision of humanitarian assistance throughout the Gaza Strip.

She denied that Israel had shut down southern Gaza’s two main crossings: Rafah and Kerem Shalom (Karem Abu Salem).

She also said that “despite the intense military activity on the premises”, no patients or medical staff were harmed during the operation by the IDF at the Al-Shifa hospital, a claim that was met by disbelief in comments on social media, including in a tweet by historian, journalist, and human rights activist Craig Murray.

“Israel claimed today at the ICJ that no patient nor medic had been harmed at al-Shifa Hospital,” Murray tweeted. “The Big Lie technique. Israel’s basic argument is that the required standard of proof for ICJ action can never be met until a conflict is over. Which negates the entire preventative purpose of the Genocide Convention.”

Military historian and author Susan Raby-Dunne tweeted: “What about mass graves of zip tied medical personnel in scrubs and patients still hooked up to drips??”

At the end of yesterday’s hearing, Judge Georg Nolte put a question to Israel. The court invited Israel to provide a written reply no later than May 18, 2024, at 6 p.m.

Judge Nolte asked: “Can Israel provide information about the existing humanitarian conditions in the designated evacuation zones, in particular Al-Mawasi, and how it would ensure safe passage to these zones as well as provision of shelter, food, water, and other humanitarian aid and assistance to all evacuees that are, and can be expected to arrive, in these zones.”

Marc Owen Jones, who is an associate professor of Middle East studies and digital humanities at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that Israel had used the ICJ hearing as a way to get out “dishonest talking points” on aid distribution in Gaza and to launch ad hominem attacks on South Africa.

“This is why a lot of what it says comes across as completely dishonest – because it is completely dishonest,” Owen Jones told Al Jazeera. “There is a difference between the reality on the ground and what Israel is trying to present to the international community.”

Owen Jones told Al Jazeera that he believed South Africa’s case was strong enough for the court to issue additional provisional measures in Gaza, especially given that humanitarian conditions in the besieged and bombarded territory had only worsened after the court’s earlier orders for Israel to facilitate better aid flow.

According to media reports, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, said after yesterday’s hearing that nothing would stop Israel from defending itself.

Katz was reported as saying: “I commend our Israeli legal team for representing us with honour and pride at the International Court of Justice in The Hague against South Africa’s display of hypocrisy.

“No force will prevent Israel from exercising its right to self-defence. We will continue to fight on the legal, political, and military fronts until all 132 of our hostages return to their loved ones.”

In a post on X, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein called on the ICJ “to reject South Africa’s appeal and to bring the abuse of the Court to an end”.

South Africa’s claims were both morally and factually distorted and constituted an abuse of the Genocide Convention and the ICJ, Marmorstein said.

Echoing the claims made by Noam and Kaplan Tourgeman in court yesterday, Marmorstein alleged that South Africa was acting as the legal arm of Hamas “in an attempt to undermine Israel’s right and moral duty to protect its citizens from the ongoing Hamas attacks and to release the 132 hostages still held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah”.

Legal counsellor at the South African embassy in the Netherlands Cornelius Scholtz said after the May 17 hearing that to argue that South Africa was at the ICJ at the behest of Hamas was “completely false”.

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