Mick Hartley

What's the point of South Africa's genocide charge against Israel? The conclusion of Yehudah Mirsky article at Unherd…

Jihadism, the stated ideology of Hamas, doesn’t accept the legitimate personhood of national groups and is in both theory and practice genocidal to the core. Its accusing Israel of genocide, in a fact-free way that undercuts the legitimacy of the idea of genocide as a whole, works to erode the rules-based international legal order that Hamas rejects to begin with. That international legal order and its aspirations to universalism is far from perfect, to say the least. Yet what might take its place? If another universalism, then of what? Not all universalisms are benign — and as universalisms go, Jihadism is singularly unforgiving.

Several nephews of mine serve in the Israeli Army and have been in the thick of fighting in Gaza. I asked one of them, a reservist in a commando unit and a bohemian neuroscientist in civilian life, what he thought of last week’s proceedings at the Hague. He didn’t get defensive, but told me that he and some comrades had been talking about it. He calmly asked: “What is the value of doing this now? I’m not doing genocide. Are others? I didn’t see it. Is the state? I don’t think so. But what’s going on there? What exactly do they want to get out of this?”

The answer, I’d venture, is much — and also nothing at all.

Much — in that some of what motivated the proceedings has to be the result of genuine concern for Palestinian suffering. But so much of it seems to be foisting onto Israel blame for all that colonialism wrought, and all that post-colonialism failed to do; beating up on America via its Israeli client; keeping alive Soviet-style Third Worldism for the sake of Western progressives; blaming the failures of the Gods — of ideologies, of utopian legalism — on the all-too-human Jews; retreating from a confrontation with Jihadism by hoping that one day Israel will simply go away.

And nothing at all — in that there is no attempt in these proceedings to ease the very real suffering of Palestinians on the ground from all that Hamas has brought upon them on its own, and by bringing down upon them the full force of Israel; and no attempt to convey to moderate Israelis that there actually is an international community trying to use international law to end conflicts rather than carry them on by other means.

Few doubt that our world needs International Humanitarian Law now more than ever. But that law needs to be credible — or it will be worse than nothing at all.