Israel leader calls South Africa ‘hypocrite’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Pretoria did not cry genocide when millions of Syrians were killed by partners of Hamas.
Daily TribunePrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Pretoria did not cry genocide when millions of Syrians were killed by partners of Hamas.
(Photo by RONEN ZVULUN / POOL / AFP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called South Africa a hypocrite for accusing the Jewish state of genocide in Gaza as the country confronts the case filed against it by Pretoria at the the United Nations’ top court.
“The hypocrisy of South Africa screams to the heavens,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, according to Ynet News. “Where was South Africa when millions of people were killed or torn from their homes in Syria and Yemen, by whom? By partners of Hamas,” he added, referring to the Palestinian terrorists who attacked Israel on 7 October killing 1,140 people and taking hostage 240 others.
“No, South Africa, it is not we who have come to perpetrate genocide, it is Hamas,” Netanyahu said in the run-up to the International Court of Justice hearings in The Hague, Netherlands.
“Israel is fighting murderous terrorists who carried out crimes against humanity: They slaughtered, they raped, they burned, they dismembered, they beheaded - children, women, elderly, young men and women,” he said, Ynet News reported.
Without mentioning South Africa, the Israeli leader said his country is being accused by representatives of monsters of “genocide.”
“Today we saw an upside-down world. Israel is accused of genocide while it is fighting against genocide,” Netanyahu said in a televised speech reported by CNN.
South Africa has launched an emergency case at the ICJ arguing that Israel stands in breach of the UN Genocide Convention, signed in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust.
Pretoria wants judges to force Israel to “immediately” stop its military campaign to destroy Hamas terrorists in Gaza that has killed at least 23,469 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Israel and its ally the United States have dismissed the case as groundless and vowed a robust defense at the Peace Palace which houses the ICJ.
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the South African case was “unfounded.”
“In fact, it is those who are violently attacking Israel who continue to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews,” Miller said.
The ICJ will likely rule within a matter of weeks on South Africa’s request. Its rulings are final and legally binding but it has little power to enforce them.
A month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ICJ ordered a halt to the military operation — to no avail.
