THE HAGUE: Israel said Friday the genocide case at the UN top court against it was "profoundly distorted" and did not reflect the realities of the Gaza war.
South Africa has "regrettably put before the court a profoundly distorted factual and legal picture," said Tal Becker, a top lawyer for Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
He claimed that Israel's response was in self-defence and not aimed at the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. "Israel is in a war of defence against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people," he said.
"The entirety of its case hinges on a deliberately curated, decontextualised and manipulative description of the reality of current hostilities," Becker added.
South Africa has launched an emergency case at the International Court of Justice 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 the Gaza campaign launched after the October 7 Hamas attacks, which left 1,140 dead, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel responded with a relentless military campaign that the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says has killed at least 23,469 people, mostly women and children.
The war began when Hamas launched its October 7 attack, which resulted in about 1,140 people killed in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally. Militants also took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom Israel says remain in Gaza, including at least 25 believed to have been killed.
WHO said this week that only 15 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, most of them in the south. The agency has long described desperate scenes in the few barely functioning hospitals remaining in the north, facing severe shortages of food, clean water, medicines and fuel.
Meanwhile, nine members of a Palestinian family have been killed in an Israeli strike in southern Gaza. Relatives gathered at the Abu Yousef Al-Najar Hospital in Rafah on Friday to grieve for their loved ones who were killed the day before, their bodies laid out on the ground covered in white sheets.
Hundreds of people have been killed in recent days in strikes across the territory, including in areas of the far south where Israel has told people to seek refuge. Israeli military operations in Gaza have lately focused on the southern city of Khan Younis and urban refugee camps in the territory’s centre.
The Israeli military said Friday that, over the past day, it had killed dozens of militants in Khan Younis and the Maghazi camp.
'Unfounded' claims Israel ally US
Israel and its ally the United States have dismissed the case as groundless and vowed a robust defence at the Peace Palace in the Dutch city, which houses the ICJ.
"The State of Israel is accused of genocide at a time when it is fighting genocide," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the run-up to the hearings.
"A terrorist organisation carried out the worst crime against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and now someone comes to defend it in the name of the Holocaust? What brazen gall. The world is upside down," he added.
In Washington, State Department spokesman 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," said Miller.
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.
'Crossed the line'
For this emergency proceeding, the court will not rule on the fundamentals of the case -- whether Israel is actually committing genocide -- but on whether the rights of Gazans to exist are at risk. South Africa can bring an ICJ case against Israel as both countries have signed the Genocide Convention.
Pretoria's Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told the court on Thursday that Israel had "crossed the line" and was in breach of the convention. He said that even the brutality of the Hamas attack could not justify this.
"Genocides are never declared in advance," said Adila Hassim, a top lawyer for South Africa. "But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts."
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has long been a firm supporter of the Palestinian cause, often linking it to its own struggle against the white-minority apartheid government, which had cooperative relations with Israel.
Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela famously said South Africa's freedom would be "incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
Addressing the ICJ on Thursday, the lawyer for South Africa Blinne Ni Ghralaigh said international justice itself was on the line. "Some might say that the very reputation of international law, its ability and will to bind and protect all peoples equally, hangs in the balance," she told the court.
But Israel described South Africa as the "legal arm" of Hamas and said Pretoria's case was "one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy in history."
(With inputs from AFP and AP)