The roots of South Africa’s Gaza case against Israel

In 1990, fresh from serving over two decades in prison on charges of trying to “overthrow the state,” South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela delivered harsh remarks likening Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the oppression of black South Africans under apartheid rule.

“If one has to refer to any of the parties as a terrorist state, one might refer to the Israeli government, because they are the people who are slaughtering defenseless and innocent Arabs in the occupied (by Israel) territories, and we don’t regard that as acceptable,” he said at the time.

It was a version of remarks the Nobel Peace Prize winner would repeat during his career as an anti-racist crusader and when he took office as president of South Africa in 1994. In government, he called on his country “to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice.”

It thus may come as no surprise that South Africa’s current government argued last week in international court that Israel’s war on Gaza is not just a means of crushing Hamas, the de facto rulers of Gaza whose gunmen grossly assaulted Israeli civilians on October 7, but also aims to commit genocide against Palestinians.

South African prosecutors accused Israel of purposefully attempting “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national racial and ethnic group.”

Israel responded forcefully and furiously. Its advocates said the case “profoundly distorted the factual and legal picture,” was “barely distinguishable” from Hamas propaganda and that Israel acted rightfully and legally in self-defense over “the slaughter of October 7, which Hamas has vowed to repeat.”

The legal stakes are high. South Africa is asking the