We are all Israel

Contemplating the implications of witnessing the most significant trial in our lifetimes.

As we all know (or should) by now, South Africa has brought a legal case against Israel, alleging genocide – a crime against (Palestinian) humanity.

The case is heard at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the judicial arm of the United Nations, in the Hague, Netherlands.

The importance of this event is self-evident: it's not “just” a matter of life and death for millions of Palestinians, but it's also an occasion of crucial significance for the defense of vital human rights in the universal sense, including the right to life, freedom of movement, self-determination, sovereignty, and independence.

Right from the start, the prosecution wasted no time in presenting the court with a damning list of criminal transgressions committed by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) against the Palestinians.

Further than that, and augmenting the international nature of the dispute, South Africa has announced additional charges to be brought against the USA and UK for their complicity in this unjust war, since these imperialist superpowers generously support the IDF with infrastructure, arms supplies, propaganda and diplomacy.

The case for genocide was meticulously, explicitly, convincingly, and resolutely detailed in the opening statements made by Ronald Molola (Minister of Justice and Correctional Services of SA) along with other diplomatic and legal councils representing South Africa to The Netherlands.

Even if only for the sake of a lesson in rhetoric and an illuminating encapsulation of 75 years of tragic history, it is an obligation of moral duty for everyone to listen very carefully to the South African delegation reciting the specifics of the horrors unfolding in Gaza.

In very clear language, providing overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence of Israel's genocidal intentions, barely disguised as defensive acts of war, the prosecution left no room for euphemisms.

Convening with full pomp and circumstance, the ICJ listened and thus legitimized the gravitas, of a grotesque litany detailing abominable injustice and gory atrocities perpetrated by the IDF against innocent people.

(The Holocaust taught us that mass murder is a highly organized, extremely bureaucratic affair.

The Nuremberg trials were the first to recognize this industrialized process of contemporary war, by devoting ample time for the collection and presentation of incontrovertible evidence, sources, citations, and witness testimony proving beyond any reason of a doubt the factual aspect of the incriminating proceedings.

It bears mentioning that Israel is one of the founding signatories of the International Court of Justice, established in 1945, with the express purpose of prosecuting crimes against humanity, specifically genocide.

Is it too obvious to note the inescapable irony of Israel being accused of genocide by the same law that convicted the Nazis of meticulously organizing and technocratically executing the Holocaust against the Jews?

Does the international community have a very macabre sense of humor or is history irredeemably sarcastic? Both seem to be true.)

Simply the act of listening attentively about these atrocities in such an institutionalized setting of such prestige as the ICJ is a bold step towards overcoming any (de)legitimizing interpretations of state terrorism, by Israel or any other nation.

We shouldn't minimize the importance of having these arguments and rhetoric heard in an institutional context that exists for exactly what cannot be adequately examined in any other framework since the severity of the situation demands the utmost procedural seriousness and adherence to judiciary protocol, a level of prosecutorial discipline only the most strict legal process can achieve.

It is also a decisive stand against the adjudicating of disingenuous rationalizations, clarifying Israeli motives as criminal and of genocidal intent, so as the manslaughter (in defense) charges are leveraged to (mass) murder.

The speakers of the prosecution made sure to stress that this abominable massacre stretches back for 75 years, an outrageous fact that inexplicably fails to inspire any sense of urgency to anyone pondering the situation.

(Thinking of how the international community continues to keep calm and carry on in the face of such a humanitarian catastrophe, one is reminded of the puppy in the meme, sipping its coffee in a burning house, proclaiming the surrounding inferno is fine.)

Focusing on genocidal intent as the only criterion to be considered when regarding the accuracy of the genocide accusation unifies the atrocities committed with the clear motive and objective of the destruction of the Palestinian people.

Israeli aggression surely cannot be acquitted as a legitimate defense when the collective guilt of the Palestinian people, including children and women, is used as an absurd pseudo-justification for the mass extinction of innocent civilians in the name of persecuting Hamas.

Conclusively, it's not only Israel and its allies but the entirety of Western moral superiority that is challenged by this trial; furthermore, the whole credibility and basis of international law is being judged.

Since the ICJ is not a policing corpus, its inability to enforce provisions renders the entire process an exercise in moral philosophy if not an entirely irrelevant theoretical charade.

Ultimately, the entire trial and the ICJ apparatus are in danger of being proven impotent to enforce sanctions on Israel.

This makes any decision potentially inconsequential, a possibility that runs the risk of representing a global failure to respond in any meaningful manner to a genocide that is being live-streamed on our screens.

But it is not happening before our eyes, is it?

It is an orchestrated spectacle projected on our screens, a catastrophe unfolding at a safe distance, a Grand Guignol attraction whose relationship with reality is mediated, edited, and kept at a safe distance.

Israel's response to the accusations is predictable if not disappointing – audaciously refusing to address any of the damning indictments brought forth by the prosecution, the accused state resorted to tawdry chicanery by disputing the court's authority of lacking jurisdiction and focusing on technicalities as well as obstructionist legalese meant to complicate and invalidate the integrity of the proceedings, ultimately calling for a dismissal of the genocide accusations on the grounds of antisemitism.

Some might consider as naive the assumption that Israel fears international condemnation

Indeed, it seems more realistic to argue that it's wishful thinking to consider public outcry as a plausible deterrent to the final solution of the Palestinian issue, which is basically expulsion and/or extinction of the Palestinian people from Gaza and the West Bank.

Beyond its topical importance, this historic court case is a call for self-examination, personal reflection, and consciousness-raising.

Like most of us, since October 7^th when the war started, I have subjected myself to listening to the news coming out of Palestine as carefully as I can, stretching my attention span to its limits.

Trying hard not to miss any of the excruciating details, making a conscious effort to process every devastating fact, we are consciously (and understandably) minimizing our emotional entanglement to protect our mental health from the radioactive moral fall-out of being a witness to this humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes, with no resolution or even temporary ceasefire in sight.

Digitized blood flows daily like a river of death and suffering down our social media feeds, each TikTok and reel yet another mediated trauma in a constant cascade of gruesome entertainment.

The vivid imagery of war becomes a routine aspect of daily life for viewers, leading to a distorted perception of the severity of the situation.

This familiarity with terror can inadvertently contribute to a passive acceptance of ongoing violence, as we may subconsciously detach ourselves from the emotional weight of the events.

The overwhelming nature of the conflict, coupled with a perceived inability to influence the outcome, fosters a sense of unavoidable resignation.

Viewers, despite their empathy and concern, may feel powerless to effect meaningful change. The complexity of geopolitical dynamics, coupled with the recurring nature of conflicts, can create a belief that individual actions or advocacy efforts will have little impact, leading to defeatism and passivity.

Moreover, the simple act of participating even as a spectator in this theater of cruelty, our mere presence as members of the audience, is most certainly proof of our complicity in a global exercise of mass desensitization.

The effect of constant exposure to unrelenting terror and insufferable tragedy inevitably leads to a deadening of the senses, an acquired jadedness that normalizes genocide by amputating conscience.

Eventually, the viewer feels nausea as their exhausted empathy teeters on the edge of compassion fatigue, that last, defeatist refuge of self-preservation in the face of existential annihilation.

This numbness is not a reflection of apathy but rather a psychological defense mechanism meant to cope with overwhelming and persistent distress.

Retreating to a paralyzed state of learned helplessness is a form of cowardice as a luxury afforded by privilege, since just listening to the minutiae, the logistics, the granular analysis of the mass slaughter in Palestine, as horrifying as it is, is not truly experiencing any of the terror, but merely engaging by proxy router with the pornography of necropolitics.

Bearing witness, by definition, demands criminality a priori, otherwise there's nothing to testify about. Testimony is in itself a byproduct of transgression. In this sense, ignorance is certainly bliss when revelatory knowledge is inevitably tainted with complicity.

We are all passively complicit with the normalization of genocide since continuous exposure to conflict through news coverage normalizes the abnormal.

Thus, a perverse equivalence is born, since the desensitization process of adapting to horror as the new normal mirrors the paranoid misanthropy that is characteristic of the relentless propaganda and brainwashing suffered by Israelis themselves, exposed since childhood to indoctrination by an apartheid state, involuntary members of a hysterical cult expressly dedicated to dehumanizing Palestinians, if not all Arabs.

In this sense, our collective numbness, cognitive dissonance, and disturbed consciousness are injuries sustained by psychological warfare, premeditated blows, calculated kicks, outcomes, results, and symptoms of an organized campaign to neutralize any potential for meaningful and consequential action against the horror.

A seminar in mental gymnastics, defending the indefensible, perverting the court of justice, smearing the opponent, denying accountability, and making a mockery of concepts such as law, or even consequences.

A refusal to accept the burden of atoning for a guilty conscience.

In this, the inability to meaningfully respond to a call for consciousness, a plea for mercy, a confession of guilt – in this, anyone who does not accept that Israel is committing genocide, is culpable as much as every Israeli citizen who supports Zionism.

Accepting this accusation necessarily has consequences, otherwise, it is a null and void deliberation – perhaps isolating Israel, imposing sanctions, or other diplomatic ways of persuasion.

Also, and ironically, this failure to respond meaningfully to cries for peace and justice is the root cause of antisemitism according to Rabbi Benjamin Blech, professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University in New York who says “anti-Semitism is nothing less than a visceral reaction to the cry of a guilty conscience.”

This definition of antisemitism as refusal to be held accountable and pay for the consequences of one's proven action is thus a fundamental evil.

This means that allowing Israel to continue on this state of denial about its war path of death and destruction is a latent form of Jew-hatred since it is obvious that, after too many precedents, the situation cannot possibly continue as favorable for the state of Israel. Only someone who wants the destruction of Jews would stop accusing them of genocide.

Whether, and however Israel will respond to the decision of the ICJ will prove to all of us what international law stands for.

Most crucially, until the outcome of the trial is public, which is somewhere in the not-so-immediate future, everyone must decide which side of the discussion one is aligned with.

The only sure thingis that innocence is permanently lost. We are all Israel if we continue to pretend otherwise.

Text written by Panagiotis Chatzistefanou, Berlin, January 2024