South Africa's lawyers have told judges at the United Nations’ top court that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, pleading with the court to urgently order Israel to halt its military operation. Israel has vehemently denied such arguments. At the start of two days of legal arguments, South Africa said the latest Gaza war is part of decades of oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. The full case is likely to take years to resolve. The dispute strikes at the heart of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state created after the Nazi genocide in the Holocaust. For its part, South Africa’s governing party has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under white minority rule.
