Among them is a quote of mine that South Africa grossly distorted in its presentation
to the ICJ.
By: Isaac Herzog
In these dark days for Israel and the civilized world, there are many things that keep me up at
night. One is that the international legal system has begun to ignore reality and truth. Justice
is unrecognizable, and noble ideals are perverted by terrorists and cynics.
These feelings were brought into focus as the International Court of Justice at The Hague in
January considered South Africa’s accusation that Israel was guilty of genocide. This absurd
claim and the abuse of an august international forum convened to weigh its merits remind us
how far we’ve come from the moral clarity of the fight against Nazism (after which the ICJ
was established).
Amid the many demonstrable misrepresentations that emerged from the accusation against
Israel, one caught my attention—a quote attributed to me. The quote was taken from a news
conference I held on Oct. 12, five days after Hamas terrorists butchered 1,200 people in
southern Israel and kidnapped hundreds more. The quote, which included a line that there was
“an entire nation out there that is responsible,” referring to the Palestinians, was presented as
if it justified the killing of civilians. South Africa used the misconstrued quote at The Hague
in an attempt to prove Israel’s intent to commit genocide and thus invoke the jurisdiction of
the court.
At that Oct. 12 news conference, I was meeting international journalists at the president’s
residence in Jerusalem. Not one journalist asked me about the pain in Israel or about the
global implications of this act of catastrophic terror. They were instead preoccupied with the
effect this would have on Palestinians in Gaza—the territory that had produced and then
celebrated the perpetrators of the attack.
The fact is that many Palestinian civilians entered Israel on Oct. 7 on the heels of the Hamas
terrorists and participated in murder, rape, and looting, much of it documented on film.
Palestinians were filmed cheering the massacre and jeering and attacking the hostages as they
were led into captivity. I also pointed out that Hamas operates from within the heart of its
civilian population and enjoys broad support. I then stated, in no uncertain terms, that there
are many innocent Palestinians, and that the state of Israel and our security forces don’t view
innocent civilians as targets in any way. I made it clear that Israel acts in keeping with international law.
These words were purposely distorted when presented to the court. The claim that Israel is
committing genocide can’t rest on accurate information, because it is a lie. Israel is acting to
protect its citizens from an explicitly genocidal enemy, as we are required to do under
international law. Israel is doing so with the utmost concern for civilian life, as experts from other
Western militaries know well. The civilian casualties in Gaza are a tragedy—due to Hamas’s
decision to attack Israelis and the way Hamas fights from under and behind its own civilians.
Differentiating civilians from combatants isn’t only a basic part of my own worldview and
Israel’s basic values; it is essential to the values of humanity. We are at war with Hamas, not
with the civilians of Gaza. I reject and condemn any call for their harm. Humanitarian aid
must reach them, as it is already reaching them, even though more than 130 of our people
remain hostages in the hands of Hamas, a fact that hasn’t been sufficiently appreciated as an
international priority. I understand that many in Israel feel that by allowing aid we are helping
the people abusing our kidnapped citizens and giving up a pressure point that could hasten
their release and shorten the war.
The world can’t disregard what we saw on Oct. 7. The International Court of Justice has
ignored most of these crimes, but we in Israel can’t. The free world must not forget that the
crimes against humanity in this war were perpetrated, and continue to be perpetrated, by
Hamas and its allies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.
The South African case, brought in support of Hamas, is a blood libel against the nation-state
of the Jewish people—a shameful low for an international system that emerged from the
ashes of the Holocaust. This abandonment of moral clarity, the desertion of the vision of
international justice, and its replacement by cynical politics and outright falsehoods will have
repercussions far beyond Israel.
*Isaac Herzog is the president of Israel.
This column was originally published by The Wall Street Journal
