Trudy Rubin

The charge of “genocide” leveled at Israel last week before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, should be a wake-up call for Jerusalem, but not for the reasons you might think.

South Africa has accused Israel before the United Nations’ highest court of taking actions against Palestinian civilians in Gaza that are “genocidal in character” and “calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”

The reference is to the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip caused by Israeli bombs in retaliation for Hamas’ mass murder of 1,200 Jews, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7.

As the world can see on cable and social media, 80% of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are now refugees living in squalor. Israel is permitting insufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza to cope with horrific shortages of food, water, health care, and shelter.

Two-thirds of the strip’s housing has been pulverized, and 23,000 Palestinians have been killed — two-thirds of them women and children.

Yet the immediate issue is not whether the court ultimately rules for or against Israel. The case is likely to drag on for years, while South Africa must prove there was deliberate Israeli intent to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza (rather than, say, indifference to civilian collateral damage from bomb strikes on Hamas tunnels).

Rather, the International Court of Justice case shines a spotlight on Israel’s failure to recognize the immediate consequences of the kind of warfare it is conducting.

There is increasing dismay among Israel’s closest allies, along with its Arab partners, at Jerusalem’s refusal to alleviate the widespread suffering in Gaza — even under heavy U.S. pressure to do so.The........

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