On Dec. 29 – just over 11 weeks after Hamas militants’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel – South Africa, a nation with its own bloody racial history, filed a bombshell 84-page legal case: It alleged that the state of Israel, in its response to the Hamas attack, was guilty of committing genocide.

“The acts in question include killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction,” the legal filing said.

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The case mentioned the staggering death toll from the “sustained bombardment” of one of “the most densely populated places in the world.” Since Israel launched its land and air assault on the enclave, more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 8,000 children. More than 55,000 Palestinians have been injured and nearly 2 million have been displaced.

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The charges also referenced Israel’s decades-long history of relations with Palestinians – “a background of apartheid, expulsion, ethnic cleansing, annexation, occupation, discrimination, and the ongoing denial of the right of Palestinian people to self determination” – as well as recent comments by top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that allegedly expressed “genocidal intent.”

South Africa brought its case in the International Court of Justice, a United Nations body also known as the World Court that’s located in The Hague, in the Netherlands. With the first phase of the trial now underway as of Thursday, what’s likely to be the most watched international criminal case in years could have significant implications both for Israel’s current war in Gaza and the future of international relations.

Here’s what else you should know about the ICJ and South Africa’s case against Israel.

The court, like many contemporary global institutions, emerged from the unprecedented bloodshed of World War II. In 1942, with the fighting still raging, the governments of the U.S. and U.K. voiced support for an international court that would take shape after the war. Three years later, when the U.S. and other powers held a series........

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