Isaac Herzog, WSJ, Feb. 11, 2024
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 in 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. …SOURCE