PBS News Hour

violence, we will use violence.

Nick: So, how strong is south Africa's case against Israel, an defense presen We get two vie First to Kenneth Roth, the former exe human rights watch and now vi university Harvard university.

How strong a case do you believe South Africa has that Israel has demonstrated the intent to destroy all or part of a racial, religious, or ethnic group?

Kenneth: South Africa assembled an incredibly talented legal team and put together a compelling case.

There is not much qu of killing and deprivation is sufficient to meet that predicate part of the crime of The south African case had elements to it in showing genocidal intent.

of statements by senior Israeli official They looked at prime minister Netanyahu's reference to Israeli enemy where the biblical injunction was to kill every man, woman a They used the defense minister's statement that they are fighting human an He said adjustme said, oh, I just met hamas -- meant hamas.

They ran through statements like that.

They had a moving sectio they had a bunch of Israeli soldiers singing and dancing and saying there are no uninvolved civilians.

Ba crim So this is all genocidal intent.

And they have worked backwards from the ground, saying because Israel is bombing indiscriminately and using huge 2000 pond -- they show an indifference to Palestinian life.

statements cited by the south Af about gaza.

The official or policy is to resp from launching another terrorist attack.

But they say for statement the south Africans choose there are other officials saying they ar to avoid civilian casu the official policy is t hamas, Kenneth: They say th official policy but when you have the prime minister talking and saying basically kill everybody, when you have the defense minister saying they are policy.

These are the top people If you look at the actions of the Israeli soldiers on the ground, whether it is the disproportionate harm to civilians or this devastating siege causing such severe deprivation to so many Palestin starvation across gaza, it is hard to say that this is not po That is what they're saying for public relations purposes.

I do n court.

ha s dropped leaflets from the sky urging Palestinian to what the idf call safer areas, uses text messages and calls to warn gazans about stripes coming, it humanitarian Zones.

Does any of that suggest Israel's intentions are black-and-whit Kenneth: I t to be the more sophisticated defenses Israel mounts tomorrow.

We have heard spokespeople say they should be c with genocide, hamas committed atrocities.

But as I conduct by one side does not testify genocide by the other.

Nothing justifies genocide.

With respect to the warnings, right thing to do, but they are doing it in an inhuman They are sending people to the south, and they contin bombs in the south.

They are depriving the people in that area of the most basic necessities.

They are jus of humanitarian aid.

Th public relations, they are not really humane efforts.

The bigger defense I think will be this mantra of hu which we hear all the time.

Yes, h Yes, hamas fights from civilian areas.

But there is a duty from the attacker, even if targeting a mi they will be disproportionate harm regardless of hum sh case does not acknowledge Israel has the right to self-defense, nor as you just mentione acknowledge how hamas fights, embedded within civilian areas.

Are those weaknesses in south Afri point of saying they condemn hamas atroci should.

Israel has the right to de itse But it has to defend itself lawfully within the Geneva co Target civilian population.

Certainly not committing This deprivation of the civilian population, 85% displaced, very little food, very little water, the hospitals are shut down.

Tis seems to be designed to impose conditions of hardship, which could lead to massive loss of life, eve bombing directly.

Africa has shown the reasonable probability of genocide and imposes what are called pr important is that?

What would be the impact of that extraordinarily important.

Even though the court has no direct means of enforcement, it has to look to council in the U.S. To stop a veto.

Nonetheless, for Israel, a state that was founded because of genocide, because of the holocaust, to be found to probably be committing genocid would be a huge stig real pressure on Netanyahu finally to stop the killing.

It would put pressure on B to stop funding and arming.

It would make an enormous contribution to saving Palestinian lives.

Nick: Kenneth Roth, than very much.

And now we get a different view from yuval international law at hebrew He has writt international courts, an trib the U.N. Human rights committee.

Thank you very much.

Do you think that Sout has shown Israel's intent to destroy in whole or in part Palestinians?

I think South Africa did work quite effectively on introducing some circumstantial evidence for its claim.

and suffering come a lot of damage inflicted on Palestinians in the gaza strip.

And it allocated significant time also to flesh out a lot of statements that were given by Israeli of There are still many holes in the narrative they are presenting before the court.

Ni those statements.

When prime minister Netanyahu site the enemies of Jews are destroyed, and valves Israel should achieve the sam gaza, does that not show intent to destroy at least part Palestinians in gaza?

Yuval: I think these are very ambiguous statements.

I would not statement.

I wish they were not uttered.

I think they were playing to political base.

But in the Israeli context calling an enemy l the Nazis or hamas, that is something done all the time.

how you refer to your mortal enemies.

You use a biblical reference to beef it up and make it sound flashier to your home base.

Actually in the first statement in the south African application, he emphasized that the idf, unlike ha observing the laws of war and not harming civilians.

So it is quite a stretch to build the entire case and to basically allege that there genocidal plan, a plan on the basis of an improvement statement.

The military is an organized basis of cabinet decisions and specific directi It does no politician says and changes its plans of actions.

This is not how things wor Every specific attack has to be cleared by lawyers who work for the id This is simply the insinuation that a statement from th minister would lead the chief of staff operational plans.

It simply has limited bearing to reality.

Ni requires Israel to prevent and not insight genocide.

As Israel punished some of perhaps the lower-level officials when they suggest th goals of the operation are to destroy no of gaza?

Yuval: Here I Africans do have a point.

So far Israel has not been diligent in taking steps again public figures who have made some outrageous statements that seem to violate international law.

I know the attorney general this week issued a statem will actually prosecute -- consider pro who uninvolved civilians.

But one could say this is a little bit late I would say by and large Israel has not handled this aspect of And there have been too many wild statements not adequately responded to, but there is a huge distance between not dealing suff cracking down on hate speech and incitement and actually attributing those statements to the actual conduct of the the field, which like you said on t the idf operation is a war which is a very di urban warfare with an enemy that is completely embedded within and below the civilian And this is something by the way the South Africa team completely left out from its narrative.

So, according to the presentations we have heard October 7 and then nothing, that hamas disappears.

It is only the Israelis dropping bombs.

The story is much more complex and the statements are ba indeed annoying and at some level even d But it is not really the driving force.

Ken Roth, what do you believe the impact would be?

Ho court imposes provisional measures on Israel?

Whether that is about aid or about the conduct of the war itself presented by South Africa does not have a chanc the merits, but they may c the threshold of plausibility, which is sufficient for court to issue provisional And this is of course someth that the government of Israel is concerned ab concerned ab And we will have t sort of provisional me court can issu involving Myanmar, the court issued relatively gene remedies, calling on the state not to preserve evidence regarding genocide.

However, in the russia/ukraine case, the court ordered Russia to That is something which course has not happene yet.

So w remedies, what sort of measures would be dictated.

Nick: Yuval very much.

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