South Africa’s Attempt to Deceive the ICJ

Detailed analysis of the Gaza casualty figures indicates that the South African government made a deliberate attempt to mislead the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its Application Instituting Proceedings, submitted in January, claiming that Israel was committing genocide.

In paragraph 4 of the introduction to that application, the South Africans stated that,

‘Israel has now killed in excess of 21,110 named Palestinians, including over 7,729 children …’

Thus, they claimed the number of dead was confirmed because it consisted of named individuals – a claim one analyst has described as “bordering on criminal”.

The documents South Africa referenced to support their claim were published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the document with the specific numbers had a disclaimer that reads:

`The UN has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures;
the current numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza
and the Israeli authorities and await further verification.
Other yet-to-be verified figures are also sourced.`

So, South Africa claimed a much higher degree of confidence in the casualty figures than the United Nations office that published them. In particular, the UN acknowledged that the Media Office in Gaza was one of the sources – an office that is not involved in the formal identification of casualties and is now considered an unreliable source.

Official acknowledgement of the uncertainty in the casualty figures came on the 8th of May, when the OCHA significantly reduced the number of women and children it reported as killed. That change revealed more than 10,000 of the total claimed casualties are unidentified and that the numbers of women and children killed had been exaggerated by more than 40 percent.

These revelations should cause the South African case against Israel to collapse.

The reputation of the international justice system is at stake.