South Africa Brings Genocide Case Against Israel, False Narratives About 7 October to Demonize Palestinians Continue to Circulate, and Israeli Policies Entrench Starvation in Gaza

Israel resumed attacks on Gaza after a brief ceasefire, killing 6,800 Palestinians, including 2,650 children and 2,300 women, and injuring more than 20,000 others. The attacks in December brought the comprehensive death toll in Gaza since 7 October to 21,800, including 8,800 children and 6,300 women, while 56,165 have been injured. Israel also killed 71 Palestinians in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), 16 of whom were children, bringing the comprehensive death toll in the West Bank since 7 October to 313 Palestinians, including 79 children. As a result of the enhanced Israeli blockade of Gaza, Human Rights Watch said Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war and UNRWA warned of “catastrophic hunger.” On 1 December, Israel published a map of Gaza where the area was divided into hundreds of small parcels, saying it would use the map to tell Palestinians to evacuate to specific places. UNOCHA pointed out that in large part such communication was useless to Palestinians due to the lack of electricity and recurrent telecommunication cuts.

December was marked by strong international solidarity with Palestine as South Africa invoked the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on 29 December, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The 84-page application filed with the ICJ stated that Israeli actions “are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.” South Africa used the Israeli leadership’s own statements to demonstrate the Israelis intend to commit genocide, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invocation of the Amalek story from the Bible, President Isaac Herzog’s statement that there are no civilians in Gaza, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s statement that Israel is fighting “human animals.” South Africa also requested that the ICJ rules to end Israel’s military operations in Gaza while the case is ongoing. The PA welcomed the South African action, while Israel called it “blood libel.”

Meanwhile at the UN, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, forcing a Security Council (UNSC) meeting on the situation in Gaza on the grounds that it poses threats to “international peace and security,” saying a ceasefire is needed to avoid “irreversible implications for Palestinians.” At the subsequent UNSC meeting on 8 December, the U.S. vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire. The UK abstained while the remaining 13 members of the council voted for the resolution. The U.S. ambassador to the UN bizarrely called 7 October the “worst attack on our people” in decades and said the resolution was unbalanced for not condemning Hamas. Two days later, Egypt and Mauritania invoked UN Resolution 377A (V) – the “Uniting for Peace” resolution - forcing the General Assembly (UNGA) to confront the U.S. veto. As a result, the UNGA adopted an Egyptian resolution calling for a ceasefire a couple of days later in a vote with 153 countries in favor, 10 against, and 23 abstaining. The UNSC convened for a new round of ceasefire discussions on 18 December, discussing the matter for 4 days before passing resolution 2720 calling on Hamas and Israel to “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities,” demanding the facilitation of the movement of aid to and within Gaza, and establishing a new UN position to oversee aid distribution. The U.S. and Russia abstained. Previous versions of the resolution called for an end to the attacks on Gaza, and later a suspension of attacks on Gaza, but both those wordings were rejected by the U.S. Russia explained that it had abstained due to the ambiguous language of the resolution. The Palestinian Authority would later say that Israel was completely ignoring the resolution by not allowing more aid to enter Gaza.

As the international community was overwhelmingly taking a stand against Israeli actions in Gaza, U.S. President Joe Biden continued to legitimize the U.S. support for Israel by demonizing the Palestinian resistance. The New York Times published a surprisingly shoddy piece of journalism, presenting an unsubstantiated narrative of systematic sexual violence on 7 October. Biden restated at a fundraiser on 5 December that he had heard reports “of women raped, repeatedly raped, and their bodies mutilated while still alive” and claimed at a campaign event on 12 December that Hamas militants used “rape, sexual violence, terrorism, and torture of Israeli women and girls without equivocation, without exception,” saying he had seen photos of beheaded babies when he was in Israel. A Haaretz investigation published on 4 December debunked the stories of beheaded babies and children being burned alive. The investigation also finds that Israeli members of the Zaka organization, members of the military, and Israeli ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lied about many of the stories of atrocities alleged to be committed on 7 October, as the list of Israelis killed on that day did not comport with the narratives.

Despite these fabrications being brought to light, the New York Times decided to publish the long-form investigative article “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” claiming, as the title suggests, that sexual violence was weaponized on 7 October. However, several investigations into the Times piece have shown that their grand claim in its title is completely unfounded and that many of the characters writing the story, and featured in it, were unreliable at best. The main journalist working on the piece was Anat Schwartz, a former Israeli intelligence officer; she later admitted in a Hebrew language interview that her calls to 11 hospitals and a sexual assault hotline in southern Israel did not produce any accounts of sexual violence committed on 7 October. Several accounts in the article were based on interviews with Zaka officials, who have been proved to have lied about events on 7 October, an Israeli soldier whose stories have been proven false, and a former Israeli soldier who changed his eyewitness account of one of the cases told to the Times numerous times. Of the 10 accounts of sexual violence recounted in the article, none of them were substantiated with actual evidence, 5 are demonstrably false, while the remaining 5 are based on eyewitness accounts of which 2 are made by unreliable sources who are known to have lied about events on 7 October. While it is doubtful that the article would pass editorial scrutiny and be published by any other serious media outlet, it was continuously highlighted by many who publicly defends Israel’s conduct and has served as a distraction from its atrocities. The Intercept will later report (on 15 April) that the Times has circulated an internal memo instructing its reporters not to use the words “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” in reporting on Gaza and to avoid using the descriptor “occupied territory” when referring to Palestinians lands.