Page:South Africa v. Israel (Order of 26 January 2024).pdf/50



1. South Africa came to the Court seeking the immediate suspension of the military operations in the Gaza Strip. It has wrongly sought to impute the crime of Cain to Abel. The Court rejected South Africa’s main contention and, instead, adopted measures that recall Israel’s existing obligations under the Genocide Convention. The Court has reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend its citizens and emphasized the importance of providing humanitarian aid to the population of Gaza. The provisional measures indicated by the Court are thus of a significantly narrower scope than those requested by South Africa.

2. Notably, the Court has emphasized that “all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law”, which certainly includes Hamas. The Court has also stated that it “is gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release” (see Order, para. 85).

3. The Genocide Convention holds a very special place in the heart and history of the Jewish people, both within and beyond the State of Israel. The term “genocide” was coined in 1942 by a Jewish lawyer from Poland, Raphael Lemkin, and the impetus for the adoption of the Genocide Convention came from the carefully planned and deliberate murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

4. I was five years old when, as part of Operation Barbarossa, the German army occupied the city in which I was born—Kaunas—in Lithuania. Within a few days, almost 30,000 Jews in Kaunas were taken from their homes and put into a ghetto. It was as if we were sentenced to death, awaiting our execution. On 26 October 1941, every Jew in the ghetto was instructed to gather in the central square, known as “Democracy Square”. Around 9,000 Jews were taken from the square on that day and executed by machine gun fire.

There was constant hunger in the overcrowded ghetto. But despite all the difficulties, there was an organized community life. It was a community of individuals condemned to death, yet in their hearts there was a spark of hope for life and a desire to preserve basic human dignity.

5. At the beginning of 1944, the Nazis rounded up all children under the age of 12, loaded them onto trucks and shot them during the infamous “Kinder Aktion”. It was clear that I had to leave in order to survive. I was smuggled out of the ghetto in a sack and taken to a Lithuanian farmer. A couple of weeks later my mother and I were transferred to another farmer. We had to be very discreet, so the farmer built a double wall in one of the rooms. We hid in that narrow space until we were finally liberated by the Red Army on 1 August 1944. Only five per cent of the Jews of Lithuania had survived.

6. Genocide is more than just a word for me; it represents calculated destruction and human behaviour at its very worst. It is the gravest possible accusation and is deeply intertwined with my personal life experience.

7. I have thought a lot about how this experience has affected me as a judge. In my opinion, the effect has been twofold. First, I am deeply aware of the importance of the existence of the State