Noah Rothman here, filling in for Jim Geraghty.
On the menu today: The self-described “International Court of Justice” (ICJ) issued a preliminary verdict on Friday following its investigation into a claim brought by South Africa alleging that Israel had engaged in genocide while prosecuting its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
A Worthless Verdict
In what the Wall Street Journal describes as a “series of near-unanimous votes” — surely a consensus propelled only by the strength of the evidence presented rather than the preexisting conclusions of the presiding justices — the ICJ determined that some of Israel’s actions in Gaza fall under what could constitute the definition of genocide (i.e., acting “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”). But if the court genuinely believed its own findings, the actions it recommended to address this supposedly horrible and ongoing criminal abuse of the human species don’t convey ...
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