On Thursday, the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s top court, located in The Hague, will hear arguments in response to South Africa’s petition accusing Israel of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. It is asking the court to order an end to all Israeli military action in Gaza. The Israeli government has denounced the case, slamming it as “blood libel” and reportedly pushing other governments to pile on, too. 

Their response, as a state created in response to the very calamity that gave rise to the Genocide Convention, is understandable. The Jewish community worldwide has, at times, had a very territorial relationship to the word. But so, too, has the petitioner to the court, South Africa, which coined the term “apartheid” and which has had increasingly bitter relations with Jerusalem since the apartheid system was dismantled in the early 1990s. Israel, after all, had a cozy Cold War relationship with the apartheid regime, despite its leaders’ ties to the Nazis. But any remaining good will between Pretoria and Jerusalem has completely evaporated during this war as both South Africa and Israel have pulled their ambassadors from the other’s capital.