©Sputnik / Russian Foreign Ministry
Russia is not surprised that Germany has decided to defend Israel in a genocide case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as unconditional support for the Jewish state is obligatory in Washington’s ‘rules-based international order,’ Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
In late December, South Africa brought proceedings against Israel at the ICJ, alleging it had breached the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in its aerial and ground bombardment of Gaza in response to the Hamas cross-border attack on October 7.
It also asked the court in The Hague to order Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza.”
Berlin has disputed the genocide charge. On January 5, a spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Foreign Office said that Israel’s “targeted action against armed attackers; that is, fighters in an armed conflict, is not action with the intention of destroying an ethnic group.”
“We have made it very clear that, in our opinion, the claim that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip is false and not covered by the Convention,” the official added.
More than 25,000 people have so far been killed in Israel’s offensive, Palestinian health officials say, while about 1,200 people died in the Hamas attack last October. Another 240 were seized as hostages.
Last Friday, Germany announced that it would intervene on behalf of Israel as a third party in the case – effectively telling the ICJ that it objects to the interpretation of the genocide convention, and how it is being applied to Israel.
This development is not surprising, Zakharova said on Sunday, telling the media that it “comes against the backdrop of the unconditional support that Berlin always provides Israel, regardless of consequences.”
“This line of the German authorities has long and firmly occupied an important place among the unspoken dogmas of the ‘rules-based order’ defined by Washington,” she added.
Zakharova also claimed Berlin was trying to position itself as an “expert” on issues regarding the mass extermination of an ethnic group. “What to do with the crimes against humanity committed by Germany against other peoples and nationalities during the Second World War?” she asked.
“History knows many examples when criminals who committed serious offenses took the path of correction using their knowledge of illegal experience, they helped prevent similar atrocities,” Zakharova added. “But this was always possible only in the presence of active repentance and unconditional recognition of one’s own guilt without the slight hint of attempts to justify one’s own crimes, much less repeat them.”
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