There could be no better applicant for these proceedings than this former apartheid and colonised state and one against whom Israeli accusations of libel and anti-Semitism are less likely to stick.
While some argue that it is a matter of shame that no Arab or Muslim state lodged the case, leaving the task to South Africa, I maintain that it is exactly this — that a non-Arab, non-Muslim nation and one which has overcome settler colonialism has brought this case — is what makes it so compelling.
Israel was a military ally of South Africa’s apartheid regime under some of the worst years of white rule. It even offered to sell nuclear weapons to the apartheid regime.
The head of South Africa’s legal team, John Dugard, was UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine in the 2000s and notably said: “I’m a South African who lived through apartheid and I have no hesitation in saying that Israel’s crimes are infinitely worse than those committed by the apartheid regime of South Africa.”
posted by f.sheikh