ISMAIL LAGARDIEN: ICJ ruling has stirred divisions and awakened Germany’s search for worthiness

The responses to last week’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on SA’s genocide case against Israel highlighted, once again, the cold and hard divisions between contending ideological perspectives that continue to dominate world affairs. These divisions are also apparent in responses to related events, notably the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea maritime passageway.

Of course, responses are heavily dependent on where one stands. Some may think the Israeli war and destruction of Gaza is necessary, and that it is an existential battle for the Israeli state. Others may ask “at what cost” the creation and expansion of the Israeli state comes, when Palestinians themselves face an existential threat. All of this in a world where two things can be true at the same time.

Unsurprisingly, the starkest element of the divide overlaps with existing ideological positions about the primacy of economic interests vis a vis human rights issues. SA’s submission to the ICJ was based on concerns about human rights and morality in international affairs at a time when public policymakers cling to the belief that “economic interests” should be front and centre of diplomacy and foreign affairs.

And then, almost on cue, China is thrown into the mix. The New York Times wrote last week that China should do something (essentially what Washington expects) if it wants to be taken seriously: “The deteriorating security situation in the Middle East shows how ineffectual Mr Xi’s promotion of peace and tranquility has been, and it’s coming back to bite China.”

This suggests that unless China takes the path the Europeans have chosen — complete support for the war on Gaza, huge arms sales to Israel and dropping bombs on the Houthis — they are not to be taken seriously. We’re back then to the divides of the last century, between economics and politics (with economics necessarily more important than politics), and conflict over competing nationalisms (Israeli and Palestinian).

Also, given Germany’s extreme nationalist efforts in the 1930s and the war that ensued, it is unsurprising that Germany, now battling with its conscience, should come out on the side of the Israelis. This is what the New York Times described more than two decades ago as “the piety of war guilt”, and Germany’s battle with “the memories of the past” when a spat broke out in 1998 over construction of a new Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Germany’s battles with its conscience have been drawn into the conflict on the side of the Israelis, presumably as a way to repay a “debt” for the carnage of  World War 2.

This “guilt” has been part of Germany consciousness and memory. When German writer Thomas Mann visited Oxford University in May 1924 many senior academics refused to meet him because they did not think he displayed the “sense of guilt” that was felt to be “the proper attitude of all worthy Germans”. Perhaps in siding with Israel the Germans are still searching for worthiness.

Nonetheless, the clearest of the divisions over the ICJ statement, and the war in general, are the position that contends that Israel can and should continue its war, and a broad position calling for a ceasefire. A second divide is the perennial horror show that pits “the economy” against “the people”, summed up by a meme that has done the rounds on social media.

It goes something like this: the Israeli army has killed more than 22,000 people and the Europeans have not intervened, but they rapidly sent fighter planes and dropped bombs on Yemen for blocking maritime trade routes, never mind that the Houthis, by the time the meme had grown wings, had “not killed a single person”. The Houthis made the mistake of interrupting the flow of goods.

There have been no interventions by the Europeans to prevent any possible human rights violations, a possible genocide, ethnic cleansing and erasure of Palestinians. Instead, according to the New York Times, the world has to secure the Red Sea “open maritime trading system” as “a public good”. This is a clear case of putting profits before people.

In Newsweek, Khaled El Gindy of the Middle East Programme on Palestine & Palestinian-Israeli Affairs in Washington, wrote (in October 2023), that “the US and European powers have resisted formal calls for a ceasefire or even expressions of concern for Palestinian civilians, effectively giving Israel a green light to conduct its military operation as it sees fit”. When he wrote that, El Gindy recorded that only 1,799 Palestinians had been killed.

It is difficult to believe that the Israelis will not prevail, though, never mind the ICJ statement and the momentous historic significance of SA’s submission. It is even more difficult to imagine that Europe, the Germans in particular, will abandon the Israelis and their savage wars of peace. The best thing about the ICJ rulings is that a country from the Global South has stood up and shown leadership in securing peace and justice in an arena kept intact by Europeans.

• Lagardien, an external examiner at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.