False claim UN court found Israel violated genocide convention | Fact check

Andre Byik, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: International Court of Justice found Israel violated genocide convention

A Jan. 26 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a judge appearing to speak into a microphone.

"The International Court of Justice finds ISRAEL has committed acts in VIOLATION of the GENOCIDE CONVENTION!" reads the caption on the image, which is a screenshot of a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The Instagram post was liked more than 100 times in four days. The original X post was reposted more than 50,000 times.

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Our rating: False

The International Court of Justice did not find Israel violated the 1948 Genocide Convention. Instead, it found South Africa's claims that Israel committed genocide were "plausible," which experts said is a low legal bar meant to preserve the rights of Palestinians so the court can rule on the case's merits at a later stage.

International court didn't rule on whether genocide occurred

In a case in front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, South Africa has alleged Israel's response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks violated the 1948 Genocide Convention – of which both countries are parties.

In a Jan. 26 decision as part of that case, the U.N's top court ordered Israel to implement a series of measures aimed at preventing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

But the order is not enforceable, and the legal case to determine whether Israel has actually committed genocide is expected to take years to determine, as USA TODAY reported.

The court's Jan. 26 decision was only in relation to "provisional measures" sought by South Africa, Rebecca Hamilton, a law professor at American University, Washington College of Law, said in an email.

Provisional measures – like an interim injunction in the U.S. – are meant to preserve, or "freeze," a legal situation brought before the court before any of the parties face irreparable harm. Without them, a case could become moot before it got to the merits, Hamilton said.

"To issue provisional measures in this situation, the party asking for the measures – in this case, South Africa – does not have to prove Israel is committing genocide," she said. "It instead has to convince the court that it is 'plausible' that rights protected under the genocide convention are implicated."

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Hamilton said the Jan. 26 decision means the majority of the 17-member court found it plausible that Israel has committed genocide.

Plausibility is a "vague standard meaning something like 'possible' but under any definition is a low bar," Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Cardozo Law School, said in an email. "The court’s interest at the provisional measures stage is in preserving the situation in order to permit the court to rule on the merits at a later stage."

Elise Baker, senior staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council, likewise said the court's decision ordered provisional measures and that "the rest of the case – the question of whether Israel has actually violated the genocide convention – will proceed over the coming months and years."

The Instagram user did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, world court did not find Israel committed genocide | Fact check

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