ICJ president shows Ken Roth lied, falsely claiming the court found “plausible case” for genocide

For the past three months, Ken Roth has incessantly been tweeting that the International Court of Justice found “a plausible case of genocide in Gaza.” Yet the President of the court who issued the ruling says the exact opposite: that the ICJ “didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible” nor “that there’s a plausible case of genocide.”

TRANSCRIPT

HardTalk: “Would it be fair to say, and I’m no lawyer and many people watching and listening will not be lawyers, but would it be fair to say that the key point that you made your initial order and ruling upon was whether or not there was a plausible case that should be taken on by the court of genocide in the case of Israel’s actions in Gaza after October 7,
and you quite clearly decided that there was a plausible case? Is it right to say that’s at the heart of what you decided?”

Joan Donoghue, Former President of the International Court of Justice: “You know, I’m glad I have a chance to address that because the court’s test for deciding whether to impose measures uses the idea of plausibility, but the test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South Africa.

So the court decided that that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court.

It then looked at the facts as well, but it did not decide, and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media, it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.

It did emphasize in the order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide.

But the shorthand that often appears, which is that there’s a plausible case of genocide, isn’t what the court decided.”

UN Watch