Searching for information on the International Court of Justice hearings yielded an Israel-sponsored ad calling the ongoing genocide hearing against it “meaningless.”
Israel is defending itself against allegations that its siege of Gaza is a genocide with Google search ads, in what appears to be a world first.
A Google search for the ongoing hearing against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) yielded an ad calling South Africa’s genocide case against it “meaningless” and linking to an Israeli government website for some users on Thursday. Motherboard viewed the ad, which appears above news coverage of the hearing being held in the Hague in the Netherlands. Google told Motherboard it reviewed the ad against its policies and did not take any action.
The ad was first noted on X when a user posted a screenshot of their Google search for “icj” which yielded a sponsored ad titled “Israel response to Hague ICJ” above the Google information panel for the ICJ. The ad includes subheadings of “October 7th: The Invasion” and “The North Border,” as well as survivor testimonies and resources.
Motherboard was not able to replicate the search using only the term “ICJ,” but was able to find the ad when searching “ICJ Israel.” The ad’s descriptive text reads in full, “SA’s claim is meaningless—the malicious blood libel advanced by South Africa seeks to slander the State of israel. South Africa’s claim lacks any factual or legal basis and renders meaningless.”
The ad links to the Israeli government website govextra.gov.il. The page lists information about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack which killed 1,200 Israelis, and a video claims that “Israel is doing everything in its power to prevent harm to innocent civilians in Gaza and is acting according to international humanitarian law.”
What ifs don’t add anything to the argument.
Anyway, here’s to hoping other nations will do the right thing when the ICJ ruling is passed and hold all the financial supporters of genocide against Palestinians to account.
They won’t, we have to be realistic here. While I want the opposite to be true. America does whatever it wants when it comes to international law. It’s very much ‘rules for thee but not for me’ with the states.
Ruling is against Israel, maybe we can hope to see the U.S mentioned as a co-conspirator but am not keeping my hopes up.
That wont change anything even if they are. Their geopolitical iterest in the middle east are at bay, they just won’t care and will continue to support Izrael anyway. That’s what they always do.
Hehe. Not if Hesbolla and the Houthis have anything to say on the matter.
South Yemen’s blockade is certainly hurting Israel and making it way harder for the US to supply Israel while Hesbolla’s strikes are successfuly spliting Israel on 2 fronts, all of that is very good, and yes it is effective, but they’re not gods, they can only do so much, Ansar Allah can only blockade the red sea, they can’t do anything about the supplies comming from the Mediteraneean, and Hesbolla, while very competent, must keep in mind that the IDF despite all the paper-tiger behavior they showed are still a well equiped modern military supplied by the world’s first military power, they can’t act recklessly and they know that, which is why they are not going all out against Israel (yet).
However, you are correct in saying that they are reliable support that Hammas can count on.
Give them some time, and with the current unraveling on US influence, they will win against Israel eventually.
As soon an the US can’t support them anymore, Israel will be done for, they will fall like Saigon when the US finally left Vietnam.
They wont.
The fundamental rule of economic sanctions is: never assume you wont be sanctioned back. Nations who attempt to sanctions Israel’s economic backers will be sanctioned back by those very economic backers, among which is the US, a country who hold a massive deals of control over the global economy through the US dollar, the curency which is used for the majority of international trade and which every countries hold assets and reserves in. Not to mention the fact that despite the massive ongoing deindustrialization the US is still the world’s second major exporter and importer. Almost any economy cut from them would imediatly enter a massive economic ressetion. You can’t just sanction coutries and expect everythong to be hunky-dory ICJ rulling or not.
You speak as if openly supporting the genocide of a race is an acceptable norm. It has never been. Not in modern times at least.
And there are many ways for member states to enforce the ICJ’s decision on ISRAEL (IDK why I have to keep repeating myself on this single point) and the US if they get mentioned as well, economic sanctions are just one of them.
What ways then?
Dump the dollar. Dump US Treasury bond holdings. Exclude the U.S from international activities, sports etc. First two if applied with full effect from “non-allied” countries, the effects on the US economy would be devastating.
I see your point.
This is correct, these mesures would indeed be tremendously effectives, the problem is that it’s easyer said than done, and it’s already happening even without ICJ rulling anyway.
The BRICS block is working to move away from using US dollar as we speak, they have started to progressively replace the US dollar by local currencies in trades between themselves and are trying to create an international currency for international trade.
But compleating those projects will take a few years at least, you don’t move half the world’s economy in one day.
Until then, a lot of countries will have no choice but to continue using the dollar for international trade, at least partially, not to mention Europe, Japan, South Korea and the others former British colonies who will undoubtedly continue to use US dollar to support the US.
But even once the dollar stop being the international unit of acount, I doubt the US will stop supporting Israel (if Israel is still there by then, let’s hope it’s not), as I said Israel perfoms the US’s budding in the Middle East, this is why they support Israel so much, the US has demonstrated during it’s recent history that its typical reaction to a competitor appearing was to push it lower than they have sunk rather than pull themself higher and Israel is a tool to do this to Arab countries, ensuring that the huge oil reserves of the region keep flowing to US company and don’t feed potential Arab competitors, among other things.
In fact, I wonder if that wouldn’t make their support of Israel more direct and agressive, it would be very US-like to, as the empire start unraveling, keep clawing on every bit of international influence and every way they extract wealth from the 3rd world to slow down ever so slightly they collapse.
My point is, wait for the US egemony to unravel some more and trust Hammas, Hesbolla and Ansar Allah to deal with Israel, the end of the genocide will come from that, not from the ICJ rulling.