SOUTH Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the latter’s military operation in Gaza, which South Africa calls acts of genocide. The excessive bombing campaign and wilful destruction of property, life and limb is hardly in dispute. Israel calls it legitimate acts of self-defence, following Hamas’s murderous incursion from Gaza on Israeli terrain on 7 October 2023. Hamas, shorthand for the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organisation founded in 1987. It has governed the Gaza Strip of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories since 2007. ANTHONI VAN NIEUWKERK, Professor of International and…