White Home nationwide safety spokesman John Kirby dismissed accusations by South Africa that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza on Wednesday, calling such claims “meritless, counterproductive, and utterly with out foundation in truth in anyway.”
Final week, South Africa filed a declare on the United Nations Worldwide Court docket of Justice accusing Israel of violating the 1948 Conference on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, to which Israel is a signatory.
South Africa claimed, falsely, that Israel is committing “the indiscriminate use of drive and forcible elimination of inhabitants” in Gaza (Israeli assaults are focused at Hamas and no civilians have been forcibly eliminated). Israel known as the declare a “despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the Court docket.”
In a press release to the Israeli Cupboard final week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed South Africa’s declare, saying:
I want to say a phrase about South Africa’s mendacious pontificating to the impact that Israel ‘is perpetrating genocide.’ No, South Africa, it’s not we who’ve come to perpetrate genocide, it’s Hamas. It could homicide all of us if it may. In distinction, the IDF is performing as morally as attainable; it’s doing all the things to keep away from harming civilians whereas Hamas is doing all the things to hurt them and is utilizing them as human shields.
I ask: The place have been you, South Africa, and the remainder of those that are preaching at us, when hundreds of thousands have been murdered and uprooted from their houses in Syria, Yemen and different areas. You weren’t there as a result of all the things you might be doing now could be solely sizzling air, lies and vainness. We’ll proceed our defensive conflict, the justice and morality of which is with out peer.
The South African authorities backs the Palestinians within the conflict, and the ruling African Nationwide Congress get together met with Hamas.
South Africa has aligned itself with a collection of rogue nations, together with Russia. Critics of its international coverage, each inside South Africa and overseas, have warned that it’s risking its relations with the USA, and should jeopardize efforts to reauthorize the Africa Progress and Alternative Act (AGOA), a commerce settlement from which South Africa advantages, when it expires subsequent yr.
Journalists on the White Home briefing, the primary of the yr, centered their inquiries to Kirby on the difficulty of the conflict within the Center East. Many gave the impression to be making the case in opposition to Israel, and the USA, as in a single weird alternate with a reporter who tried guilty the Biden administration for “escalation” within the Purple Sea:
The White Home / YouTube
The Houthi rebels from Iran have been attacking business delivery by way of the Bab-el-Mandeb; the Biden administration has tried to discourage assaults however has not attacked the Houthis immediately.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Massive at Breitbart Information and the host of Breitbart Information Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He’s the creator of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and be a part of it),” now up to date with a brand new foreword. He’s additionally the creator of the current e-book, Neither Free nor Truthful: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He’s a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Comply with him on Twitter at @joelpollak.