South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is crucial. Future wars need legal sanctions

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Last week’s hearings on South Africa’s densely-argued 84-page application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), charging Israel with genocide in Gaza, will likely prove one of the most consequential documents of our times. Genocides are made not just of will and organised action but also little acts of individual savagery. This happened on 11 August 1942: A young boy, who was just brought on a transport into the Nazi German death camp at Belzec in Poland, cheerfully asked if anyone had succeeded in escaping. “He was stripped naked and hung upside down from the gallows—he hung there for three...