 South Africa has approached the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocidal acts. What is this case about? Indonesia is said to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in 2024 and these will be historic in many ways. Who are the contenders and what is at stake? This is the Daily Debrief. These are the stories for the day and this is also the final episode for the year. So if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. South Africa has filed a case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocidal acts. The case filed by South Africa states that Israel's actions are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group. We go to Abdul for more details on this case. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. A very significant case. Could you first maybe take us through what exactly are the arguments South Africa is presenting, what is in that document, what are the details, what are the claims and what are the accusations against Israel? Mr. Roshan, South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide in a case filed in the International Court of Justice or the World Court as it is known because it is affiliated to United Nations and it basically asks it to adjudicate on that. It means once the court sits on it, and if it decides that what is happening inside Gaza for last three months, almost three months, is genocide or not. If it rules that way, that it is a genocide, it would invite international sanctions against Israel and also would invite actions against the Israeli leadership. The case is basically based on the facts that more than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel's indiscriminate bombing and ground offensive since October 7. And thousands of others, around 55,000 to 56,000 Palestinians have been wounded. Most of these Palestinians which are killed and wounded are civilians, mostly children and women. And in basically questions, the nature of the overall killing questions, the Israeli claim that it is fighting against Hamas and acting in its self-defense. Well, the international law does not recognize Israel's right to self-defense anyway because it is an occupying power. So, that is one thing. The second thing, of course, is it is based on the observations made by different UN experts. In fact, a set of UN experts on November 16 basically opined that what Israel is doing inside occupied Palestinian territory, that is Gaza, amounts to genocide. A second, a third thing, of course, is related to the statements. You can say that is an evidence to prove that what Israel is doing is basically an act of genocide because as per the international law, an act of genocide is intended, act to eliminate a certain set of people, nation, or ethnic group. And if you see various Israeli leadership from October 7 onwards have given statements in which they have clearly stated that what they are doing is not against one group or one set of people, one group or one organization, but basically against the entire Palestinian population in Gaza. Israeli defense minister has called it, had called Palestinians animal. Then Israeli prime minister has basically stated in different words, which basically means that it wants to expel the entire Palestinian population out of the Gaza Strip and different other leadership from Israel have basically said that they want to eliminate all the Palestinians and in fact they have stated that they are carrying out collective punishment. And if you see the way Israeli actions have been taken out and as it is reported in different media, it clearly establishes that what Israel is doing is some kind of collective punishment against Palestinians. And if it is a collective punishment, it is with the intention of kind of throwing Palestinians out of Gaza, of course that would amount to genocide. So basically collecting all these facts and collecting the statements made by different experts in international media in last three months, South Africa has moved to in ICJ asking it to take a final call. Right, and South Africa has been one of those countries which from the very beginning has been taking a very powerful stand against Israel's actions since October itself. Could you maybe also take us to some of that? Well Prashant, South Africa's move comes after a considerable amount of time has lapsed since the war began and since various experts, various human-ed groups, some of the countries repeatedly reminded the International Criminal Court of war crimes which Israel has been committing inside Gaza. They have also basically raised the issue of violation of different international law, humanitarian law by Israelis, by targeting civilians, using prohibited substances, chemical weapons and against the Palestinian people, targeting health staff, targeting aid workers, targeting hospitals and so on and so forth. So there has been different complaints and different notices given to the International Criminal Court in the last three months by different organizations raising the issue of repeated violation of international law and repeated war crimes committed by Israel. And but ICC in particular has failed to take note of it despite the fact that the Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan visited Gaza and despite the fact that he made statements about possible war crimes, ICC has not taken the stand. So South Africa's move does not come without any context. South Africa, apart from this, has also has a history, long history of kind of taking the Palestinian issue seriously and raising it on international fora. It was one of the first countries which recognized the Israel's discriminatory policies against Palestinians, called it apartheid, of course, coming from its own experience of experiencing apartheid for decades, saying that there is a discriminatory policy, set of policies which is followed by the Israeli occupation inside the occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza, where there is one set of rules for illegal Israeli settlers and another set of rules for the Palestinians for the same kind of crimes or same kind of behavior or the violations of laws and so on and so forth. That is one, of course. Apart from that, South Africa has also has been very consistent in raising the issue of occupation and demanding a two-state solution. In fact, ever since the war broke out on October 7, South Africa has basically been demanding ceasefire, has been calling for international action against Israeli war crimes. And in fact, the South African legislature passed a resolution demanding expulsion and basically expelling the Israeli ambassador from the country, saying that there cannot be normal diplomatic relations with Israel until there is a succession of hostility in Gaza. So the South Africa's action basically has a solid historical background and it basically emerges from its own colonial experiences, its own decades of experience of apartheid and occupation. Thank you so much, Abdul, for talking to us. Presidential parliamentary elections will be held in Indonesia on February 14. incumbent President Joko Widodo, aka Joko Vi, cannot contest as he has completed two terms. But the political permutations and combinations are quite complex and old foes have turned friends and vice versa. We go to Anish for the details. Anish, thank you so much for joining us. So elections, very significant elections in Indonesia. A lot of power brokers, of course, trying to influence the election. So let's maybe first give us a layout, so to speak. What is the political situation like? Who are the key contenders in this election? So one of the things that we need to understand of those who are not very privy to the news in Indonesia very regularly, it is that this current election is going to be very interesting primarily because of how coalitions have been devolved over the past year or so. What is interesting is that one of the leading contenders who is seen as a frontrunner right now, which is Prabowo Suvianto, is being supported by the current incumbent President Joko Widodo. Now, interesting thing is that in the past two presidential elections, Joko Vi and Prabowo were contenders. Very stiff contenders. In fact, in both the election results were contested by Prabowo as having been manipulated or whatever by Joko Widodo and his party at the time, which was the PDIP led by Sukarno's daughter, Megavati Sukarno Kutri. And this reworking of an alliance is something that has been key in the current set of elections. So we have three major candidates right now. Obviously, we have spoken about Prabowo. The PDIP has brought out Ganja, who has been a long time leader, but who is seen as the more moderate figure among the three candidates. And then we have Aniz Beswaden, who is leading a sort of a different set of opposition parties. Well, not really opposition parties because of how things work in Indonesia because pretty much everybody other than two parties are in the pro-government coalition and the parliament. But there is a lot of smaller national parties who have significant clout who have come together to support Aniz's presidential candidacy. Now, in all of these, it is going to be very simplistic to say this candidate is more right wing or this candidate is more left wing, because pretty much the kind of coalition that has been stitched up by each of the three is very clearly opportunistic. We are seeing Islamist parties in pretty much all of them. And we are seeing the more supposedly moderate ones taking up alliances and even stand at this point in time during obviously the debates and the election campaigns, very opportunistic stand on a whole host of issues. And that is something that is quite clearly visible with the recent anti-Rohindian campaigns that have been led in the outside. And that is something that the opposition is trying to take more a political mileage out of. Other than that, we are seeing actual bread and butter issues being almost nearly sidelined at this current point in time. The omnibus bill, which has been the biggest political, which has actually created the biggest political movement, nearly an uprising of workers across Indonesia in recent times, is something that is no longer a matter that has been discussed all three of them because all the parties involved have supported the omnibus bill, have supported, you know, whittling down labor laws and labor protections, whittling down environmental protection. And they do not want to talk about something that they can be implicated in, obviously. So they have very clearly put that out of the debate as well. And that has been supported by much of the mainstream media. So we are looking at a very compromised political landscape that is something that Indonesia hasn't seen in a while right now, even though we have seen, like, obviously, the progressives very strong left party cannot really exist in Indonesia because of the anti-communist laws. But at the same time, there has been at the very least certain issues that were quite significant in previous set of elections, which included at times, labor laws about national protection of national resources, about protection or protection for, you know, small workers from all these free trade agreements that exist, and so on. And so all of these factors do not really come in and figure in the debates right now. So this is the kind of situation that we're looking at. So February would be a significant issue. But the other thing that we can see is that the rework of the political alliances would mean that we might see a runoff. And that is where the real debate would happen in the coming months. Anish, thank you so much for that analysis. That's all we have in this final episode of 2023 for this week, as well as for the year 2023. We'll be back in 2024 with fresh stories of struggles across the world of people's movements, of resistance, of geopolitical developments, and of the fight against imperialism. So watch out for all of that next year. Also, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button.