 Today is a sad day for the state of Israel, and like many Jewish Israelis, I find myself just a little bit under the weather as a result. Today on January 12th, 2024, for the first time in its history, Israel finds itself before the International Court of Justice in the Hague forced to fend off spurious allegations of genocide brought by none other than South Africa. Today Israel finds itself forced to field senior legal representatives to fend off a spurious and vexatious lawsuit before nothing better than a thinly veiled kangaroo court. South Africa has been allowed to show footage that was literally shot on a smartphone in a battlefield. Israel has been forbidden from using Hamas body camp footage as evidence. That's body camp footage of Hamas terrorists attempting to perpetrate an actual act of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Israel, intended to rid what they call Palestine of each and every Jew who stood in their way. Had Hamas not been stopped from butchering, murdering, beheading more than 1200 Israeli civilians, they would surely have continued until every Israeli civilian, including me, That was an actual attempt at genocide and ethnic cleansing. But that's not the case that's being heard in the ICJ today. Rather, Israel is being accused of genocide for pursuing a war of self-defense, leveled against Hamas. This is nothing more than a matrix-like subversion of reality, an upside downing of good versus evil, of democracy versus terrorism. The lawsuit that South Africa is bringing before the ICJ is a malicious attempt to isolate and punish the state of Israel for pursuing an entirely legitimate war against an Islamist terrorist entity sworn in its destruction. If allowed to do so, Hamas won't stop at Israel. Israel is simply the closest target. Hamas wants to subject every Western democracy to its totalitarian version of Islamic jihadism. Not only does Israel find itself forced to defend itself against a completely vexatious allegation of genocide, it finds itself having to do so against South Africa, a country with a dismal record of human rights abuses. But none of this matters in the kangaroo court in the Hague. All that matters is that Israel is found guilty. Today I'm reminded of the fact that the thin veneer of respectability that the ICJ and much of the international community enjoys is really only that. A thin veneer of legitimacy belying a very rotten core. Today I'm reminded of the fact that in many respects the world really hasn't come so far since the Dreyfus Affair. As Alan Dershowitz has frequently remarked, Israel is the Jew of the international community. It seems that we always will be. And as the Jew among the world's nations were held to unreasonable and frankly impossible standards of conduct, especially when we're conducting wars. We're prosecuted for having the very temerity to attempt to defend ourselves against those seeking our destruction, while other armed forces pursuing their enemies in legitimate acts of warfare go completely unchallenged. Ultimately, we know that whatever we say or do, it's never going to be enough for those who would only truly be satisfied if we were utterly destroyed, God forbid. Like most Israelis, I support my country's military operation in Gaza. I think that Israel must destroy Hamas before they destroy us. I want to see a thriving Israel surviving in the Middle East. I also agree that in pursuing this war, Israel must be expected to do absolutely everything it's power to minimize death among the civilian population. But a war that is taking over three months to pursue is simply and patently not an act of genocide. A war in which Israel drops leaflets, set up safe evacuation corridors and forewarns residents of strikes is patently not an attempt to commit an act of genocide or ethnic cleansing against the innocent population in that territory. To call this a genocide is nothing less than an absolute perversion of the term. It's also an insult to the millions of people around the world who have lost their lives and continue to lose their lives against actual acts of genocide. To take smartphone footage of a few Israeli soldiers in the battlefield and hold that before the world's highest court as supposed evidence of intent on the part of the entire Israeli military to conduct a genocide makes an absolute mockery of the process of justice and the value of true evidence. I wish the Israeli legal team strength, courage and perseverance in their vital mission to fend off these spurious, ridiculous charges. Any ruling against Israel at the ICJ would be nothing less than a legal victory for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and every entity seeking to destroy the West. Signing off from Irani, Jerusalem.