Kicking off Israel’s defense at the International Court of Justice, Dr Tal Becker said that South Africa has presented “a profoundly distorted factual and legal picture. The entirety of its case hinges on a deliberately curated, decontextualised and manipulative description of the reality of current hostilities,” Haaretz reports.

He described Hamas’ Oct 7 offensive as “wholesale massacre, mutilation, rape, and abduction”, and said, “if there were acts of genocide, they have been perpetrated against Israel.”