You may guess what the managing editors of National Review Online (NRO) usually do in their free time, but Judson Berger does visit felafel restaurants in the Philadelphia area, tastes and reports about their food quality. This particular felafel shop was co-owned and operated by an Israeli man and had been protested by pro-Palestinian demonstrators recently.

The dear editor says several things about felafels in general, but he fails, in particular, to mention that the proprietor of the said shop has been refusing to support a local boycott of those companies whose nickels and dimes end up as bullets and bombs raining on the top of Gazan babies. More than 10,000 of them so far have been killed by the Israeli Defense (!) Forces (IDF). That was the reason Philadelphia area students had been picketing around that felafel shop, and that was the reason the mighty National Review was so savagely criticizing the pro-Palestinian United States youth.

Why did the U.S. and some European media adopt this viciously anti-Palestinian attitude since Israel launched its latest war on Gaza? From the NRO to the German daily Bild, they attempt to belittle pro-Palestinian youth as "anti-Israel hooligans"; they try to teach them how to live in European countries ("Since the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, we are experiencing a new dimension of hatred in our country – against our values, democracy, and Germany. We must say 'NO!' to anti-Semitism and that we love life, not death ... we say 'please' and 'thank you'... we don't wear masks or veils and we don't marry off children ... And men can't have more than one wife..." – BILD-Manifesto).

I think the Western media has not taken seriously the 84-page "application" that South Africa filed with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Dec. 29, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

The reason they brush it aside could be twofold. First, they trust that Israel, a country created for the genocide victims by the genocide victims, cannot be convicted by any self-respecting international judges as a genocide perpetrator. Second, Israel's claim, in lieu of legal defense, that their operations as retaliation to Hamas' Oct. 7 raid in the Israel-occupied lands have been proportionate, limited and targeted only the Hamas members, has been parroted by all the reporters, columnists, TV anchors and panel moderators verbatim already.

The Western media began pumping the Israeli reports about how the Benjamin Netanyahu government has dismantled Hamas' "military framework" in northern Gaza while "having killed between 8,000-9,000 Hamas militants since Oct. 7." (Not the babies and women but Hamas militants!) When ICJ judges start deliberations, everything about the war and "technically unavoidable collateral damage" will be forgotten.

Israel's "unconvictability" in a genocide case has been voiced so strongly and so many times that it is almost a given universal fact: The ICJ cannot convict the one-and-only victim of the genocide (with upper case G), the Jewish people, especially when the "genocide" has become a "rhetorical crime" thanks to modern times! Anton Weiss-Wendt, a Norwegian academic and historian specializing in Jewish history from Brandeis University and who has worked at the Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities since 2006, blames it on the geopolitical discourse of the Cold War.

"Weiss-Wendt shows how, throughout the Cold War era, genocide morphed from a legal concept into a political discourse used in international propaganda battles. Through a unique comparative analysis of the U.S. and Soviet statements on genocide, Weiss-Wendt investigates why their moral posturing far exceeded their humanitarian action."

Other scholars find the nationalistic and tribal fights in Africa, each blaming every other neighbor for genocide, even for over-the-border altercations, causing the concept to lose its seriousness. Perhaps this is why, as its initial reaction to the South African application to the court, Netanyahu said Pretoria's accusations were a "blood libel." Israel accuses South Africa of "collaborating with a terrorist group" that seeks Israel's destruction, just as many countries accused neighboring countries during the post-colonial nationalization period in Africa.

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term and campaigned for the criminalization of genocide in international law, stated clearly that his purpose, in part, was to protect human cultural diversity: "The world represents only so much culture and intellectual vigor as are created by its component national groups. ... The destruction of a nation, therefore, results in the loss of its future contributions to the world."

Lessons from the Serbian leaders' trial

But the ICJ has shown, especially after the Serbian leaders' trial for their crimes during the Bosnian wars, that it should not be treated as a "contingent feature of the modern state."

If you take genocide as such, then you have to show what A. Dirk Moses, a leading genocide scholar who researches various aspects of genocide, says, that you have "unique or at least unusual features of the perpetrator society, such as the distinctive ideologies associated with social revolutions, for instance." No modern nation would have such items in its constitution, nor would it teach such racist ideologies in its schools. Even if it would, proving that a certain nation has acted because of its "political and ideological features" would be almost impossible. Moses, in his book titled "The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression," argues that our "troubling history" teaches us better ways that our "troubling law" makes it harder to see a genocide even when there is one looking into our eyes.

The ICJ has been looking into these features to decide if a nation is committing genocide or not:

– Killing members of the group;

– Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

– Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

– Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

– Forcibly transfer the children of the group to another group.

Israel's defense at the ICJ

Anybody other than the part-time culinary and managing editor of the NRO and Howard Feldman of the Jerusalem Post would easily see all these five features in the actions and narration of the Israeli officials and IDF's actions. Feldman's recent article titled "ICJ Gaza genocide case: South Africa set to discover the law of unintended consequences" also hints at Israel's defense at the ICJ.

Israel defends itself by falling into the logical fallacy called "Tu quoque" (Latin for "you too"). One defends oneself against an argument by engaging with the criticism of the argument by turning it back on the accuser: a criticism is answered with a criticism. South Africa accuses Israel of genocide, but the African National Congress (ANC) committed genocide itself! Siblings do that when chided by parents: "But mom! My sister does that, too!"

The Israeli defense team also resorted to the "he-did-it-first" defense about Hamas. "Hamas, in its charter, in its actions, and its words vows to kill every Jew in the region – literally the definition of genocide .... Hamas has publicly stated that it will do it.

"Again and again and again ... is still holding hostages ... Hamas mass raped, tortured, and kidnapped women ... etc."

Even if the judges of the ICJ find this defense credible, they would probably say what a responsible parent would say to that child: She might have! But it is not an excuse for your actions summarized in the five items above.

There is such a thing as "collective punishment," and Israel has been doing it for the last three months. Israel's army proved that it could implement surgical strikes as it did in its operation targeting Naim Qassem, who is the second-in-command of Hezbollah with the title of deputy secretary-general, in the middle of a busy Lebanese neighborhood without harming any civilians during the operation.