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Updated 14 Jan, 2024 11:45pm

Hollywood actors back SA against Israel at ICJ by reading case’s excerpts

Television series ‘Game of Thrones’ actor Charles Dance was among the major actors who read excerpts from South Africa’s case filed at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing Genocide in Gaza.

Several actors read multiple points of the case against Israel over its actions as Western media was accused of censoring the ICJ proceedings at The Hague.

Dance’s his co-stars Carice van Houten, Liam Cunningham, and Lena Headey among others joined him in reading points from South Africa’s case in a series of videos supporting South Africa’s accusations against Israel.

More than 50 countries have supported South Africa’s case amid Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip and the killing of more than 20,000 Palestinians while displacing thousands of others.

South Africa filed the lawsuit at the ICJ in December 2023, and asked judges to impose emergency measures ordering Israel to immediately halt the offensive.

It said Israel’s aerial and ground offensive - which has laid waste to much of the narrow coastal enclave and killed more than 23,000 people according to Gaza health authorities - aimed to bring about “the destruction of the population” of Gaza.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Since Israeli forces launched their offensive, nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes at least once, causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Post-apartheid South Africa has long advocated the Palestinian cause, a relationship forged when the African National Congress’ struggle against white-minority rule was cheered on by Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation.

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