After four days of continued killings in Gaza, following the International Court of Justice’s Jan. 26 order to Israel to stop the killings, on the fifth day, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor announced to a Jan. 31 press conference: “I can’t be dishonest. I believe the rulings of the court have been ignored. Hundreds of people have been killed in the last three or four days. And clearly, Israel believes it has license to do as it wishes.” She warned of the dangers of the world looking the other way, reminding one and all of the similar inaction that resulted in the horrific level of fatalities in Rwanda in 1994. She declared that Pretoria would “look at proposing other measures to the global community” to intervene.
Her press conference occurred following an official statement that she presented, at the press briefing, which among other issues, addressed “The case before the ICJ regarding Israel’s genocide in the war on Gaza.”
“Oxfam’s figures indicate that the average daily killing of Palestinians by the Israeli military since 7 October 2023, exceeds the daily death toll of any major conflict in recent years. The deaths of children are almost incomparable both in terms of actual numbers killed and the rate at which children have been killed. More journalists have been killed in Gaza in the last 100 days than were killed during World War II and the Vietnam War….
