Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government’s support for the International Court of Justice as a key institution of international law does not mean it backs the premise of the genocide claim brought by South Africa against Israel.
The Liberal government has faced days of questions about where Canada stands on South Africa’s case before the top United Nations court.
“Canada has long been a tremendous supporter of the international rules-based order and processes and structures that have been put in place over the past decades to be able to actually ensure that international law is respected and enforced,” Trudeau told a press conference Friday in Guelph, Ont.
“And the ICJ, International Court of Justice, is a key part of that. Our wholehearted support of the ICJ and its processes does not mean we support the premise of the case brought forward by South Africa.”
In a statement released Friday afternoon, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly echoed Trudeau’s remarks and said Canada will watch the case before the ICJ very closely.
“Under the UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide requires the intention to destroy or partly destroy a group because of their nationality, ethnicity, race or religion. Meeting this high threshold requires compelling evidence,” said Joly.
“We must ensure that the procedural steps in this case are not used to foster antisemitism and targeting of Jewish neighbourhoods, businesses and individuals. At the same time, we will continue to stand against Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment.”
In the statement, Joly went on to say that Canada remains deeply concerned about the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and supports urgent international efforts to secure a sustainable ceasefire.
“This cannot be one-sided. Hamas must release all hostages, stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields and lay down its arms,” she said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that although Canada supports the International Court of Justice, that doesn’t necessarily mean it supports the premise of South Africa’s case against Israel.
South Africa launched proceedings against Israel at the ICJ in December accusing the Israeli government of perpetrating a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
South Africa accuses the Israeli government of engaging in “genocidal acts” against Gazans, including “killing them, causing them serious mental and bodily harm and deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group.”
Hamas carried out an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 200 people hostage. Israel declared war on Hamas in response, unleashing months of heavy air bombardments and a full-scale invasion of Gaza. The Hamas-run health authority says more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 58,000 Palestinians have been injured in Gaza since the start of the war.
The UN’s genocide convention codified in international law for the first time the crime of genocide; it became the first human rights treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. It was intended to signal the international community’s commitment to preventing a repeat of the atrocities of the Second World War, including the Holocaust.
Israel rejects South Africa’s allegations as “grossly distorted” and is calling on the ICJ judges to dismiss South Africa’s call for Israel to halt its military operation in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned South Africa’s allegations as “hypocrisy and lies” this week.
“Israel is accused of genocide while it is fighting against genocide,” said Netanyahu, citing Hamas’s stated intent to destroy Israel.
Hamas’s founding document, The Covenant of Islamic Resistance Movement, states that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
The 1988 document also explicitly rejects peace negotiations and processes to settle Jewish and Palestinian land claims. “There is no solution to the Palestinian question except through Jihad,” the document states.
In November, Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, reportedly said in an interview with a Lebanese TV channel that Hamas aims to repeat the Oct. 7 attack many times in an effort to annihilate Israel.
Hamas is a listed terrorist organization in Canada.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre dismissed South Africa’s genocide allegations against Israel, calling them a shameless and dishonest attack on Jewish people and the Jewish state.
“I find it incredible these countries have not accused Hamas of genocide when it’s in Hamas’s charter that they want to commit genocide against Israel. We don’t even need to accuse Hamas because they admit they are a genocidal enterprise. They admit that their October 7 attacks were motivated by genocidal aims,” Poilievre told reporters Friday at a press conference in Winnipeg.
“If we want to go after genocide targeting Muslims, why are they not bringing a case against China for its persecution of the Uyghur Muslims who are in concentration camps in that country? Why are they not going after [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad, who has been carrying out a genocide against Sunni Muslims in that country?”
It could be years before the ICJ issues a final ruling on the genocide claim.