Searching for information on the International Court of Justice hearings yielded an Israel-sponsored ad calling the ongoing genocide hearing against it “meaningless.”


Israel is defending itself against allegations that its siege of Gaza is a genocide with Google search ads, in what appears to be a world first.

A Google search for the ongoing hearing against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) yielded an ad calling South Africa’s genocide case against it “meaningless” and linking to an Israeli government website for some users on Thursday. Motherboard viewed the ad, which appears above news coverage of the hearing being held in the Hague in the Netherlands. Google told Motherboard it reviewed the ad against its policies and did not take any action.

The ad was first noted on X when a user posted a screenshot of their Google search for “icj” which yielded a sponsored ad titled “Israel response to Hague ICJ” above the Google information panel for the ICJ. The ad includes subheadings of “October 7th: The Invasion” and “The North Border,” as well as survivor testimonies and resources.

Motherboard was not able to replicate the search using only the term “ICJ,” but was able to find the ad when searching “ICJ Israel.” The ad’s descriptive text reads in full, “SA’s claim is meaningless—the malicious blood libel advanced by South Africa seeks to slander the State of israel. South Africa’s claim lacks any factual or legal basis and renders meaningless.”

The ad links to the Israeli government website govextra.gov.il. The page lists information about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack which killed 1,200 Israelis, and a video claims that “Israel is doing everything in its power to prevent harm to innocent civilians in Gaza and is acting according to international humanitarian law.”

read more: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7b48q/israel-defends-itself-against-hague-genocide-allegations-with-google-ads

  • intelshill@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Israel understands the first rule of international politics: you can do whatever you want so long as a global superpower has your back.

    • hottari@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      If the ICJ judges determine that Palestine is a victim of genocide (indeed), the same so-called global superpower, as one of the ratified members, is bound to stop Israel from committing further genocide on Palestinian people.

            • hottari@lemmy.ml
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              6 months ago
              1. The US cannot purport to defy an ICJ ruling meant for Israel.
              2. The US cannot stop the other ratified nations from carrying out their sworn obligation to stop genocide under the international genocide convention.
              • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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                6 months ago
                1. The US cannot stop the other ratified nations from carrying out their sworn obligation to stop genocide under the international genocide convention.

                What you want here is a normative statement , not a descriptive one. In other words, yes the US can definitely prevent others from intervening against Israel. Whether they should is another matter.

              • ExotiqueMatter
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                6 months ago

                How do they keep not respecting ICJ rullings against them and their allies then? Like, bruh. This shit is not magic. Without a structure that would be able to physicaly force the US if and all of it’s intricate global military alliance to respect the rulling if nessessary, which there are none of currently, the rullings are just empty words which they can and will ignore. It’s like expecting that convicted criminals will walk from the courtroom to the prison on their own without any escort being needed to make sure they respect their sentence.

                • hottari@lemmy.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  Unless Israel forces itself to become a recognized colony of the US, you don’t have a case here. IDK why you guys insist on arguing with me about some of the most basic shit. It’s almost like you support genocide but are too afraid to come out and say it.

                  • ExotiqueMatter
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                    6 months ago

                    Unless Israel forces itself to become a recognized colony of the US, you don’t have a case here.

                    How so? Israel doesn’t have to be a “recognized colony” or whatever for this to be about US interest in the region. There is a reason why the US is Israel’s largest foreign arms supplier and Israel is one of the coutries who buy the most american weapons in the world.

                    Israel is the only coutry in the middle east who is willing to do the US’s bidding there without questions, if it disapear, all the US will have left will be a shaky alliance with Saudi Arabia and a fragile ocupation in Iraq, and with Iran just next door, without Israel those too will be gone sooner rather than later as the middle eastern country realize that now that the US can’t do shit to them anymore they can freely make an allience that makes much more sense for their geopolitical interests with Iran.

                    And without any influance there the US has no way of stealing middle eastern oil or to at least presure middle eastern countries to sell their oil in dollar and severe concurence to american oil company will soon apear which the US doesn’t want.

                    IDK why you guys insist on arguing with me about some of the most basic shit. It’s almost like you support genocide but are too afraid to come out and say it.

                    Saying that an ICJ rulling wont stop the US from doing whatever they want isn’t supporting genocide, it’s being realistic and realizing that the US wont stop pursuing their interests just because an organization with “international” in it’s name scolded them.

                    OF COURSE it would be good if that made the US stop, but we are analysing a real life geopolitical situation, not power-of-friendship shonen where the good guy convince the bad guy that it’s not very nice to not be nice with a speach.

                    How would the ICJ rulling stop the US?

                    The ICJ DO NOT have the power to enforce it’s rullings, especialy not on the US.

                    Not to mention, like everyone here keep showing you, all of the instences where did not respect an ICJ rulling in the past.

                    They already did it and nothing happened, there is no reasons to think it would be any different this time.

            • hottari@lemmy.ml
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              6 months ago

              I think you are confusing the ICC with ICJ. Those are 2 different institutions.

                • hottari@lemmy.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  What ifs don’t add anything to the argument.

                  Anyway, here’s to hoping other nations will do the right thing when the ICJ ruling is passed and hold all the financial supporters of genocide against Palestinians to account.

                  • assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world
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                    They won’t, we have to be realistic here. While I want the opposite to be true. America does whatever it wants when it comes to international law. It’s very much ‘rules for thee but not for me’ with the states.

                  • ExotiqueMatter
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                    Anyway, here’s to hoping other nations will do the right thing when the ICJ ruling is passed and hold all the financial supporters of genocide against Palestinians to account.

                    1. They wont.

                    2. The fundamental rule of economic sanctions is: never assume you wont be sanctioned back. Nations who attempt to sanctions Israel’s economic backers will be sanctioned back by those very economic backers, among which is the US, a country who hold a massive deals of control over the global economy through the US dollar, the curency which is used for the majority of international trade and which every countries hold assets and reserves in. Not to mention the fact that despite the massive ongoing deindustrialization the US is still the world’s second major exporter and importer. Almost any economy cut from them would imediatly enter a massive economic ressetion. You can’t just sanction coutries and expect everythong to be hunky-dory ICJ rulling or not.

          • freagle
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            6 months ago

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members’_Protection_Act

            You have some exciting learning to do! The above act, also known colloquially as the “Hague Invasion Act” gives the president power to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court”.

            So it’s not nonsense to suggest the US would rather invade the ICJ than recognize such a ruling.

            • hottari@lemmy.ml
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              Hold on there, the ICJ is not a country you can invade!

              And as I said earlier, ICC & ICJ are 2 different institutions.

              • freagle
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                6 months ago

                Do you think such technical arguments are relevant to the question of whether the USA will abide by an ICJ ruling?

                  • freagle
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                    6 months ago

                    They have no choice? Have you ever seen the US made to heel by anyone?

                  • ExotiqueMatter
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                    A lot of these countries are at least ally of the US if not pupets, don’t count on those to do anyting about it if the US decide that they don’t care what the ICJ says.

                    As for the coutries that aren’t, what they can do is very limited, they can place embargos and apply sanctions but that’s about it, they certainly won’t perform any military actions against the US even if they are in theory able to because they aren’t stupid and understand that a war with the US won’t end well for them even if they win.

                    Even without going that far, the actions that can be taken against the US are limited because since in the real world coutries aren’t closed off pocket universes and are rather part of the same world and all connected by economy, politics, history and geography in some ways, any actions taken by one country against an other will have consequances for the PERPETRATOR of those actions as well.

        • hottari@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          All the 153 nations, including the US, that have signed the convention on genocide.

          • Doods@infosec.pub
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            So you’re trying to tell me the governments of the west will honor their word when it’s against their interests? when did that ever happen?

            (The tldr is the last paragraph)

            Edit : yes, they might send “supplies” and tell Isreal that what it’s doing is “bad”, but that’s just talk, the real action is being committed against the only ones who took actions, the (organization in Yemen).

            I don’t fully agree with that group, but they’re the only ones who took real action, unlike everyone else who just watched and told Isreal: “stop, please, it’s not good”.

            When Russia invaded Ukraine*, every “Civilized” nation took immediate action, cut trade, sent weapons and sent financial support, even though Ukraine originally belonged to the Russian entity, trying to reclaim it was seen as tearing the flesh of all that’s good and holy in this world.

            *: A European, white, non-islamic nation.

            But when it comes to Isreal, whom the US acknowledged as a sovereign state 5 minute after its conception, even though it’s based in land it has no right to exist in, by genocing a population** undeserving of being killed. And not only that, Isreal was supported fully by the US and the EU in its every move, not necessarily in the methods, but in the goal, Giving the Jews what they want, a land from the Nile to that other river, and making the poor nations pay for it, as all others are “deserving of being slaves to them - Jews.” as they say, ignoring the religious aspect of this conflict is ignorant.

            ** A middle-eastern, Arab, not so white, Islamic population.

            A while back I heard something on lemmy about France supporting Isreal duo to its debt to the Jews for playing a role in the holocaust or something, while the holocaust is possibly the most over-exaggerated event in modern history, in death numbers and whatnot, it’s still a horrible event, yet what that writer failed to say is that France, along with the US and many European nations, are guilty of many similar acts against the Muslim Middle Eastern population.

            The west are currently controlling every Arab state by having important government members - literally the entire government in many cases - consist of puppets they control, by threatening them - the puppets - with their crimes against humanity, by which they can turn the world media on the at any moment and strip them of their power, and offering to point the attention of the world media away from them.

            People on lemmy here like to complain about the 1%, the 0.01% and modern capitalism and billionaires, the leaders of the government ARE the 0.001% you morons, they don’t have hearts, worship money, and don’t mind doing anything to maintain their power, yes they are pretending to support Gaza even before the war to maintain public support, but the supplies they were sending before the war were just enough for the now-homeless (duo to the occupation) Palestinian population to just die slowly enough for it to not attract public attention. They were quick to blame Hamas for “stealing supplies meant to support the poor population” THAT’S how you support a homeless population, by giving them guns to fight for their rights and freedom.

            (the last sentence reminded me of what someone told me about a Rambo movie, IDK anything a ku Rambo don’t quote me on that)

            • hottari@lemmy.ml
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              The US cannot be seen to openly support genocide against the determination of all the other countries that signed the treaty. There’s no world where what you are describing is a win.

                  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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                    6 months ago

                    Okay, so why would the US care? If it can get away with genocide surely it can just support an ally doing a genocide and get away with it.

              • ikidd@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                So a country that’s committed genocidal acts with impunity is not going to get away with refusing to stop others genocide? Where’s the logic in that?

                • hottari@lemmy.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  When did the US get convicted of committing genocide… Where is your logic?

              • Doods@infosec.pub
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                The US: “I am going to say I don’t support this, but I do, and all of you understand that I do, and you all know what will happen if you refuse”

                Maybe I am just too much of a ‘conspiracy theory acknowledging, modern capitalism hating, 1% despising, extremist muslim’ (or whatever it’s called) but I genuinely don’t think anything good will come out of the west, and that if they had a ‘kill a random innocent child and get slightly richer and more power’ button, they would pay a starving African child 0.01$ an hour to continuously press it for them, and hire a guard to leash them if they get tired.

                (the guard part doesn’t financially make sense as well as not using a machine to press the button, but you get the idea that I hate them so bad I would execute many of them if I had the ability)

                • hottari@lemmy.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  The US: “I am going to say I don’t support this, but I do, and all of you understand that I do, and you all know what will happen if you refuse”

                  True. The world has been following along with this narrative. But times are changing (the US foreign policy has never been weaker) and I don’t think when it comes to it, any country wants to be seen internationally as a supporter of genocide. The West can bluff all they want now but we all know they will be forced to drop Israel just like they did to Ukraine’s war efforts. Genocide is not a casual matter you can brush aside after an ICJ determination.

                  • Doods@infosec.pub
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                    True. I think the populations of the world have put so much pressure on this case it can’t be brushed aside, but the US Loves Isreal, and has much experience avoiding consequences, but I am not sure how much of the blow can they soften on Isreal at the moment, but I still don’t doubt the US’s ability to hide history from the masses.

                    (I know Trump is old news but the video’s made me laugh when I first saw it)