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

        • hottari@lemmy.ml
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          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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            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@lemmygrad.ml
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            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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              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@lemmygrad.ml
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                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.

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                  CONSIDER THIS MY LAST COMMENT ON THE MATTER.

                  AN ICJ RULING FAVOURABLE TO PALESTINE WILL BRING A SWIFT END TO THE GENOCIDE HAPPENING IN GAZA. WHETHER THE US LIKES THE OUTCOME OR NOT.

                  END OF STORY.

                  • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
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                    I mean, it’s good to have hope. It would be awsome if the ICJ will stopped the genocide.

                    But I’m telling you, you’ll be disapointed in the end.

                    Either way, well see what happen when it does.

                  • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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                    AN ICJ RULING FAVOURABLE TO PALESTINE WILL BRING A SWIFT END TO THE GENOCIDE HAPPENING IN GAZA

                    no, but bombing israel to dust would

                    one can dream

        • hottari@lemmy.ml
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          I think you are confusing the ICC with ICJ. Those are 2 different institutions.

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              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.

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                  Ruling is against Israel, maybe we can hope to see the U.S mentioned as a co-conspirator but am not keeping my hopes up.

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                    That wont change anything even if they are. Their geopolitical iterest in the middle east are at bay, they just won’t care and will continue to support Izrael anyway. That’s what they always do.

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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.

                • hottari@lemmy.ml
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                  You speak as if openly supporting the genocide of a race is an acceptable norm. It has never been. Not in modern times at least.

                  And there are many ways for member states to enforce the ICJ’s decision on ISRAEL (IDK why I have to keep repeating myself on this single point) and the US if they get mentioned as well, economic sanctions are just one of them.

                  • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
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                    And there are many ways for member states to enforce the ICJ’s decision on ISRAEL (IDK why I have to keep repeating myself on this single point) and the US if they get mentioned as well, economic sanctions are just one of them.

                    What ways then?

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        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.

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

                • hottari@lemmy.ml
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                  Case is against Israel. What the US wants and doesn’t want doesn’t really matter here.

                  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                    Have you not paid attention to the last several decades? Israel has the nuke thanks to the USA despite international law.

              • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
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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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                  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.

                  Don’t flutter yourself too much.

                  If today the ICJ rules that Palestinians have been victims of genocide, that war is ending in the next few days/weeks.

                  You can take that to the bank.

                  • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
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                    If today the ICJ rules that Palestinians have been victims of genocide, that war is ending in the next few days/weeks.

                    This is naive. Like we keep teling you, the US has made it a habit to go against decisions from intrenational institutions like the UN, the ICJ etc. Nothing has ever happened to them as a consequance of that behavior. If they decide to keep backing Israel’s genicide anyway, which they without a doubt will, there will be very little consequances for them at best.