South Africa formally accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the International Court of Justice on Thursday. 
 

• In the opening statements at The Hague, lawyers for South Africa called the decimation of Gaza part of decades of Israeli oppression against Palestinians, and demanded the United Nations’ top court order an emergency suspension of the Israel Defense Forces campaign. In the first of two days of hearings, South Africa said that Israel’s campaign, which has displaced up to 85 percent of the coastal enclave’s population of 2.3 million people and killed more than 23,000 people according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, aimed to bring about the “destruction of [Gaza’s] population.” A lawyer for South Africa said: “The intent to destroy Gaza has been nurtured at the highest level of the state,” and described members of Israel’s far-right government including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as among “the genocidal inciters.” 
   

• Israel vehemently rejected the accusations and claimed that South Africa was speaking on behalf of terrorist group Hamas, which the latter nation denies. “Today we saw an upside-down world,” Netanyahu said. “Israel is accused of genocide while it is fighting against genocide.” He added that Israel is fighting against “murderous terrorists who carried out crimes against humanity,” referring to the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis. Of the 23,000 killed in Gaza, some 70 percent of the deceased are women and children according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. 
   

• South Africa pointed to comments made by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said early in the war that Israel would impose a total blockade as part of an effort to combat “human animals.” Those remarks and others from government officials, as well as other actions demonstrate genocidal intent, South Africa said. And genocide, as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is about intent—which is a difficult element to prove.  According to the definition formed at that convention and (as of 2022) ratified by 153 countries—including Israel and South Africa—genocide “means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation, ethnical, racial, or religious group: 

  1. Killing members of the group; 

  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” 

The hearings will continue on Friday. South Africa and Israel will each have two hours on separate days to make their case through legal arguments by state officials for or against emergency measures to be invoked. 
 

• Thousands of miles away in Gaza, conditions continue to deteriorate even further. The number of Gazans facing possible starvation in the coming weeks is the largest share of any population at risk of famine identified since a U.N.-affiliated panel, the Famine Review Committee, created the global food-insecurity assessment two decades ago. Famine scholars say that this degree of food deprivation in warfare has not been seen in generations. Israel’s ground assault and the sealing of the enclave has left the enclave’s population deprived of sufficient food, clean water, and supplies, and the U.N. has concluded that without significant intervention, the enclave could reach a level of widespread starvation that constitutes a famine as soon as February. 
   

• According to the panel of U.N.-affiliated experts, more than 90 percent of Gaza’s population is facing “acute food insecurity,” and one-quarter of the population is experiencing “catastrophic levels of hunger.” Even before the war broke out on October 7, nearly 70 percent of Gazans relied on humanitarian aid for food because the territory has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007. They reported that most people in the enclave are regularly going a day or longer without eating. Children, the elderly, pregnant and lactating women, and people with medical conditions are often the first to succumb to severe malnutrition. Only an estimated 1.6 liters of drinking water are available to each person in Gaza per day, according to estimates. The World Health Organization recommends 15 liters per day. 

The conflict continues to expand beyond Israel and Gaza’s borders. The United States and United Kingdom began striking targets in Yemen to retaliate for attacks in the Red Sea from the Iranian-backed Houthis. The strike was confirmed by an American official on Thursday night. An attack from the Houthis on Tuesday was one of the largest in the Red Sea to date.

On Wednesdays, we wear pink. And listen to Keep it. Cady Heron, AKA Angourie Rice (An-gor-y Rice) from the new Mean Girls musical, was on yesterday's episode of Keep It, and she shares how awesome it was to be punched in the face by the new Regina George. Then, hosts Ira & Louis dig into the snubs and dubs of the Golden Globes. Listen to this episode now, out on the Keep It feed!

Here we fucking go again. Congress is fast approaching the first of two deadlines to fund the government and avoid a shutdown, as five major federal departments are set to run out of money by next Friday, January 19. The rest of the government is funded until February 2. [Holds finger to the wind: “A Republican was here.”] House Republicans are once again threatening a full shutdown over disagreements about “securing” the U.S.-Mexico border. Without a funding package or a short-term stopgap bill, the departments that could be affected on January 19 are big ones: Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, Energy, and Transportation. As always, a big “Thanks for nothing!” to Republican lawmakers.

A new United Nations report estimates that 1.84 billion people, nearly one-quarter of the world’s population, were living under drought in 2022 and 2023. The vast majority were populations in low-and-middle-income countries. 

An Ohio grand jury declined to charge 34-year-old Brittany Watts of “abuse of a corpse” for miscarrying at home, resolving a case that sparked national outrage due to its implications for pregnant women in states across the country. About 10-20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. 

Iran seized an oil tanker filled with Iraqi crude destined en route to Turkey on Thursday. According to Iranian state media, this was retaliation for the confiscation last year of the same vessel and its oil by the United States. 

Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH)—who campaigned for reelection in part on being critical of disgraced former president Donald Trump—now says he would vote for Trump if he’s the Republican nominee…even if he's a convicted felon. Profiles in courage!

The developer of OpenAI admitted that its tools like ChatGPT would not be possible without access to copyrighted material. So…stealing?  Cue up the “Oh my god, he admit it!” meme.

Even as inflation continues to moderate, utility bills remain high, squeezing many low-income households.

Disgraced former president Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial concluded on Thursday in a packed Manhattan courtroom. True to form, Trump insulted presiding Judge Arthur Engoron to his face while giving surprise remarks in his own defense, leading Engoron to instruct Trump’s lawyers to “control your client.” He painted himself as the victim of a grand conspiracy (a go-to Trump move) and expressed his well-known disdain for state Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) who he claimed “hates Trump and uses Trump to get elected.” This unhinged use of the third-person concluded a monthslong trial in which Attorney General James is seeking a $370 million penalty for the Trump Organization. She accuses Trump and his top executives of fraudulently inflating the value of his properties to obtain favorable loans and other financial benefits. Along with the monetary penalty, James also seeks to ban Trump from New York’s commercial real estate industry, permanently.  Wow, I gotta say, I’m pretty tired of this guy!

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December data shows that inflation, although bumpy, is still trending downward and on track to return to a normal pace. 

St. Paul, MN became the first major U.S. city with an all-female city council.