Given the sheer power of the United States and its track record of international impunity, the odds of any significant consequences may be small — but, nevertheless, Americans should understand that the case is both substantial and serious, and that their own government is implicated.

Within hours of the Hamas attack, Israel imposed a brutal blockade on the Gaza Strip, cutting off electricity, water, fuel and food to a trapped population of roughly 2.2 million, about half of whom are children.

To understand this extraordinary spasm of violence as an act of national self-defense, you’d have to accept that Israel’s only chance for safety depends upon Gaza being crushed and emptied — by death or displacement — of virtually all Palestinians.

The Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy has repeatedly called the South African case a “blood libel” — a reference to antisemitic European conspiracy theories that have fueled the persecution of Jews since the Middle Ages.

To hear the charge of genocide turned against the Jewish state often provokes a visceral disbelief among people — including many Americans — who were carefully educated about the Holocaust while the desperate plight of Palestinians was downplayed or ignored.

Speaking before the tribunal on Thursday, the South African barrister Max du Plessis argued that Israel’s decades-long oppression of Palestinian rights must be regarded as crucial context of the violence in Gaza, which he said “is not correctly framed as a simple dispute between two parties.”

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