Israel on trial

Good afternoon!

Here's what's on tap today:

UP FIRST: South Africa's genocide case against Israel begins

CATCH UP: What's a bitcoin ETF?

Also, a correction: Yesterday's Verbatim should have been attributed to Jason Dempsey, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

—Nicole Narea, senior reporter

UP FIRST

South Africa wants to end the violence in Gaza

Ecuadorian troops patrol in Quito, Ecuador, Jan. 9, 2024. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa on Tuesday declared ''internal armed conflict'' and mobilized the army to combat organized crime linked to drug trafficking, following an escalation in violence in the South American country.

Michel Porro/Getty Images

Opening arguments began Thursday in South Africa's case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza before the International Court of Justice, the United Nations's top court.

South Africa has asked the court to order an immediate halt to Israel's military operation, in which more than 23,000 people have been killed, as well as prevent further forced displacement, deprivation of basic necessities, and lack of access to humanitarian aid.

"Nothing will stop the suffering except an order from this court," South African lawyer Adila Hassim told the judges in the Hague.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues that "it is not we who have come to perpetrate genocide, it is Hamas," which has been designated as a terrorist organization by many countries. The October 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group killed about 1,200 people in Israel.

The court is expected to rule in the next few weeks on South Africa's preliminary request to end the fighting. But a final decision as to whether Israel has committed genocide could be years away, and such determinations are historically rare.

Here's some key information on the case:

Israel's defense: Israel maintains that it is targeting Hamas, rather than Palestinians overall, and taking measures to avoid civilian casualties: airdropping flyers urging civilians to seek safety, calling civilians in targeted buildings to tell them to leave, and withholding some strikes that would harm civilians.

The evidence suggests otherwise: Israel has exacted widespread civilian casualties and suffering. It has made Gaza "uninhabitable," with dire shortages of food, water, and basic medical supplies and the spread of infectious disease, as the UN humanitarian chief recently warned.

It's still hard to prove genocide: "The threshold to establish genocidal intent remains very high," Michael Becker, a professor of international human rights law at Trinity College Dublin, told me. Still, he said it's "not beyond the realm of possibility that Israel's military campaign ... has evolved into something that might meet the strict legal definition of genocide."

A final determination of genocide is far off: At this point, the court doesn't need to determine whether Israel has committed genocide. It only needs to decide whether the case is plausible and "whether the Palestinian population of Gaza faces a real and imminent risk of irreparable harm," Becker said.

CATCH UP

Bitcoin ETFs have been approved

A Palestinian man dressed in all black stands in the ruins of a bombed room, pointing towards the missing exterior walls; all around him are pieces of broken household goods.

Chesnot/Getty Images

The Securities and Exchange Commission has given the green light to the first US bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Firms including BlackRock, Invesco, Fidelity, Grayscale, and Ark Invest will soon roll out 10 of these funds — and that means you'll be able to not only hold bitcoin but actually trade it through an ETF.

Before I get into why that's exciting, a bit of financial literacy 101: An ETF is a basket of different investments (such as stocks, bonds, commodities, or in this case, bitcoin) that you can buy or sell on a regulated stock exchange.

ETFs are useful because they allow you to diversify your investments (and therefore mitigate your risk exposure). You don't need a lot of money to invest, they're typically lower cost than actively managed funds, and you can buy and sell shares in ETFs throughout the day at market prices. If you're just starting to get into investing, ETFs are a great option.

And for that reason, it will become a whole lot easier for investors who may not have had a lot of experience in cryptocurrency to start investing in bitcoin and get some exposure to the market. That might cause the market for bitcoin to grow, but it's also just a big boost to crypto's legitimacy as an asset class — even if it is still very risky (so maybe don't pool all of your retirement savings in there).

VERBATIM

🗣️ "It's populist rhetoric and elite economics."

— Felicia Wong, president and CEO of Roosevelt Forward, a sister organization of the progressive think tank the Roosevelt Institute, on what a Trump second term might look like for the economy. [Vox]

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