In seeking a provisional order from the international court of justice restraining Israel from committing potentially genocidal acts in Gaza, South Africa did not just put Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the dock, but also the whole post-second world war rules-based order including the authority of the ICJ itself. Never has there been such a high profile case brought in the middle of such a bloody conflict, and rarely have so many staked so much on the outcome. In the words of the Irish barrister Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, who set out part of South’s Africa case to the court: “The...