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on bbc news. >> in conformity with the obligations under the genocide is that they must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action. >> israel says it is acting precisely as it should and rejects this notion that what it is doing in rafah is somehow bolstering south africa's case. >> the convention is crystal clear on this issue, so israel has to abide by the decisions and the demands from the icj. ♪ >> coming up on the program, the un's highest court, the icj rules that israel should immunity halt its military offensive in rafah.

israel's finance ministers has no power on earth would stop his country going after hamas. we will be live in jerusalem with the latest. we've been talking a lot about elections. we will be bringing you a special report on the upcoming contest in south africa. and we have the very latest from here in the u.k.. plus, will be looking at memes, viral videos, and more. what does a campaign look li in 2024? we will analyze how the major parties are seeking out votes online. we begin with the latest on the israel-gaza war. as we've been saying, the un's highest court has ruled israel must immediately halt its military offensive in rafah. south africa as the international court of justice to issue the order as an emergency measure, argued that israel's actions amounted to a genocidal operation and threaten the survival of the palestinian people.

the icj made several rulings today in addition to calling for israel to halt its military operation in rafah. the court ordered it open the rafah crossing with egypt for the entry of humanitarian aid. it also wants israel to ensure access to gaza for investigators and fact-finding missions. the judges called on hamas to immediately and unconditionally release hostages taken in the seventh of october attack on israel. the icj can make legally binding rulings in dispute between nations but had little way of enforcing its orders. however, it's given israel a month to update on the progress. let's hear from the judge. >> the court considered than in conformity with obligations under the genocide convention, israel must mediately halt its military offensive and any other action in the rafah government which may inflict on the palestinian group in gaza,

conditions of life that can bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. the court recalls that in its order of january 26, 2024, it ordered israel to "take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of article to in article three of the genocide convention." >> let's go to our diplomatic correspondent paul adams who joined me from jerusalem. what more reaction have we had from israel to today's news? >> predictably, this was not a welcome move, one that the israeli government had feared, perhaps hoped it might be able to avert. as it happens, the court was clearly not persuaded by the

israeli arguments about the way it is conducting its military campaign in rafah. and so the news came that the court was ordering the halt. now, the israeli government has argued all along that it is conducting this campaign in accordance with international law, given civilians opportunity to get out of the way. 800,000 people have obeyed those instructions. according to israel, it has gone to some lengths to make sure that aid and other supplies can get into the gaza strip, something that the u.n. absolutely disputes, saying the eight situation particularly in the south is extremely critil. interestingly tonight, there is a slight development on that aid front. following a conversation between the egyptian president and joe

biden, there appears to be an been held up inside egypt forad the last two and half weeks that would normally have gone through the rafah crossing which remains closed, that is going to head down to the nearby israel he ossing -- israeli crossing. we understand trucks are currently on the move. that could, depending on the scale of it, improve the provision of aid in the southern part of the gaza strip, but doesn't get around the problem of what exactly the israeli military intends to do with the city of rafah where there are still huge numbers of civilians, where airstrikes were continuing today, and where everyone is dreading a full-scale invasion of the city itself, as opposed to the water area -- wider area. >> that is the question as we have been reporting, the court has little power to enforce

these rulings today. >> no, not at all. in a way, you should look at the wider context of this, not does the court have the ability to prevent israel from carrying out certain actions? it clearly doesn't. but coming on top of the possibility of everest warrants -- arrest warrants following the appeal to the international criminal court, following the decision by three european countries to recognize the state of palestine, following what we understand to be the increasing levels of frustration bordering on despair in washington at the inability to get the netanyahu government to discuss plans for gaza in the future. given all of these international developments, you get this real sense of israel and this government increasingly isolated

on the international stage. while that does not have any immediate practical consequences in terms of what israel is doing on the ground in rafah, it does just create an atmosphere in which no israeli leader, no matter how determined to finish the job of defeating hamas, can quite ignore. >> thank you very much for the latest. to discuss this in more detail, i am joined now by the international criminal court founding prosecutor, former icc chief prosecutor. thank you for joining us here on bbc news. you are exactly the kind of person we need to talk to today to unpack what we heard from the icj. we were talking with paul adams, our correspondent in jerusalem, about the impact this could have, even if it is not essentially legally binding. what do you think the impact can be?

>> well, it is not a national call who has police. it depends on the reactions of other actors. normally the big and only protector of israel now is the u.s. but on this topic, the rafah attack, the u.s. was saying exactly the same as the court is saying today. you should not attack rafah. i was reading the decision, for me, for the first time, and understood the novelty. the court explained, submitted that they are morning the people in rafah to move. but the court is saying, this is an area which already has 100,000 palestinians. they have no water, food, medicine.

that is not a place to go. that is a new situation that the international court of justice said. if you tried to remove these people to rafah, these people will be exposed with nothing. that is why the court considered the attack on rafah should stop. >> israel has been asked to report back as well. is that something that is quite typical? >> yes. the decision was asking israel, who was a part of the decision. israel cannot be a part of the decision and not. they accepted the proceedings. they cannot ignore. so the court ordered two things. stop the attack, but also produce a report on the. -- on that. i don't know what israel will do. there are three aspects here,

the legal aspect, military aspect, and political aspect. now they are not harmonizing. legally, this week, the icc talking about war crimes and crimes against humanity, and now this court decision. israel is a country with legitimacy. how can israel ignore these courts decisions? they also have military problems. this war will not end with hamas. how israel explains that his exposure legally and militarily. how much president biden can help the situation. in particular, president biden is in agreement with the principles. no rah attack. also in agreement from the beginning that israel should respect the law. >> israel has -- we heard from

an israeli government spokesperson earlier, saying they would continue their fight against thomas. -- hamas. paul adams saying it is unlikely to make a huge difference to their initial reactions around rafah. what it could do perhaps is also change the equation in other ways, adds to the pressure. is that when these kinds of rulings in your experience can do, add to the pressure on a country? >> the judges and the prosecutors do the legal work, implementation is in the hands of states. the problem here is when you read the security council decisions, 90% of the states of the world are telling israel to stop. the only country who is supporting israel is the u.s. it is al saying to stop in rafah, provide assistance. that is why i believe, either

they continue the attack, israel is going nowhere. that is why it is time to rethink the strategy. personally, i believe the international court is trying to control terrorism. there reports say that the money hamas used to buy weapons, if we are not stopping that money, whenever a of soldiers you kill, hamas will be rebuilt. it is organized crime. you need to stop the money flow, not just killing soldiers. >> it's a complicated issue indeed. thank you very much for sharing your experience in this field on today's main story. the international criminal court founding prosecutor and former icc chief prosecutor. we heard from the office of israel's prime minister netanyahu who said south

africa's accusations were false, outrageous, and repulsive, said israel would not carry out military activity in rafah which could lead to the destruction of the palestinian civilian population in whole or in part. around the world and across the u.k., this is bbc news. ♪

>> today, the u.k. parliament shut up shop for the next few weeks as campaigning for the upcoming general election continues. we will have more on that in a moment. let's take a look at one of the laws that was set to go through before parliament was suspended. hundreds of sub-postmasters who were wrongly accused of stealing when a faulty computer system was infected blame are set to have their convictions quashed by parliament. all of this as the former post office boss appeared before the public inquiry to look into what went wrong.

lawyers are some those wrongly accused say that she lived in lala land and was in a cloud of denial. with more, here is emma simpson. >> celebration three years ago as the first wrongful convictions are overturned in court. now hundreds more former sub-postmasters are having their names cleared today. lee williamson on the right was given a suspended sentence for fraud in 2014, which is now being quashed, sooner than he expected. >> there is always been delay or frustration to delay the whole process. it is actually here, it's a relief. i suppose other emotions will come once it settles in. >> so he is to blame? >> paula vennells, did you put profit before people? >> it is day three for her at the public inquiry. time for the sub-postmasters lawyers to ask questions. >>ou still continue to live in

a cloud of denial. >> and i didn't hold back. >> i didn't know, nobody told me, i can't remember, i was not shown this, i relied on the lawyers. >> i have tried to do this to the very best of my ability. >> looking under that route, you are going to find a problem. it is going to devastate the post office, ruin it. you couldn't let that happen, could you? >> i loved the post office. i gave it -- i worked as hard as i possibly could to deliver the best post

office for the u.k. >> she was asked about this episode of the one shop which highlighted the case of joe hamilton. she then discusses it in this email to senior colleagues. i was more bored than outraged, she said. joe hamilton left passion and admitted also accounting on tv. >> i made a mistake in this email. >> is the reality that what you said here reflected, that behind closed doors attitude to these post masters? >> no. >> if she would have sorted out, she could have ended it, what, eight years ago? >> royal mail was split and privatized during her 10 year. she removed a reference to horizon in a prospectus to investors and emailed the post

office chair saying i have earned my keep. >> you wanted to defuse this because of course it was going to be immensely politically damaging, both to the post office itself but also to the privatization. >> i don't think it was ever my style to try to please or to keep in with people. >> but she listed it in an appraisal is one of her key achievements that year. she admitted letting the sub-postmasters down but says there was no deception. it is now up to the inquiry chair to judge how credible her evidence has been. >> as we were saying earlier, campaigning for the general election is in full swing. regardless of which party wins the most mp's for the next government, one thing is clear, parliament will look very different after the election on the fourth of july.

that's because more than 100 sitting mps have said they are standing down. tonight, the latest to add their name to the list is the prominent conservative minister michael gove. those who do want to stay in office were campaigning in earnest. today, prime minister rishi sunak visited northern ireland, while labor leader sir keir starmer launched his campaign. to discuss the latest in the election, i am joined by our correspondent rob watson. a lot of people talking tonight about the fact that one of the best known members of parliament, michael gove, is hanging up his hat in a few weeks from now. >> absolutely. if you were to think of modern british politics, politics of the last 20 years as one of those tv series, which people binge watch, michael gove would be one of the st principled and colorful characters in the conservative party from 2005 onward. he's been very close to all of its leaders, then falling out

with them, buddies with david cameron, boris johnson, buddies, fell back in, one of the architects of leave. someone who was a neocon when it came to foreign policy, loved bashing leftists, experts when it came to policy, and led the league campaign, one of the architects with it alongside boris johnson. extraordinarily colorful character. he is going and many will see that as a sign, along with all the other mps as you mentioned, a sign that maybe it is a sinking ship. >> not just about 17 conservative mps but about 20 or so from the labor side, including harri harman, another long-standing member of the labour party. >> i think that is partly the sheer length of time served, stresses and strains of being an

mp, and it is being more stressful as time goes on. most politicians will tell you that, the abuse they serve. one thing that was interesting from mrs. harman and also from theresa may, outgoing prime minister, also leaving. both of them talked about the importance of public service. although despite all of those stresses of being a politician, the sort of good you can do. it is fascinating because their pleas, defense of politics, being a politician comes against a backdrop of this particular election of absolutely crashing public trust and affection for politicians, the political system, political parties. when did mrs. may suggest might reverse that? politicians thinking of themselves or at providing service rather than being in it for themselves or their parties. certainly not the way that voters see things at the moment. >> thank you so much, rob watson.

one election battleground or party keeping a close eye is online. social media and internet spread of information drive the confirmation and can influence our opinions. naturally, campaign teams have once ain been carefully crafting their approaches. it's a significant departure from significant -- traditional ads. let's take a look at this one post by the conservatives this afternoon. ♪ >> [laughter] don't know why i'm ughing but they are quite unusual, these as we are seeing. this is from the labour party. ♪ >> it's been 40 years.

>> [laughter] both of them made me laugh in equal measure. i suppose that's the whole point. these ads on social media are designed to be shared and designed to attract attention in a different way. to discuss this in a bit more detail, joining me now is a professor from the oxford internet institute, university of oxford. we've seen different attack ads over the years but these are really short and piffy, get to the point in a very direct way, don't they? >> they are certainly geared at doing that. i guess we don't know yet whether they actually will. time will tell. i don't know how well those kinds of memes will hold up with the tiktok generation. but we are certainly going to see a lot more of them. we are going to see a lot more of all of the digital things

that we have seen in previous elections, we are going to see a lot more of them in this one. >> you say you don't know how they will hold up but clearly the political parties are making them because they think they will work. >> yes, that's right. and we will see huge amount more of these things being sent out. we will see a lot more political advertising. the spending limits have been raised on polical advertising, so the parties can legally spend more. we will see huge amounts of advertising on facebook, youtube, google, x, which now allows political advertising, which it did not before. what is difficult to predict is the level of engagement people will have with content like this. that is really difficult to predict, how will will those things stand up against these advertisements for clothes,

food, and so on? >> 30 seconds, but i wanted to ask you about misinformation and fake news, the role that plays in social media in an election. >> well, this is the first election that we will have with large language models like gpt. gpt has a lot of potential to turbocharge online har like misinformation, hate and abuse, which one of your previous presenters mentioned, all kinds of things like that that we are use to. we will see a lot more of it. will be critical to get good information out. >> indeed. from the university of oxford, thanks for taking us through the changing nature of social media in election campaigns. break.l have more after a short you are watching "the context." announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james.

cunard is a proud supporter of public television. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: get the free pbs app now and stream the best of pbs.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: funding for presentation of th program is provided by... woman: a law partner rediscovers her grandmother's artistry and creates a trust to keep the craft alive. a raymond james financial advisor gets to know you,