The International Court of Justice recently declared that South Africa's accusation that the government of Israel was committing genocide in Gaza was "plausible", and ordered the government of Israel to desist from certain actions, and to allow others, such as "humanitarian assistance" to the people of Gaza.
The response of many Western governments was not merely to connive at, but to actively support this possible genocide by immediately cutting off support to UNRWA, the main agency providing this "humanitarian assistance". They thus directly went against the judgement of the court, which had examined the evidence. and did so because they found some unsubstantiated allegations by the government of Israel that some UNRWA employees had participated in the October 7 outrage in Israel to be "credible".
This raises the question of what the words "plausible" and "credible" mean.
"Credible" is a much stronger word than "plausible" -- it means trustworthy, reliable, worthy of being believed.
"Plausible", on the other hand, is a much weaker word. It means that something is apparently true. We speak of someone who is a "plausible rogue", a person who has the gift of the gab, the ability to persuade people that something is true even though it may not be.
The Western governments that apparently rejected the judgment of a court that examined the evidence, and yet immediately accepted unsubstantiated allegations by the accused in the case as "credible" are therefore credulous at best, but more likely to be complicit in war crimes, mass murder, and possibly genocide (if the ICJ eventually does find that the government of Israel was indeed practising genocide in Gaza).
But it might clarify a lot of muddled thinking about such things if people were more careful about how they use words like "plausible" and "credible".
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