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An independent United Nations inquiry has concluded for the first time that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and that the country’s top leaders have incited genocide, in what it described as the “most authoritative UN finding to date.”
In a 72-page report released on Tuesday, the commission, which was set up by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), found that Israel has “committed four genocidal acts” in the enclave since October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out deadly attacks on Israel and Israel launched its military campaign.
These acts include the killing of Palestinians in Gaza, causing Palestinians “serious bodily and mental harm,” “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,” according to the report.
Nearly 65,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the Palestinian health ministry there. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters but has said that most of the casualties are women and children.
The Israeli government has maintained it is conducting the war in Gaza in self-defense and in accordance with international law, firmly denying accusations of genocide.
“Israel categorically rejects the distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of the Commission of Inquiry,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday. It described the inquiry as a “report that relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods” and accused the authors of being proxies for the militant group “whose horrific statements about Jews have been condemned worldwide.”
For years, Israel has accused the HRC, which commissioned the report, of having an anti-Israel bias.
The Trump administration has backed Israel, withdrawing from the UN body in 2018 during Trump’s first term and during the first month of the second term. Israel has consistently argued that it is acting in accordance with international law.
But accusations of genocide are growing internationally, including from within the United States.
Last week, US Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is “implementing a plan to ethnically clean Gaza of Palestinians” and that the United States is complicit.
Earlier this month, the International Association of Genocide Scholars – the world’s largest body of genocide scholars – said that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.
In July, a pair of leading Israeli human rights groups became the first organizations from Israel to make the claim that their country was “committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
And in December 2023, South Africa accused Israel of genocide in an unprecedented case at the International Court of Justice, saying the country’s leadership was “intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza.”(CNN)
