By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – A United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded on Tuesday that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had incited these acts – accusations that Israel called scandalous.
The U.N. report cites examples of the scale of the killings, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic to back up its genocide finding, adding its voice to rights groups and others who have reached the same conclusion.
“Genocide is occurring in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, head of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a former International Criminal Court judge.
“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza.
ISRAELI AMBASSADOR CALLS GENOCIDE REPORT ‘SCANDALOUS’
Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Daniel Meron, called the report “scandalous” and “fake”, saying it had been authored by “Hamas proxies”.
“Israel categorically rejects the libellous rant published today by this commission of inquiry,” Meron told journalists.
Israel, which accuses the commission of having a political agenda against Israel and diverging from its mandate, declined to cooperate with it.
The commission’s 72-page legal analysis is the strongest U.N. finding to date but the body is independent and does not officially speak for the United Nations. The U.N. has not yet used the term genocide but is under mounting pressure to do so.
Israel is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It has rejected such accusations, citing its right to self-defence following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
The subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 64,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while a global hunger monitor says part of it is suffering from famine.
The 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”.
To count as genocide, at least one of five acts must have occurred.
The U.N. commission found that Israel had committed four of them: killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
It cited as evidence interviews with victims, witnesses, doctors, verified open-source documents and satellite imagery analysis compiled since the war began.
ISRAEL ‘DEHUMANISING’ PALESTINIAN POPULATION
The commission also concluded that statements by Netanyahu and other officials are “direct evidence of genocidal intent.” It cites a letter he wrote to Israeli soldiers in November 2023 comparing the Gaza operation to what the commission describes as a “holy war of total annihilation” in the Hebrew Bible.
The report also names Israeli President Isaac Herzog and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
South Africa’s Pillay, who headed a U.N. tribunal for Rwanda where more than 1 million people were killed in 1994, said the situations were comparable. “When I look at the facts in the Rwandan genocide, it’s very, very similar to this. You dehumanise your victims. They’re animals, and so therefore, without conscience, you can kill them,” she said.
While the International Court of Justice referred to other Israeli statements in regard to Gaza and Palestinians in its 2024 emergency measures order, it did not name Netanyahu.
“I hope, as a result of our report, that the minds of states will also be opened,” said Pillay, who retires in November.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Stephanie van den Berg in The Hague; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Aidan Lewis and Kevin Liffey)
