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A UN commission of inquiry concluded on Tuesday that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli officials including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had incited these acts.
It cited 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 that have reached the same conclusion.
“Genocide is occurring in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, the 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.”
Israel has declined to cooperate with the commission. Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva accuses the commission of having a political agenda against Israel.
“Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this commission of inquiry,” a statement from the foreign ministry said.
The commission’s 72-page legal analysis is the strongest UN finding to date but the body is independent and does not officially speak for the UN. The UN 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 (ICJ) in The Hague. It rejects such accusations, citing its right to self-defence after the deadly 7 October 2023 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 being taken hostage, according to Israeli figures.
The 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 UN 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 UN 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.
The commission also concluded that statements by Netanyahu and other officials were “direct evidence of genocidal intent”. It cited a letter he wrote to Israeli soldiers in November 2023 comparing the Gaza operation to what the commission described as a “holy war of total annihilation” in the Hebrew Bible.
The report also names the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
South Africa’s Pillay, who headed a UN 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 ICJ 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. )
