A United Nations commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli officials including prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had incited these acts.<\/p>\n
It 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 that have reached the same conclusion.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenocide is occurring in Gaza,\u201d said Navi Pillay, head of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a former International Criminal Court judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel has declined to co-operate with the commission. Israel\u2019s diplomatic mission in Geneva accuses the commission of having a political agenda against Israel.<\/p>\n
The commission\u2019s 72-page legal analysis is the strongest UN finding to date but the body is independent and does not officially speak for the United Nations. The UN has not yet used the term genocide but is under mounting pressure to do so.<\/p>\n
Israel is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It rejects 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed \u201cwith intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such\u201d. To count as genocide, at least one of five acts must have occurred.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It cited as evidence interviews with victims, witnesses, doctors, verified open-source documents and satellite imagery analysis compiled since the war began.<\/p>\n
The commission also concluded that statements by Netanyahu and other officials are \u201cdirect evidence of genocidal intent.\u201d <\/p>\n
It cites a letter he wrote to Israeli soldiers in November 2023 comparing the Gaza operation to what the commission describes as a \u201choly war of total annihilation\u201d in the Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n
The report also names Israeli president Yitzhak Herzog and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s Pillay, who headed a UN tribunal for Rwanda where more than one million people were killed in 1994, said the situations were comparable. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look at the facts in the Rwandan genocide, it\u2019s very, very similar to this. You dehumanise your victims. They\u2019re animals, and so therefore, without conscience, you can kill them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope, as a result of our report, that the minds of states will also be opened,\u201d said Pillay, who retires in November.<\/p>\n
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