<\/p>\n AP Mobile App CTA<\/p>\n Get the AP News App<\/p>\n The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created four years ago, has repeatedly documented<\/a> alleged human rights abuses and violations in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel led by Hamas, and other Palestinian areas.<\/p>\n While neither the commission nor the 47-member-country council that it works for within the U.N. system can take action against a country, the findings could be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court or the U.N.’s International Court of Justice.<\/p>\n The report also amounts to a final message from the team headed by former U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay, who served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda that sentenced 62 people over the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Rwandans. All three of the commission\u2019s members announced in July that they would resign, citing personal reasons<\/a> and a need for change.<\/p>\n The team was commissioned by the Human Rights Council, the U.N.\u2019s top human rights body, but it does not speak for the United Nations.<\/p>\n Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission<\/a> and has accused it and the HRC of anti-Israel bias. Earlier this year, the Trump administration, a key Israeli ally, pulled the United States out of the council<\/a>.<\/p>\n Commission says Israel committed \u2018genocidal acts\u2019 <\/p>\n After a painstaking legal analysis, examining both actions and intent, the commission said Israel had committed four of the five \u201cgenocidal acts\u201d defined under an international convention adopted in 1948 known colloquially as the \u201cGenocide Convention,\u201d three years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,\u201d said Pillay, the commission chair. \u201cIt is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.\u201d<\/p>\n The team based its findings on the convention\u2019s five criteria to assess whether genocide has occurred: killing members of a group; causing its members serious bodily or mental harm; imposing measures aimed to prevent births in the group; deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the \u201cphysical destruction\u201d of the group; and forcibly transferring its children to another group. <\/p>\n Under the convention, a genocide determination could be made even if only one of those five criteria is met \u2014 and the commission said four have been. Only the criterion on forcible transfer has not been met, it said. <\/p>\n Pillay said \u201cresponsibility for the atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons\u201d over the nearly two-year war.<\/p>\n Her commission concluded that Netanyahu, as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, had incited the commission of genocide. It hasn\u2019t assessed whether other Israeli leaders had done so too.<\/p>\n Chris Sidoti, one of the commission\u2019s three members, said he hoped that the report would reach people in Israel, insisting they had been \u201cbetrayed\u201d by the government in its \u201cabject refusal\u201d to take action to rescue Israeli hostages after 1,200 people were killed on Oct. 7 two years ago, and its \u201cgenocidal war\u201d that has jeopardized Israel\u2019s security.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot understand how traumatic the 7th of October was for the people of Israel,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThe trauma and their suffering has been ruthlessly manipulated by Netanyahu and his cronies for the last two years \u2014 and it\u2019s time that it stopped. And it\u2019s time that those who are responsible for this were held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel rejects the findings<\/p>\n Israel has adamantly rejected genocide allegations against it as an antisemitic \u201cblood libel,\u201d and its Foreign Ministry issued an angry response Tuesday that it \u201ccategorically rejects this distorted and false report.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThree individuals serving as Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic positions \u2014 and whose horrific statements about Jews have been condemned worldwide \u2014 released today another fake \u2018report\u2019 about Gaza,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Genocide accusations are especially sensitive in Israel, which was founded as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust and where memories of the Holocaust still play an important role in the country\u2019s national identity.<\/p>\n In coming to its conclusion of genocide, the commission said it pored over the conduct of Israeli security forces and \u201cexplicit statements\u201d by Israeli civilian and military authorities, among other criteria.<\/p>\n In particular, the experts cited as factors the death toll, Israel\u2019s \u201ctotal siege\u201d of Gaza and blockade of humanitarian aid that has led to starvation, a policy of \u201csystematically destroying\u201d the health care system, and direct targeting of children.<\/p>\n Commission calls on countries to act<\/p>\n The commission urged other countries to halt weapons transfers to Israel and block individuals or companies from actions that could contribute to genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThe international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,\u201d said Pillay, who is a South African jurist. \u201cWhen clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity.\u201d <\/p>\n The current U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker T\u00fcrk, has decried Israel\u2019s conduct of the war in Gaza and spoken out forcefully against alleged crimes, but has not accused Israel of carrying out genocide.<\/p>\n His office, alluding to international law, has argued that only an international court can make a final, formal determination of genocide. Critics counter this could take years and insist that thousands of people, many of them civilians, are being systematically killed in Gaza in the meantime.<\/p>\n The International Court of Justice is hearing a genocide case<\/a> filed by South Africa against Israel. Other countries, including Spain, Mexico and Libya<\/a>, have asked the U.N. court to join the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA (AP) \u2014 A team of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations\u2019 Human Rights Council has concluded…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":232267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[97,372,125152,356,4219,69,4526,57,18890,57958,89268,6604,49970,99,3462,373,3463,125150,50,365,1206,125151,103,107,65380],"class_list":{"0":"post-232266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-2024-2025-mideast-wars","9":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","10":"tag-chris-sidoti","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-gaza-strip","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-genocide","17":"tag-international-court-of-justice","18":"tag-international-criminal-court","19":"tag-international-news","20":"tag-isaac-herzog","21":"tag-israel","22":"tag-israel-government","23":"tag-israel-hamas-war","24":"tag-mideast-wars","25":"tag-navi-pillay","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-religion","28":"tag-united-nations","29":"tag-volker-trk","30":"tag-world","31":"tag-world-news","32":"tag-yoav-gallant"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115216177312741328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"AP](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/icon-2-copy.png\"){kind=icon}
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