The document is meant to be comprehensive and incriminating, documenting evidence it claims proves that Israel is engaging in genocide in Gaza. It claims that Israel has violated the Genocide Convention that was approved in 1948 by the newly formed United Nations. The term genocide, and the convention that established it as a crime, were conceived specifically in response to the genocide of six million Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Israel dismisses all claims that its actions in Gaza have violated the treaties and conventions constituting the laws of war and international humanitarian law. It defends itself as self-defence, for the defense of its people and to compel the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on 7 October 2023, some 20 or so of which are thought still to be alive.
The Israelis have rejected the report as Hamas-inspired antisemitic lies. It was authored by a commission of inquiry that had been established by the UN Human Rights Council. Israel and the US are boycotting the Council, which both nations claim is anti-Israeli and anti-US.
But the conclusions of the report will contribute to mounting global outrage at Israel’s behavior, which is also being expressed by Israel’s long-standing western allies and also by the Gulf Arab monarchies that normalised with Israel in the Abraham Accords.
UN genocide report a blunt indictment of Israel’s actions in Gaza
Later this month in New York at the UN General Assembly, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada and others will join the majority of UN members by acknowledging the sovereignty of an independent Palestinian state.
The gesture will be more than symbolic. It will alter the debate over the future of the conflict that started over a century ago when European Zionist Jews arrived in Palestine to settle. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has criticized recognition as being antisemitic, as a reward for terrorism from Hamas.
He insists the Palestinians will never achieve independence in any area of the land from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea because a Palestinian state would endanger Israelis. Israeli religious nationalists hold the belief that God donated the land specifically to the Jewish people.
Genocide has been defined under the 1948 convention as intending to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group – in this instance, Palestinians in Gaza.
The report catalogues actions taken against Palestinians within Gaza and in prisons within Israel.
Among scores of allegations is Israeli targeting of civilians over whom it has a legal duty to protect, and the imposition of “inhumane conditions leading to Palestinian deaths, including withholding food, water and medicines”. That is a reference to the blockade which has generated a famine as well as mass starvation, says the IPC, the international organization that measures food emergencies.
UN genocide report a blunt indictment of Israel’s actions in Gaza
The new UN report also lists forced displacement, which is taking place in Gaza City since the Israeli army, the IDF, instructed all non-combatants in it to relocate south.
Some one million people are estimated to be displaced. Israel’s campaign is reaching full momentum, with airstrikes and demolition of most buildings, including highrises that are Gaza City landmarks and represent its symbols, which the IDF defines as Hamas “terror towers.”.
The report also states that Israel has taken “measures intended to prevent births”. That is referring to an attack on the largest fertility clinic in Gaza that damaged approximately 4000 embryos and 1000 sperm samples and unfertilised eggs.
In addition to the outcome of military action, the UN report targets three Israeli officials for genocidal incitement.
They include Yoav Gallant, at the time defence minister, who stated on 9 October 2023 that Israel was battling “human animals”. Like Prime Minister Netanyahu, Gallant himself also already has an arrest warrant for war crimes pending against him at the International Criminal Court.
Netanyahu is further charged with incitement for making parallels between the Gaza conflict and the biblical account of the Jewish struggle against an enemy called Amalek. In the bible, God instructs the Jews to kill all the men, women and children of the Amaleks, as well as their goods and their animals.
The third government official targeted is President Isaac Herzog, who on the first week of the war blamed Gaza’s Palestinians for failing to revolt against Hamas. On 13 October 2023, he stated that “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”.
Legally, the crime of genocide is difficult to prove. Those who drafted the Genocide Convention, and some rulings by the ICJ in more recent cases, consciously established a high legal threshold.
In The Hague’s International Court of Justice, South Africa has filed a case that Israel has conducted genocide against the Palestinians. It will take a few years before the case will be heard.
But with the Gaza war still raging and maybe intensifying with the present Israeli assault, the UN report is going to exacerbate global differences regarding the war.
On one hand are nations which call for an end to the killing and destruction in Gaza immediately, and denounce the famine brought about by Israel’s blockade. Included among them are the UK and France.
Against it are Israel and the United States. President Donald Trump’s administration goes on supporting essential military assistance and diplomatic protection on the absence of which the Israelis would not be able to sustain the conflict in Gaza and its aerial attacks elsewhere in the Middle East.
