A civil society panel assembled in response to Israel's annihilation and starvation of Gaza delivered its final statement Sunday in Istanbul—detailing nine categories of crimes committed, warning that genocide continues, and calling on humanity to take action to hold the perpetrators legally and morally accountable.
Chaired by Richard Falk, a former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and a professor emeritus at Princeton University in New Jersey, the Gaza Tribunal held four days of public hearings during which international jurists, experts, and witnesses offered evidence and testimonies of what they said are Israel's continuing crimes against the Palestinian people.
Israel "is perpetrating an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, within—and enabled by—a broader settler-colonial apartheid regime rooted in the supremacist ideology of Zionism," said Christine Chinkin, a University of Michigan law professor who chaired the tribunal's Jury of Conscience.
"The jury, guided by conscience and informed by international law, does not speak with the authority of states, but when law is silenced by power, conscience must become the final tribunal," she continued. "We believe that genocide must be named and documented and that impunity feeds continuing violence throughout the globe."
"Genocide in Gaza is the concern of all humanity," Chinkin added. "When states are silent civil society can and must speak out."
The jury named—and condemned—Israel's crimes in Gaza, including:
- Starvation and famine via the deliberate and systematic destruction of Gaza's food and water system;
- Domicide, including the intentional mass destruction of homes and their infrastructure such as electricity, water, and sanitation;
- Ecocide, the catastrophic obliteration of sources of food and water, land fertility, and air quality;
- Deliberate destruction of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure;
- Reprocide, or the intentional and systematic targeting of reproductive care through prevention of births, eliminating future lives, and the ability to reproduce safely;
- Scholasticide, the "genocide of knowledge" via the destruction of educational institutions and infrastructure and killing of and forcibly displacing educators and students;
- Attacks on journalists—well over 200 of whom have been killed since October 2023—in order to thwart genocide documentation;
- Torture and sexual violence; and
- Politicide—the targeted assassination and abduction of political and cultural leaders, representatives, activists, and the destruction of civic institutions.
Additionally, the jury "finds Western governments, particularly the United States, and others complicit in, in some cases colluding with, Israel’s commission of genocide through provision of diplomatic cover, weapons, weapon parts, intelligence, military assistance and training, and continuing economic relations," Chinkin said.
The panel called for "ending impunity and ensuring accountability" by using legal institutions such as the International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa—and the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza including murder and forced starvation.
The jury also urged UN member states to invoke the United for Peace resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 1950. The measure is designed to empower action when at least one of the five permanent Security Council members uses a veto to thwart functions mandated under the UN Charter.
The resolution—which has been implemented more than a dozen times—allows the UNGA to take actions ranging from rejecting Israel’s UN credentials to mandating an armed protection force for Gaza, if approved by two-thirds of UN member states.
The jury further recommended "resisting and dismantling oppressive structures" by "building a worldwide movement that weakens, isolates, and dismantles each source through coordinated political, legal, economic, academic, cultural, technological, and social action."
It also called for "comprehensive global confrontation" of Israel "in every sphere—political and diplomatic; legal and human rights; economic and commercial; media, cultural, intellectual, academic, and educational; industrial, technological, and scientific; arts, tourism, and sports."
"Silence is not neutral; silence is complicity," Chinkin concluded, adding that "neutrality is surrender to evil."
